On Wed, Dec 29, 2004 at 08:11:22PM -0600, 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? > > Thanks.
I use lyx for anything I need to write on paper or PDF. I can do lots of tweaks but rarely have to. I have made a couple of document classes that fits my work. I don't use lyx for email, plain text is the format of choice for that. I don't want to bother others by forcing them to start some extra program to read mail - all mail readers support text directly. Note that good formatting in all cases, and satisfying all sorts of layout constraints _is_ hard - no program can help that. Lyx can come further, but the task itself is complicated so even a full-featured future lyx will force beginners to ask for help. Today, the hard stuff lies in latex commands and such. With support for everything built-in, the problem will be which of thousands of menus to use to get some specific effect. You can see this already, not all the answers here deal in latex commands. Some go along the lines of "insert a float with such and such options, then use insert->special char->hfill in order to . . ." Those that want to play with advanced typography will need to learn a lot, even if they don't want to learn latex. But predefined classes usually gets the work done. Helge Hafting
