I get his first complain against lyx today: "The lyx file is corrupted
after I edit your formula, I hope that you can open this file...". The
real problem, as I later found out, is that he accidentally inserted a
math symbol \times in a \textrm box, a problem I had asked for a
thorough solution many times in this list.
This is http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1527
[snip complaints]
This is all true. The big problem is that the proper solution (i. e. make
text in mathed behave like normal text) requires non-trivial code and file
format changes. Therefore this bug will not be fixed for 1.4.0.
Georg
There is definitelly a learning curve with LyX. I have seen it with my
advisor. People who haven't been exposed to LaTeX very often complain
and find many things in LyX "illogical." But then again, I'm glad that
LyX won't shield me from LaTeX altogether... I don't believe it is
possible to translate LaTeX's functionality completely into LyX without
making somebody suffer. People will eventually want to use some package
unsupported by LyX or do some kind of customization and then they will
simply have to learn LaTeX. A good example is Beamer, which is a
beautiful thing and it works great in LyX but sometimes you need to
insert ERT or be careful about nesting in order to get what you need.
But the mistake you describe -- inserting \times into \textrm field --
is most unfortunate. This really could discourage people unless they
have somebody with LaTeX experience at hand. And that would be shame
since LyX *is* extremelly robust (nothing I've ever seen before).
I was thinking it would be nice to write a short document explaining
these intricate details brought over from LaTeX to people who do not
have the background... I realize that there's the Tutorial and User's
Guide, but these are too long for most people. (But on the other hand
it's their arrogance to assume you can use something as complex as
LyX/LaTeX without ever learning about the underlying philosophy.)
Good luck!
David
