On 10/22/13 10:19 PM, Richard Talley wrote:
I originally picked up on LyX because I needed to produce some technical
manuals quickly that looked good to management and that didn't make me
deal with the WYSIWYG nightmares of Word and its ilk.
LyX really came through for me.
Now I'm helping a friend apply to graduate school. I used the
KOMA-script v. 2 letter class to typeset his letter of intent. Looks good!
Now on to the résumé. Let's see what's available. ModernCV looks good,
under development for seven years.
Except it won't accept last names much longer than the author's name
without hyphenation. Searching produces lot's of hacks to deal with this.
Run the example that comes with LyX. Note in example says, 'The moderncv
class offers lots of customization possibilities; some are explained in
the preamble of this document; for more information look at the
documentation of the LaTeX-package moderncv.'
Yeah, right. The README for moderncv is very short and includes this:
'Until a decent manual is written, you can always look in the "examples"
directory for some examples. Documents can be compiled into dvi, ps or pdf.'
The example LyX file points to documentation that doesn't actually
exist. There is no 'more information'. Nothing is explained. Seven years
of development and there's nothing that Aunt Tillie can use.
I know what I'm going to hear, 'Do it yourself', 'That's how open source
works'. I agree. Perhaps I'll find the time to work on the
documentation. In the meantime, I need to produce a document NOW, not
work on the documentation for the tool to produce the document.
Lesson: Please don't point to ghost documentation. If you have the time
to produce something that you expect people to use, you need to make the
time to explain how to use it.
(Disclaimer: this doesn't apply to LyX itself, which is richly
documented. Just to accessories to LyX and to open source generally.)
-- Rich
To all, what I'm about to write doesn't specifically to LyX, but as in
Rich's disclaimer, it applies to the open source community in general.
I totally understand Rich's frustrations, although he clearly states his
comments about the ModernCV site do not apply to LyX.
When I bought this Mac, it was more than I should have spent. I got
into the open source programs, and encouraged others to do so.
I no longer encourage others to use it. Myself, I'm slowly moving back
to commercial software. A fair question is, why?
There's no universal answer to the question. I'll just do some quick
comments, and leave it at that.
1. Web pages make claims as to the abilities to do a job. But the
software is buggy, or some features just don't work.
2. Some pages ask you to become involved, and file bugs. You do, and I
did. But, after a year and a half, the bugs are not even assigned to
anyone, much less fixed. One bug was assigned for awhile, but the
assignment has been removed. Both are classed as minor. Well... They
aren't minor to me!! If the developers don't/won't fix it, then:
a. Why would I use the program?
b. Why would I recommend the program?
The program I filed the bugs with is one that wishes to take on a
commercial program in the marketplace. And they add new features, some
of which are inevitable buggy. But the attitude exhibited by not fixing
existing bugs is very unprofessional. If you are a business, with
competition, you want tools that work, not tools you spend a lot of time
finding work arounds.
3. When the new version comes out, and the developers have broken
something, they say it's a "regression". Oh, BS!! That's just
political spin for not saying they screwed up and didn't catch it. I
would appreciate the pure honesty of admitting a mistake than political
spin.
4. My impression is, for most open source software I've tried over a
period of time, the quality assurance/testing program to look for and
find bugs is seriously flawed. Some bugs are blatant, and I ask myself,
"How did they miss that?"
So, the open source community, as a whole, has lost a supporter. And
they have a long, long way to go if they want me to recommend them.
That being said, I've started a small writing project, for fun for now.
Part of the writing will be done in a commercial program. I will give
LyX a try, 2.06 is installed, but haven't had time to start using it.
--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 24.0
Thunderbird 17.0.8
LibreOffice 4.1.1.2
