Steve - Just to understand, do your comments apply to mathematical/technical documents that are < 10 K words as well ?
thanks -----Original Message----- From: Steve Litt [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 9:55 AM To: lyx-users@lists.lyx.org Subject: Re: "why lyx when there's word?" On Monday 18 April 2005 02:33 am, 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? I think a person should use Word (or in my case OpenOffice) for most stuff. If it's under 10,000 words, LyX is a hassle unless you're willing to accept ALL LyX's defaults. Here's why... In WordPerfect 5.1, Word or OpenOffice, modifying a style is a 5 minute procedure. For very sophisticated styles it might take an hour. But in LyX, I've spent 2 days modifying one paragraph style (Environment in LyX speak). Meanwhile, although WordPerfect 5.0 had character styles in May 1988, and Word had styles at least as early as the early 1990's, LyX still does not have character styles (something I keep urging the developers to put in). In summary, changing the default look of a document class is a HUGE time sink. How different things become when your document exceeds 20,000 words. Now Word, WordPerfect and OpenOffice start having problems. I know for a fact that Word 97's table of contents is inaccurate, and I've had to come back through and hand tweak page numbers. You've seen other posts in this thread mentioning that cross references are inaccurate. Unlike LyX/LaTeX, Word is not at heart a typesetter -- it doesn't know how to lay out a page just right -- the resulting document isn't as good looking. Bottom line -- if you're writing a 150 page book, LyX produces a much better looking product without all the fine tuning you'd need with Word. Considering that a 150 page book is at least a 2 month project, so what if you spend a week tweaking styles? The result is more than worth it. Another winning point for LyX is the LyX mailing list. If U have trouble with Word, I have no idea where you'd go or who you'd ask, but if you email the LyX list, there are probably at least 50 LaTeX experts who have seen your problem before and can give you guidance. Herbert's page (http://www.texnik.de/) has ways to do almost anything. Kathryn Andersen's excellent "Using LyX For DTP" page at http://www.katspace.net/lyx/lyxhow.html. I've laid out "Writing Self-Published Books with Lyx" at http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/index.htm and "LyX Quickstart" at http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/200210/200210.htm. In summary, my opinion is that you'd have to have rocks in your head to use LyX for a doc under 10,000 words, unless you're willing to accept every default of your document class. However, as the doc surpasses 20,000 words, and certainly 40,000 words, you'd have to have rocks in your head to use Word, or any similar wordProcessor, because LyX does a much better job of creating a uniform document. SteveT Steve Litt Author: * Universal Troubleshooting Process courseware * Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist * Rapid Learning: Secret Weapon of the Successful Technologist Webmaster * Troubleshooters.Com * http://www.troubleshooters.com
