Daniel Lohmann wrote: > I guess the main (non political nor domain-specific) problem many people have > with Word is its /pretended/ simplicity. Yes it is simple to get a > good-looking, personal letter out of it. However, if one wants to use it to > write a more complex document, one really has to know the fundamental > concepts and principles to be successful in the end, as well as some > best-practices and work-arounds. [snip] > Yes, this is a huge problem, and not just with Word but with a lot of programs that are out there. They make it easy to do certain things and make it seem as if it should be just as easy to do other things, but in fact they make it HARDER to do those other things because all the stuff that makes it so easy to do the easy things gets in your way when you want to do something else. > So why did I switch to LyX? > > [snip out all the praise ;-)] > > On the other side: At times, I am still surprised how much effort it > takes in LaTeX to change just a subtle detail such as a font. > Yes, but of course LaTeX isn't designed for end-users to do this kind of thing. The class is supposed to handle all of that, and the end-user is supposed to worry about content. True, there are times when one does want to do that kind of thing, and if you're self-publishing books like Steve Litt does then you wear both hats. But it's a bug, not a feature, of Word and similar programs that it makes changing fonts so easy, and so alluring.
That said, once you know how to change fonts in LaTeX, it's not that hard to do. > The things I am missing most from Word are the spell checker and the > table editor. Even after four years LyX/LaTeX experience, I think that > developing tables with LaTeX (and LyX) is just a big PITA. Especially if > I have to present plenty of data on as-few-as-possible space, both LyX > and plain LaTeX drive me crazy. Maybe this just takes another four years > :-) Sometimes, I have to admit it, I still "draw" tables with Word or > Excel and export them as EPS figures into my LyX document... > I think work on the table editor is scheduled for 1.6.x development. Richard -- ================================================================== Richard G Heck, Jr Professor of Philosophy Brown University http://frege.brown.edu/heck/ ================================================================== Get my public key from http://sks.keyserver.penguin.de Hash: 0x1DE91F1E66FFBDEC Learn how to sign your email using Thunderbird and GnuPG at: http://dudu.dyn.2-h.org/nist/gpg-enigmail-howto
