Alexander Blüm wrote:hello,
I am still a convinced LyX user and I've "infected" a few people around
me to use it aswell. My girlfriend uses it for all kinds of documents now and gets good grades for homework (the professor likes the the layout - hehe).
But I've also met a few very stubborn people, like most of my school.
They say that you can solve any problem you're approaching with
WORD2000...
I'm running out of arguments.. They've not even tried LyX and knock it
already. Any good arguments why one should use LyX instead of word?
Saying "you can solve any problem you're approaching with WORD2000" is a theoretical assumption, which does not validate in the real life. Word is not good when the number of pages increases and there are cross references.
Here are for me the 2 key features LyX has and Word does not have:
- No corruption of data : the way LyX saves data and saves in cases of emergency makes it very good at avoiding corruption. Additionally, LyX itself is quite stable compared to Word. When Word crashes, you can loose days or weeks of work. With LyX, when LyX has to exit in emergency (LyX crash, but much more often XWindow crash), you loose nothing.
- Correct cross-referencing and numbering: Word is extremely bad at this. I read last week a scientific article with wrong cross referencing (figures had been inserted, and the numbering of the references had not been updated). It was written in Word.
So if you are writing a letter or a small report, Word is fine. If you want to make your layout yourself, Word is fine. But if you are writing a Thesis or a Dissertation, Word is a no go.
I hope this can help.
Best regards,
Olivier.
PS: This is my personal opinion based on my personal experience. Anyone is entitled to disagree.
PPS: Anyway, the best tool is often the tool one is confortable with.
Martin Hansen some time ago initiated a similar sort of discussion. He summarized the findings so the following link may be worth a look
http://www.mail-archive.com/lyx-users@lists.lyx.org/msg38064.html
samar
