On Wed, 29 Dec 2004, Jack T. Gill wrote:
I've been monitoring this list for a couple of months. I was intrigued by LyX and it being a WYSIWYM program. However most of the activity I've seen on this list seems to be from folks having problems tweaking LyX, i.e., changing the settings or adding ERT to reformat the output to what they want. To me that's no longer WYSIWYM, but seems to be what I've done for years with OpenOffice or in Word---typing the content and formatting the output.
Does anyone use LyX right out of the box (or download) without all the tweaking? If so, to what use are you putting it?
Jack,
You're reading too much into what you see. For the really easy stuff no one writes to ask for help. It's only when you don't know how to do something (e.g., remove the date from the title page; place a special character, have multiple equations with one number and caption, put multiple figures or tables in the same float).
On the other hand, I'll bet you don't use winWord or OO.o "out of the box", either. Never used Word (yea, team!) but have used OO.o since WordPerfect bit the dust about 5 years ago. In OO.o one must set the page size (unless A4 is your default), specify font style, size, margins and so on for your defaults. If you want templates then you need to create those, too. Nothing works for everyone as built.
What sort of writing do you do? Have you produced documents using the article, report and/or book classes? If so, do they meet your needs? If the defaults (and you still need to configure LyX when you carefully take it out of the box) are acceptable, then use it and ignore the traffic here. When you want to do more, or customize the output to fit a specific need (e.g., a thesis/dissertation template, journal template, whatever) and you need help, just write and someone(s) will respond to you.
This is, without doubt, one of the most useful mail lists to which I subscribe. I learn as much by reading how others' problems are resolved as I do when my problems are resolved. Also, if you're serious about using LyX buy yourself a copy of "The LaTeX Companion, Second Edition" (TLC2). Not only is it a complete reference but it will show you what you can do to make the output match your design.
Once things are set up, just write. The formatting, typesetting and other heavy lifting is done for you.
HTH,
Rich
-- Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM) <http://www.appl-ecosys.com> Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863
