Steve, I like your list of good things about LyX; but you have omitted what to me is the most significant:
Try using Word to compile a long book with many illustrations, often with 3 graphics to a page. Word has a shocking reputation for using a master document with many child documents, particularly one with many graphics. There are many warnings that Word will crash and corrupt files. So be it - I used OpenOffice. Result: as the book got longer, the OpenOffice master crashed frequently. Every time a child document was added or modified, the master document took up to half an hour to update and was likely to crash in the process. At least OpenOffice never corrupted the files; but it became impractical to complete assembly of the book. I carried the same files over to LyX, converting each child document. Result: LyX has not crashed once and it assembles or updates the master document into a pdf, with all the graphics inserted in less than 30 seconds. I may have to negotiate with LyX on where I wish to place an image or what ERT is needed. But the worse that might happen is I get an error message. All through the operations, LyX remains rock steady. For long complex documents, LyX is the practical solution. Cheers, George Legge On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 5:20 PM, Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com>wrote: > If I were going to enumerate the good things about > LyX, it would be something like this: > > * It typesets better and more consistently than its non-TeX based > competitors. > * It deletes unintentional double spaces and double newlines. > * It always calculates references, TOC and indices correctly, unlike > others. > * The black on tan is readable and soothing to the eyes for long workdays. > * Its simple native format invites programmatic document creation and > editing. > * It's free software, which protects your documents from vendor lock-in. > * It's an incredibly fast authoring environment. >
