On Friday 22 March 2002 13:12, John Richard Smith wrote: > And the really frustrating thing is having spent hours setting it > all up and writing some long paper at the end of it all you go to > print it off and get told "LaTeX error" better fix it. > No thanks.
Well, at least LaTeX errors are usually fixable! 95% of errors I've had were the result of either changing the document class (so I had incompatible environments etc.) or screwing up LaTeX code (Evil Red Text, in LyX terminology). Who would write a whole paper before checking DVI output? Another reason I prefer LyX is that on the occasions when something won't output to DVI, or there's some formatting I can't work out how to do, I can post to the users list and get a reply the same day - don't know if I could do that with Word/WordPerfect. There's an analogy here with Linux in general. I get error messages in both Windows and Linux, but the latter usually indicate something I can fix, or can ask other people how to fix. Smae goes for LaTeX error messages - they tell you what they think is wrong, and usually give you advice about how to fix it. As for the steep learning curve mentioned elsewhere .... Yes, LyX is a bit of a brainteaser at first, because it's so different. However, for most purposes you only really need to learn a small subset of what is possible with the program (actually, the same goes for something like Word - if I had the time to learn all the features in Word 2000, I'd spend it learning C++). I have a very basic guide at http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin/lyxguide.pdf Robin -- "Give me the views, and I'll give you the arguments." - Chrysippus Robin Turner IDMYO, Bilkent Universitesi Ankara 06533 Turkey http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin
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