On Thu, Sep 06, 2001 at 09:03:08PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Thursday 06 September 2001 18:51, Kathryn Andersen wrote:
> >
> > LyX wasn't actually free -- it cost me $72 (the price of Lamport's LaTeX
> > book). Oddly enough, I found the book catalogued under "programming
> > languages".
> Would you recommend Lamport's book to someone who is writing a book in Lyx
> and needs lots of custom Environments and character styles? Is it
> understandable for someone who, let's put it this way -- doesn't have the
> world's best attention span? Is it well organized?
(shrug) I found it quite readable and well-organized -- but I'm a
technical person so I can't really judge how someone who "doesn't have
the world's best attention span" would find it.
The reason I bought it was, though there were various pieces of
documentation on the net, and many of the LaTeX packages are very well
documented, that's just enough to enable you to, say, use the package.
But I wanted to know what the heck I was doing. There were certain
things I did, which wasted a lot of my time, which, if I'd actually had
the book earlier, I would have been able to avoid.
For example, the short on-line LaTeX tutorials mentioned the \twocolumn
command in passing, but it wasn't until I read the book that I found out
that it had this optional argument which meant that I hadn't needed to use
the "multicol" package at all, and that the \twocolumn command was
perfectly usable for what I wanted, if I used this optional argument
that nobody had told me about.
The LaTeX book gave me a starting point, an orientation, a compass.
I haven't read the LaTeX Companion, though everyone seems to mention it
-- and I'm sure it's full of wonderful tricks, and is terribly exciting
and helpful to people *who already know LaTeX*. I didn't.
I bought it because I wanted to *understand*.
Yes, there are many many things that one can do in LyX without knowing
any LaTeX. That was one of the attractions. I'd heard of LaTeX but I
didn't want to have to learn a whole new language just so I could find
out whether it would be worth learning a whole new language...
And even if I was a LaTeX guru (which I'm not), I'd still probably
prefer using LyX because it takes out the tedious stuff, leaving the
exciting stuff to be able to be done in ERT.
Once I got to the level where I needed to do some heavy customization
(I really ought to put my how-I-used-LyX-for-DTP post on a web page...)
then I was really not comfortable with just typing in this, that and the
other command without knowing what it meant. I'm a programmer -- I need
to grok code in order to hack it...
Er, I think I'm ranting. Sorry.
> Is there a way to get it
> for less than $72.00? I don't live in a technical metropolis -- where can I
> get it?
Don't judge the price by what I said -- I live in Australia, which
gives me three disadvantages: (1) imported books get zapped by the
exchange rate and (2) technical books are horribly expensive and (3)
books in general are more expensive.
Assuming you live in the USA, you should get it for a lot less than I
had to pay for it.
Kathryn Andersen
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
--------- if you cut here, you'll probably destroy your monitor ----------
--
_--_|\ | Kathryn Andersen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
/ \ | <http://www.katspace.com>
\_.--.*/ |
v | #include "standard/disclaimer.h"
------------| Melbourne -> Victoria -> Australia -> Southern Hemisphere
Maranatha! | -> Earth -> Sol -> Milky Way Galaxy -> Universe
