A comparative review of Scientific Workplace and LyX will appear in the electronic Journal of Statistical Software. LyX may respond to the review. Please let me know who wishes to do this and I will send them a copy of the review. (For obvious reasons JSS would like just one response, but no doubt you can organise that amongst yourselves.)
How long should the review be? Who will be the author of the article? I used SWP 4 years ago and switched to lyx out of frustration. I tried SWP from time to time since then, but I am not familiar with the current versions to make valid criticism. If you only need a list of points, this list can give you a quick list so that you can make your own comparisons. I can think of, very quickly, 1. platform availablity. lyx is available on all major OSs, while SWP is windows only. 2. latex compatibility, lyx exported latex is directly compilable, SWP's tex output needs some hand-modification to work, at least on Linux/Unix. 3. active user list of lyx. (I emailed SWP tech support once, and you know the feedback). 4. lyx unique features: change tracking (Very useful), instant preview, 5. of course, lyx is free, swp sells at high bucks 6. GUI: SWP seems to be better, but the fact that there is no caption of an article always confused me. (belongs to frontmatter in SWP). 7. customizable shortcuts of lyx. 8. Easy outside class support of lyx, I am not sure how SWP does this though. 9. (bragging of my feature): view latex: instant view of latex source to learn latex (will be available soon from lyx 1.5.x). 10.. the list can go on... Cheers, Bo
