Steve Litt wrote: > 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...
I would respectfully disagree with my honorable colleague from Florida :-) Steve, you used just one of many possible reasons why not to use Word (because, it is the one where you are most invested in). Of course, it is not about length at all -- Word can easily work with 10MB files if necessary -- but about structural elements like ToC, cross-references, etc., where Word's instability goes into author's way. However, there are other factors where Word's inadequacy shows up -- somebody mentioned mathematics, I would add missing support for BibTeX (don't even think about selling me _the current_ bibliographic support in OOo), and there are many others. Moreover, Steve (as self-publishing author) assumes that people _need_ to work with typography. I am afraid that it is prejudice based on the fact that M$ Word/WordPerfect/OOo mixed together authoring and typesetting. LyX doesn't do it (although you can tweak layout endlessly of course) and I think that it is The Right Thing(TM) to do. IMHO most people don't (and should not) care about their layout at all, and standard layout of LaTeX classes (or maybe their improved version from Koma-script) is more than adequate for them. Who really cares that the attached document looks as it does? Therefore, my conclusion is just opposite -- use LyX for everything and only in the rare cases when you need .doc document, or where you really need to tweak layout more use OOo (or maybe Scribus?). Matěj -- Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB 25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC 138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488 Only two of my personalities are schizophrenic, but one of them is paranoid and the other one is out to get him.
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