On Thursday 28 April 2005 07:13 am, Helge Hafting wrote: > Steve Litt wrote: > >On Monday 18 April 2005 02:33 am, Alexander BlÃm 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. > > Lyx is lacking when it comes to customization, but you don't > have to accept "ALL defaults". There is a limited selection of > fonts and sizes for example. There are several pages of other > changeable stuff in the document layout dialog, although other > word processors indeed have much more. > > And there are quite a few things that can be achieved by 1-2 > simple latex commands in the preamble. Simple stuff that you don't > need to learn latex to use - just look it up on the web or the > lyx mailing list archives. > > Bigger changes are harder - you either learn latex or you > don't do them. Take the trouble of making your own lyx layout > and it can be used for small documents as well as large. > > I have found that I don't need to write documents in many > very different styles, so taking the trouble once sorted things > out for years. So I use lyx for everything except e-mail. From > the word documents I see, it seems that people "just use the defaults" > when using word too. Word seems to have one particularly nasty > looking default - ragged-right text. That's what I see in > every word document that comes my way - I believe word > can do justified text, but I have yet to see anyone use it. > > A reason for not using word is the way word can screw up a > document in unexpected ways. Two years in a row, the word > users here have managed to _print_ a course catalog where > the table of contents listed all content with the same page > number througout. (Actually, the first page of TOC was > okay, but at some point the page numbers didn't > change any more.) Lyx just don't do that sort of thing, so > you don't have to look for it while proofreading. Fix a spelling > issue or some very minor formatting issue somewhere, and > word _may_ scramble the TOC or something else that was fine > the last round.
Here's an example. I need a URL style for my book. I want it small, bold and underlined. This would be 2 minutes in WordPerfect 5.1 (the wordprocessor whose styles I'm most familiar with). In LyX, I don't have it yet, in spite of trying all the suggestions on the LyX list. Herbert's came the closest, but when there were 2 URLs in a row, Herbert's solution concatinated them into a single line. I've spent about 10 hours trying to get a URL style. I can write that off in the production of a book, but on a 10,000 word document it would add 20% to the authoring time. By the way, I finally just gave up on the underlining. 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 (Legal Disclaimer) Follow these suggestions at your own risk.
