On Mon, 19 Jun 2006, Jeremy Wells wrote:
For some time I have been evaluating Lyx as an academic word processor, but find it wanting in a few critical areas.
Jeremy, Right there you're off on the wrong foot. LyX is a gooey front end to the LaTeX macro layer on top of the TeX typesetting system. It's not a word processor, any more than a page layout program (Scribus, for example) is a word processing program. If you want to process words, and the appearance of the results are of secondary importance, then use OpenOffice.org by all means. Of course, there's a high and potentially steep learning curve as soon as you move beyond the basics with that, too. But, it's all a matter of perspective.
For instance, the stated goal of Lyx is to spend more time writing, but less time on formatting. Based on my experience, however, and from posts to this list, a great deal of time is spent inserting LaTeX tags into documents. In fact, my assessment is that more time is spent making Lyx work properly than is spent in dealing with a traditional word-processing environment, be it MS Word or OpenOffice. Moreover, a significant time investment is required to research the format of the tag and where to insert it, and then to debug the results. How does this save time?
Until you become familiar with LyX through use, don't be too quick to judge based on those who, for one reason or another, want (or need) to do something highly non-standard. Work through the tutorial (about a half-hour or so) and you can be immediately productive. As a matter of course, you and others in academia may neve need to do much more than is provided by the menus. Some folks here are writing theses and dissertations at academic institutions that do not provide LaTeX layout files for their particular requirements. People ask for help in structuring their efforts as the university requires. Others here self publish and do not like the standard appearances of the documents produced by book, the KOMA-script classes or the Memoir class. So, they ask for help in writing their own version of LaTeX to do layout exactly as they want it. If you want to see the difference in results, use the word processor of your choice to type a page from a book, any book. Print that page on your laser or inkjet printer (use the same text area as in the book), and compare the two. Word processors treat each line as a separate unit when fully justifying it; LyX (actually, TeX) treats each paragraph as a unit. Typesetting is different from adding more space between words on a line. It involves changing inter-letter spacing, too. And, if you have any mathematical formulae (in line or on separate lines), you'll readily see the difference in output.
Is the eventual goal of Lyx to "GUIfy" more of the LaTeX backend to avoid having to delve into adding tags?
No. My preference is to work from the command line and to keep my hands on the keyboard and not use the trackball except when required. My main text editor is emacs, I use pine for mail, and always have several virtual terminals open. I also find OO.o a major PITA to use, so I use it only for short letters and the like. However, after working at learning LaTeX by writing in emacs (with the LaTeX major mode), I found LyX significantly more productive because I did not have to learn all the formatting tags, remember to close them (or make sure I had the syntax correct), and try to read what I wrote without the distraction of tags. Try reading someone's html-formatted e-mail (bad! bad!) in a test-based MUA: it's very difficult to separate the wheat (if there is any) from the chaff. Well, with LyX I can write rapidly and see everything clearly. If I need to emplasize, or create a different environment (for example, a list), I see it formatted that way without the distraction of the tags themselves. Do I use a lot of LaTeX? You betcha' I do. But, that's because sometimes I want to do something non-standard (e.g., have a report's "Abstrat" actually titled "Executive Summary" because that's how business reports are done). What you see on the mail list are those who need to do more than is provided by the basic system. Sometimes, too, reading the built in users guide and reference manual will answer the question without need to post to the list. But, we have no idication of how many users (hundreds of thousands?) work happily with LyX and never post a question to the mail list. It is analagous to asking how many traffic accidents you've not had. Now, if you want to make an equitable comparison, subscribe to the OO.o mail list. That has such a high traffic volume, I used to subscribe to ask a question, them immediatly unsubscribe after I got the answer. Most of those posting questions there work in the winduhs environment and want answers handed to them rather than RTFM or seeking the answer themselves. And, OO.o is (at least, was) very difficult to find where a particular feature was hidden in the menu structure. In the latest version (2.0.2), for example, they changed Insert->Image to Insert->Picture. Why? Is the standard term, 'image,' too difficult to comprehend for those used to working with Word? Go figure out how to do a mail merge in OO.o and then tell us how much simpler that is than learning some LaTeX. <rant> I find it highly unfortunate that the LyX developers decided to call the tool to enter LaTeX into a document 'ERT' for Evil Red Text. LaTeX is not at all evil, IMO, but a powerful tool woderfully encapsulated in LyX. </rant>
Or will this tool remain relatively marginalized, only used by those willing to undertake the significant time overhead needed to actually do productive work?
See my comments above about doing "productive work" in OO.o once it's beyond a few pages.
Judging from the number of posts to this lists, citations and bibliographies are a major issue. There is no easy to use method (e.g., a GUI) that can define the options for natbib, jurabib, or any number of bibliography styles. Most importantly, customizing these styles again requires one to write more code, yet again, instead of engaging in the writing process.
No, it's not a major issue for everyone. One of the reasons it becomes a major PITA is because each journal, publisher, or anyone else, wants something slightly different from the rest of the world. Don't blame the complexity on the LaTeX and LyX community who actually are able to solve the problems created by the publishers. What are your options for bibliographic inclusions in OO.o or Word? What do you do if you submit to journals with different requirements for formatting?
This whole thing is extremely frustrating as I can see the huge promise that the LaTeX/Lyx system can offer, but it's awfully rough beneath the surface.
Heh-heh. Try doing what you want with Word. I am assuming that you cannot -- at least, not easily -- and that's why you're looking at LyX. Good luck, Rich -- Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D. | The Environmental Permitting Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.(TM) | Accelerator <http://www.appl-ecosys.com> Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863
