Allan Rae wrote:
>
>
> What about products like eXceed or other apps like Applix (different
> situation admittedly)?
eXceed is not an example of X at the end of the word.
The x in Applix is the x of Unix not the X of X Window.
> Have you never heard of people inventing new words?
> Small businesses do it all the time. Name like "Kwik Kopy". Neither is a
> real word. Neither would submit to your analysis. So why can't we
> engineers and computer scientists also invent new words like LyX?
Kwik and Kopy are not new words. They are orthograhic variants of
existing
words Quick and Copy. Quick is Gernanic and Copy Latin. Neither is an
instance of our difficulty in determining the provenance of the letter X
in LaTeX and LyX.
We engineers and computer scientist, as educated people, would not flout
established linguistic conventions to invent meaningless or stupid
neologisms. Words have a form which conveys their cultural and historic
ambience (unless advertising men or barbarians are involved in the
process).
Typically, learned neologisms are well-founded on root lexemes of
European
languages (mostly Latin or Greek).
So I stick to my contention that LyX is pronounced as the lych in
polychromatic.
I am not arguing against the right of the word LyX to exist. I am merely
explaining
why it is obvious that it is consistent with its historic and cultural
commections
with LaTeX (pronounced Lah-teck) and honours the same convention of
using X to
transliterate the Greek letter CHI.
John O'Gorman
