>>>>> "Alejandro" == Alejandro Aguilar Sierra <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Alejandro> On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, Asger K. Alstrup Nielsen wrote:
>> I have Scientific Word 2.5. It's an ok program, but IMO not as
>> good as LyX. It's similar in many aspects, since it's built on top
>> of LaTeX. It imports LaTeX to a (very) limited degree.
Alejandro> [...]
>> There are a few areas where they are ahead of us, but in many
>> others, they are trailing us by far.
Alejandro> It would be interesting to have a more complete
Alejandro> comparison. Years ago I was a heavy user of SciWord 2.0. In
Alejandro> fact I started to use LyX (and wrote Mathed) because there
Alejandro> was not SciWord for linux.
Here is a message we got some times ago describing features we could
'steal' from SciWord. There are interesting things there.
JMarc
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 22:14:31 +0000 (GMT)
From: Serge Winitzki <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: suggestions for LyX from a user of LyX and SciWord
Dear Lyx developers,
I have been using LyX for a while to prepare various scientific and
business materials. I am not a developer and I can only suggest what I
hope could be changed in future versions of LyX to make this great program
even more powerful and useful. I see LyX as a program with great future
allowing scientists like myself to enjoy a greater level of productivity.
I should say that my first experience in "WYSIWYM" latex has been with one
of the first versions of "Scientific Word". I was later using LyX 0.10,
0.12, and now 1.0 under Unix. Naturally I "miss" some of SciWord's
features but I do not wish for LyX to imitate any of them without a good
reason. Late versions of Sciword are quite horrible because of a strange
selection of features; as of version 0.12, LyX is already superior in some
features, customization and organization of the user interface: e.g. I was
able to customize some key bindings to resemble those Sciword keys which I
find the most convenient.
What follows is a list of "LyX annoyances", i.e. things which are not
quite bugs but perhaps not planned features either. Some of these
suggestions are cosmetic, and others may improve productivity. I shall
also mention the corresponding Sciword features, for comparison.
(Everything was tested for version 1.0.0pre2 on an SGI IRIX 6.2, bxforms
0.88)
Generalities
The autosave file "#whatever.lyx# is made "newer" even if no changes were
made to the file after saving it. This is confusing as LyX asks whether
I'd like to use the "newer" autosave version and I don't remember why it's
newer. [Sciword stops autosaving the file if no changes are made after
saving.]
The display is not updated and the UI is locked during some time-consuming
operations such as latex'ing, or opening a document (help files are very
large).
After clicking on a pulldown menu and deciding that the menu is not what I
wanted, I have to click on another menu item twice before it drops down.
Seems like an XFORMS specific "feature".
Math editing
Cannot delete paired delimiters or modify them - typing backspace at the
bracket deletes the whole bracketed expression. [SciWord has a "revise
brackets" dialog like the LyX delimiters dialog, called up by
double-clicking on a paired bracket or on the whole selected bracketed
expression.]
Mouse selection of subexpressions: can't select a math subexpression
without first clicking on the math to change to the math mode. (cosmetic,
one extra mouse click). [Sciword has drag/drop of math subexpressions by
mouse. Very convenient and well designed.] Selecting subexpressions in LyX
is generally not as precise as one would expect and often leads to many
frustrated mouse clicks. For example: enter $\int f\left(x\right)dx$ and
try positioning the cursor between ')' and 'd'. Click-dragging with the
mouse inside a bracketed object or an equation array often selects the
whole object rather than a part of it. (Selecting by shift-arrow keys
works better but is much slower.)
After creating an equation array (Control-Enter in a displayed equation),
it is impossible to position the cursor into the last item in the first
row by clicking the mouse. The cursor always goes into the last item in
the second row. Also, creating and modifying labels in equation array does
not work as described in the User's Guide. After creating a two-line equation array
and inserting a label, I got two (#) numbers, the label was not shown.
Trying to enter text or inline math immediately preceding a displayed
equation works but the cursor is at the wrong position (on the line with
the displayed equation rather than on the preceding line) and the screen
update is much slower than it is normally. The same with putting the
cursor immediately to the right of a displayed equation: the math mode is
not entered but the text appears on the next line. This is especially
counter-intuitive when there is a labeled displayed equation: I put the
cursor between the equation and the label and it doesn't make it switch to
math mode but rather I end up entering text after the display. (Cosmetic)
Can't put the cursor by clicking the mouse in the denominator of a
fraction, only in the numerator. Therefore also can't select the
denominator of a fraction with the mouse. Seems counterintuitive and
inconvenient.
Also I'd like to be able to "kill the denominator" of a fraction, i.e. to
delete the empty denominator and leave the numerator intact, converting it
to a normal expression. [This was what the Sciword key "backspace" did
when the fraction had an empty denominator.] Right now, if I decide that I
don't need the fraction, I'd have to copy the whole numerator, delete the
fraction, and paste the numerator. All of this is not error-proof because
of mouse selection problems.
Can't seem to edit the label in a displayed equation. No mouse or button
operation seems to let me do anything with it. I can only delete it (using
math-number) and insert. But it's awkward because once an empty number
label is inserted, there is no way to enter a label. [Sciword revised the
labels by double-clicking (or pressing the "revise" shortcut key) on them,
or on the whole displayed equation if selected.] (Cosmetic)
Sometimes the cursor goes in the wrong direction after exiting the inline
math mode; especially when moving to the left, the cursor sometimes ends
up to the right of the whole inline math block. This seems to be happening
only when using the Greek-toggle. For example: "math-greek-toggle a"
produces "alpha" in math mode; then press Backspace 5 times and then
cursor left. The cursor is sometimes placed to the right of the now empty
math box.
Cursor positioning by arrow keys with delimiters misses the rightmost
delimiter character. For example: enter \left(x\right) in math mode (using
the delimiters dialog); then put the cursor to the right of it in text
mode and start going with left arrow key to the left. The moment the
cursor enters the math mode, it's already between 'x' and ')', not to the
right of ')' as expected. (Bug?)
The Backspace key does not delete selected math subexpressions, rather it
deletes the rightmost object even when a larger group is selected. This is
counter-intuitive because it does delete selected text together with some
math inside it.
Text editing
Cursor positioning by mouse clicks is not always convenient because the
cursor is sometimes put to the left of the character clicked on, even if
clicked almost at the rightmost point of the character. This seems to
happen with all characters in text mode and with bracket characters
([{<>}]) in math mode.
LyX swallows the spaces too early if I select a word and replace it by
overtyping. Also when cutting/pasting a phrase, it swallows spaces around
it and I have to type another space to separate words that became glued
together. This is obviously a feature but maybe swallowing of extra spaces
could be done less aggressively.
Can't edit references or labels. Can only delete them and enter again.
[SciWord has a "revise reference/label" dialog called up by
double-clicking on a reference or label.]
Can't insert text past a table which is the last element of the file.
Cannot delete that table either since can't select the whole table.
Workaround: go to the last element of the table and press Tab; another row
appears, go to the last element of that row and press Enter; then
everything is back to normal. (Bug?)
Need a horizontal scrollbar to edit wide expressions. [Was added in later
versions of Sciword although not very conveniently.]
Hope this is useful.
Regards,
-----
Serge Winitzki
***winitzki*@*geocities.com***
