Thomas Løcke wrote:
Hey,
I'm about to start the process of writing the 2nd edition of a fairly
long (+150 A4 pages) internal manual. It's about a set of software
systems and programming practices in my business. The 1st edition was
written using OpenOffice. I remember spending a lot of time trying to
make things "look good", and when I'm reading the manual today, I'm
constantly reminded of how hard I failed at that. :o)
So for this 2nd edition, I've been looking for some better tools, and
this has brought me to LyX. I've installed LyX and TexLive on my
Slackware 12.1 system, and I've tinkered some with it. It appears to
be *exactly* what I'm looking for.
Yes, LyX ought to be the right tool for making a book "look good". And
size will not be a problem.
Many like to use one file per chapter. Lyx can handle a single 150-page
document, but you may get tired of scrolling around in it.
But before I start writing, I'd like to ask if there are any good
resources on using LyX for writing what is essentially a book on
programming. I'd really like to avoid painting myself into a corner,
like I did with OpenOffice.
Spend some time in the beginning, finding out how you want to do things.
This so you don't have to re-do a lot of stuff. For example, lets say
you need code examples in your book on programming practices. Should
code examples exist inside the LyX file, or should LyX pull lines of
code from real source files? The former approach gives you all in one
document, the latter approach means you can change your code and the
document is updated automatically. (No need to sync the document with
code revisions.)
Figure out what kind of numbering scheme you want for sectioning. See if
you have something special, like: per-chapter TOCs, a special font or
customized running headers.
Skim through the user guide (and all the other help documents), look for
things that could be useful. The listing package can do automatic syntax
highlighting and numbering of code lines, for example.
After a while, you have everything way you want in a 3-4 page "test
book" that contains all the types of material and formatting you plan on
using. The book can then be finished almost as fast as you can come up
with material. There is normally very little tweaking to do in the end.
If you feel a need to do tweaks like an occational manual page break,
don't do it until the book is finished. Otherwise, you risk disrupting
such tweaks if you edit any content earlier in the book. Ideally, there
shouldn't be any manual breaks but they are handy occationally.
Helge Hafting
