On Monday 11 June 2007 04:24, Wolfgang Engelmann wrote: > I am asking for experiences and hints from those of you who have introduced > LyX to interested people. I have done it several times but am not content > with the way I did it so far.
Hi Wolfgang, This is a subject near and dear to my heart for the last five years... > The main task is -as I see it- to > 1- make people see the advantages of LaTeX over other prg´s and the > advantages of LyX in respect to LaTeX. I'll address making people see LyX advantages in a minute. Part of introducing LyX, in my opinion, is informing them of LyX's one huge DISadvantage: Creating a new paragraph or character style can take days instead of minutes, and that's if they're LaTeX savvy and/or have a good knowledge of what's available in CTAN. Let them know strategies to minimize this problem: * CTAN packages * Choosing the right document class * Creation of layout files with LaTeX * Having a professional create the LaTeX For instance, tell them they can easily and immediately create environments and character styles that don't create the proper output, and then later either they or a LaTeX expert can change the code to do the right thing. Make them understand the principles of styles based authoring, and why they should NOT use emphasis for new terms, explatives, and bicycle names, but instead should make character styles for each (the derailleur on my Kabuki bike is ^&[EMAIL PROTECTED]& awesome :-) Now back to advantages, starting with LyX over LaTeX. As authors, we need to type in our thoughts fast enough that we don't forget our thoughts, and such typing must be brain dead enough not to pull our thoughts away from our train of thought, once again causing us to forget. In my opinion, an author needing to pound out 2000 words a day has no businss writing tags -- not html, and not LaTeX. LyX vs. OpenOffice: My research of Openoffice shows it to have a HORRIBLE system for creating and using styles with which one can easily accidentally change a style definition. It's also hard to import fonts. Personally, I wouldn't use OpenOffice to write anything over 5000 words. LyX vs. MS Word: Word is the greatest authoring tool ever created, as long as you don't care what the output looks like. Word's outline view stands alone as a two way trip between outlining and content authoring. Styles are easy to create and use. What you see is what you get. If the subtleties of good typesetting aren't necessary, Word might be the way to go. Of course, anyone using Word must be warned that the native format is proprietary and they could end up with vendor lock-in. Also, if one has a problem doing something with MS Word, there is, as far as I know, no equivalent of the LyX mailing list. Have your credit card ready. LyX vs. WordPerfect: I used WordPerfect 5.0/5.1 in the late 80's and early 90's. It's a truly great program. However, once again it's not built from the ground up for typesetting, and once again you have a proprietary native format with the possibility of vendor lock-in, and I doubt there's as good a community as exists with LyX users. LyX vs. expensive desktop publishing programs: I used a desktop publishing program once, and as I remember, the main focus was making it easy to fine tune every single square inch of ever single page. That's what you want if you're writing a flyer, but not if you're writing a book, report, or thesis. In fact, it's the direct opposite. LyX vs. Docbook: I believe that LyX can be used to front-end docbook. LyX advantages: Once all necessary environments and character styles have been created, writing with LyX is a brain-dead secretarial task. This enables you to use 99.99% of your brainpower thinking of content, while your fingers independently pound out the words. This is what you want. Like other good writing programs, LyX enables hotkeys for often used commands. LyX is stable as the rock of gebralter. If need be, the LyX native format is 100% printable text, easily understood by a human, easily parsable by simple programs, easily backed up and diffed. The VimOutliner outline processor comes with (or has available on its project website, not sure which) an outline to LyX converter. > 2- show them briefly how to work with LyX. Since the help files of LyX are > excellent, I would not waste time to go into details, but rather present a > few examples (How to write a book/Thesis). Dog and pony shows are always nice. Like I said above, once you have all your enviornments and character styles, writing with LyX is trivial. > 3- would instead make sure that those who decide to try it out, do succeed > in installing LyX. I will therefore offer a Knoppix/Debian based life CD > with LyX, JabRef bib manager for booting the PC/notebook, and point to > sources where the permanent installation is described for the different > operating systems and Linux versions. > > I would appreciate further ideas, infos and hints. If you really want them to succeed, show them how to search, download and install CTAN packages. Give them a high level procedure to use when they need an environment or style they don't have available. Get them to truly understand the benefit of styles-based authoring, and show them how non-styles-based authoring walks the trail of tears. This could be as simple as "oops, all operating system keywords were monospace, but now I need to make them monospace bold. Oh, and by the way, I don't have a list of all the operating system keywords, so I'll have to read the book and circle every one I find, and heaven help me if I get drowsy and miss one". HTH SteveT Steve Litt Author: Universal Troubleshooting Process books and courseware http://www.troubleshooters.com/
