The only feature I miss is a layout editor. I don't know how easy would it be to program one, but that would be one good addition. The second one I miss, mostly because I'm not a native English speaker, is online spell checking, but that is coming in 2.0.
Again, I have to give my most sincere thanks to all developers. Lyx is a wonderful tool even if my WinEdt addict friends at the lab keep laughing at me for using it. :D ------------------------------------------------- Julio Rojas jcredbe...@gmail.com On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 6:36 PM, Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote: > On Monday 22 March 2010 08:51:55 Walter van Holst wrote: >> -------- Original Message -------- >> Subject: Re: things that I miss in lyx >> Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2010 13:51:24 +0100 >> From: Walter van Holst <walter.van.ho...@xs4all.nl> >> To: Jose Quesada <ques...@gmail.com> >> >> On Sun, 21 Mar 2010 02:23:34 +0100, Jose Quesada <ques...@gmail.com> >> >> wrote: >> > Hi all, >> > >> > In no special order, things that I miss in lyx... >> > >> > 1. incremental search >> > >> > 2. sentence autocapitalization >> >> As others have written, NO! IN THE NAME OF EVERYTHING THAT IS HOLY, DON'T! > > ++ >> >> > 3. grammar check (not crucial) > [clip] >> > 4. search highlight occurences > [clip] >> > 7. the rest of the world operates on rich text/html. LyX doesn't >> >> (clipboard >> >> > integration is poor, copy-pasting from/to web loses formatting) >> >> Actuall, I prefer the current default of losing formatting. The whole >> point of LyX is that you focus on structure and content and have LaTeX >> take >> care of formatting. The rest of the world operates on a fundamentally >> braindead paradigm and if I wanted to use that paradigm I'd be a happy OOo >> camper. Which I am not. > +=65535 > > What could be grosser than having the source's fingerpainting auto-inserted in > your styles-based LyX doc? > > I'd like to take a second to back up a couple levels of abstraction, from > features to priorities. My priorities in LyX are: > > * Ability to write long documents fast and easily > * Styles based authoring > > Believe it or not, aesthetic typesetting isn't one of my priorities. My books > written in WordPerfect 5.1 and MS Word were easily good enough when it came to > typesetting. After all, my books are a mail order product. > > If I wanted to write short docs I'd use Abiword or OpenOffice, kompozer or > Vim. If I didn't care about styles based authoring I'd use OpenOffice. > > I think priorities determine the need for features. Given my priorities, > character styles was far and away the best feature addition in the last 10 > years. Another great feature is LyX's ability to almost instantly manipulate > 100,000 word documents -- good algorithms implemented right. Outline view was > a good addition and will be even better when it can be used to add nodes. > Outline view is a big timesaver. I imagine Layout Modules would be a big > timesaver but haven't learned to use them yet. > > One of the biggest consumers of time when I use LyX is adding and tweaking > styles, both paragraph (environments) and character. Getting a LyX style to do > what you want is about 2 orders of magnitude more time consuming than the same > thing in WP 5.1 or MS Word. That would probably go up to an order of magnitude > of 3 for a LyX newbie. This can't be helped -- LaTeX is more complex and less > obvious than WP5.1 or MSWord layout, but it can be addressed through a > combination of: > > 1) Documentation > 2) Easy to browse and search repository of styles to which we all contribute > > Sentence autocapitalization might be somewhat of a time saver if the subject > matter always has a capital following a period and whitespace. But for code- > rich docs, it would slow you down immensely. As far as special kinds of > searches, LyX's algorithm design and implementation is so good that you can > brute force search almost instantly, so what's the need? > > This paragraph is my opinion -- your mileage may vary. In my opinion LyX is a > tool to be used in a very narrow set of circumstances -- long document writing > where consistency is a priority (hence styles), and good typesetting is a > priority, and table of contents and indices just work. I'd never use it for a > poster -- Inkscape does posters better. I'd never use it to create a web page > -- Kompozer is much better at that (exception: When a whole web subsite must > have consistency and is the equivalent of a document). I wouldn't use it for a > five page document -- OpenOffice and AbiWord are much easier for that, whether > you're doing fingerpainting or limited styles-based. To me, adding features > like autocap and especially rich/XML paste would be trying to make LyX into a > tool it's not -- like putting a file on the side of a hammer. > > I think the decision of what features to add is all about what one does with > LyX, and one's priorities in using LyX. > > SteveT > > Steve Litt > Recession Relief Package > http://www.recession-relief.US > Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt > >
