Olá Marcelo, One of the reasons that convinced me right away to learn and use LyX/LaTeX was the ability of changing the whole look of a text, no matter what length, with a single change of style. When you use a WYSIWYG application like Open Office, you may define styles for each component of a text, say paragraphs and titles for instance. But, if you want to change the global appearance of a text you still would have to change each of the styles, one by one. Even when you try to export them to a markup language format like XML, you either get the contents without any semantic distinction (this paragraph is a quotation, this is not) our you get styles and contents intermixed.
With LyX or LaTeX, you can have one text and change its appearance as many times you want just by choosing different output style packages or by creating them yourself. What you get, really, is a markup language that, just as wisely used X/HTML, separates content from presentation and allows you to use the same content over and over in different contexts by just applying to it different style sheets (in the Web they're called CSS, Cascading Style Sheets). You just can't do that in any other WYSIWYG application, as far as I'm aware of. But, then again, if you just want to produce texts that will only be used once, say a letter or a school homework, then you should really use Open Office, which is an excellent application, solid, reliable (I never heard of disappearing styles), and extremely easy to use. LyX and LaTeX have many other advantages, but we could write a book just on it... HTH. Roberto -------------- On Fri, November 2, 2007 11:14 pm, Marcelo Acuña wrote: > hello, > a question rised in a free soft forum. I > propposed latex/lyx and another person question: > Why lyx/latex and not open office with styles? > What I said about it? > > Marcelo ---------------------Roberto Gorjão freelance designer and web designer personal site: www.castelosnoar.com PORTUGAL / BRAGA / PÓVOA DE LANHOSO
