On Fri, 26 Oct 2001, Allan Rae wrote: > What shall I do a LyX presentation on? Any ideas?
What about talking about how LyX reuses and leverages a lot of existing tools? I.e. LyX is build on LaTeX, but it requires Perl for reLyX, it exploits ispell/aspell for spell checking, it uses kdvi/xdvi/ghostview for previews, it will use imagemagick and other tools to convert graphics files, it can use chktex for typographical checking, nroff for Ascii renderings of tables, and so on. Then talk about how much of this is optional: If you have it, you can explot it. If you don't. you can still work. Also mention how the configure script detects available software, and adapts LyX correspondingly. And as the ultimate killer, talk about the external material inset which allows you to plug basically any existing program into LyX, without requiring that this software supports KParts, Bonobo or other such component standards. In this way, I'm pretty sure that LyX is the only word processor with integrated support for chess diagrams through xboard. The main lesson is this: If you leverage existing quality software, you can get very far. And notice that LyX does NOT require any specific interface for the external programs. It just uses what they provide from the box. I always thought that this aspect of LyX was fairly unique. I can't think of other software that does this to the same extent as LyX. I know that this is the traditional Unix philosophy: A lot of good, small tools that work together, but we have never really seens how it should be done in a GUI program before. Basically, it's a question of trading development resources for consistency and ease of use: Yes, it would be better if the chess diagrams were inline in the document, and that the chess editor used the same GUI buttons and so on as LyX, but such an effort would take years. It's more economical to just reuse existing software as it is. Just a thought. Greets, Asger
