wow, lyx is *very* nice. i've wanted to see a wysiwyg front-end to latex
for some time, and you've done a great job of it! i especially like being
able to directly type the latex commands in math mode, and the extensive
keyboard shortcuts.
i thought you'd like to know that the first two links under "Recommended
Reading" (http://www.devel.lyx.org/references.php3) are broken. i wanted
to look at the development documents to get a feel for the direction lyx
is going.
i have a few suggestions for enhancements to lyx. assuming they are not
already implemented or being worked on, i would be willing to help out, in
that mythical future Sometime When I'm Not So Busy.
my main suggestion is recognition of user-defined commands, especially when
importing latex files. what i have in mind is macro-expanding the commands
to see if they map to something that lyx knows how to display, then
recording that mapping in the document for easy lookup. that way, a user
would be able to enter "\foobar" and have it translated by lyx to
$f_o^o(b_a^r)$ or whatever. the advantage, of course, is the user could
later redefine \foobar to be $foo^{bar}$. i find that, rather than keep
the user-defined commands and allow them to be displayed in tex mode, i
want to change them all so that they "look right," thus loosing the
abstraction provided by the commands.
some other things that would be nice are support for caligraphic letters
(\cal) and support for \mbox in math mode. often i want plain text in
equations, as opposed to math symbols embedded in plain text, and it wasn't
obvious how to do that in lyx.
once again, i'm very impressed by lyx, and expect to be using it quite a
lot. i hope i'll be able to help out at some point.
cheers,
keith
