On 19/06/06, Jeremy Wells <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
For some time I have been evaluating Lyx as an academic word processor, but find it wanting in a few critical areas. 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.
Yes. Especially for the Humanities where Journal X or Department Y has its own house style.
I suppose what I'm hoping for is someone to say 1) "no, you're wrong, because..."; 2) "wait x number of years and we'll be there"; or 3) "if you don't like coding, use a different tool."
1) No you're wrong. LyX is a front end, designed to make LaTeX easier, which it has successed at. Its suffering from mission-shift at the moment as more people take it up. Due to the sciences bias in the initial user group / development group, LyX and LaTeX achieve science results with greater ease. I anticipate this will change as more humanities users take LyX/LaTeX up. 2) Wait x number of years and we'll be closer to a front-end for more LaTeX features. Though this may mean tkJuraBibStyleEditor as a device independent GUI ap, rather than the features embedded in LyX itself. Or it may mean tkLyX_Semi_WYSIWYM/WYSIWYG_StyleEditor instead of a style editor within LyX itself. Or it may mean LyX_DocumentTemplate_Humanities_History_ChicagoFootnotes_UniversityFoo_DeptBar_StyleBok etc. Who knows? It depends on the contributions from the community of users and developers between now and year X. What I do know is the age, stability and support for LyX/LaTeX/TeX means that your commitment is unlikely to be wasted by technological or commercial change: Company X won't fail and no longer support their document format. 3) If you don't like the limitations of LyX as it currently is, and don't like the bug/feature resolution system of ERT / feature requesting / solving it yourself and sharing the results, don't use LyX. The community development culture is unlikely to change.
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.
Yes. I found that LyX was great to write undergraduate / honours work in without a bibliography / citation manager. Now that I'm working on journal articles and my doctoral dissertation, I'm finding that I'm coming up against new challenges with regards to citation management. 1.4.3 provides far more suitable and easy solutions than 1.3.7 did for me. It also took a large amount of time to find the right device independent tools for bibliography management, and the ones which suited my academic needs over a career. I found this a more useful investment of my time than the repeated wordprocessor crashes and frustrations of EndNote. Your situation may differ. Finally, LyX development works more like a community of knowledge than a commercial developer. People produce new ideas, or reproduce old ideas, and share them for free. The cost is of course, people may not have developed the ideas you need, yet. yours, Sam R. -- I will give you Tacos, such Tacos as you have never seen.
