On Wednesday 31 October 2007 07:16, pol wrote:
> I am in touch with high school teachers in italy where an attempt is on
> going to teach students to use latex/lyx to write down exercises, with
> their development and comments.
>
> Since probably more schools/univs in the world are involved with that sort
> of prgram, i am wondering whether it is worth the effort to form an
> authoritative committee to set up a syllabus, to assess student skills.
>
> Any suggestions about italian possible members?
>
> I am also considering to open an italian lys-users mailing list. Any
> comments and support is welcome.
>
> thank you

The following is my opinion -- I'm sure others have their own opinions...

When you say "teach students to use latex/lyx to write down exercises", that 
can mean two different things:

1) The student is given a complete document class containing ALL the 
environments and char styles needed, so he can use LyX like a word processor.

2) The student is expected to create some of his own environments and 
character styles.

#1 is very doable for the student, #2 won't work at all.

LaTeX is a programming language macro set, and not a simple one. Human 
experience in a variety of societies and cultures is that only a minority of 
people have the ability and interest to handle computer programmming. As if 
it isn't hard enough, writing LaTeX capable of interfacing with LyX is even 
more difficult. For instance, in LaTeX it's perfectly OK to nest 
environments, but LyX cannot use nested environments. Then there's the fact 
that the whole edit/compile/view cycle is more difficult and time consuming 
in LyX.

Bottom line, unless the school system is willing to write a set of very 
complete document classes for the students, OpenOffice would be a much better 
tool for students to do their exercises.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Books written in LyX:
        Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist
        Twenty Eight Tales of Troubleshooting
        Troubleshooting: Just the Facts

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