"hello world!" Hi I'm Simon, I'm considering Lyx for my use, but I'd like your opinion before I try it. I'm currently downloading/compiling it on my gentoo desktop, so meanwhile I thought I'd ask!
In a nutshell: I need a programmer-friendly way to output good looking documents compatible with current MS word. This is my problem. I thought if LyX can output to word documents, maybe I'm getting close to a solution, but also, I'm sure you guys (this community i mean) also have experience with some of my concerns and might be able to help me out. In details: I often need to write documents containing technical or repetitive information that I feel a script would do better and faster. (I could write one to create such document in html within a few minutes). These documents are opened by business people that know nothing outside of their MS universe (a secretary once refused a PDF i sent her saying she couldnt open it, that's 2 years ago! I bet the extension.rtf wouldnt do as good as .doc either...). Some of them have locked down computers and cant install or change anything, some are scared about anything different and some just dont bother. Another reason (quite a good one) is that sometimes these people need to edit those documents and the only tool really suitable for them is MSword... These people are not under my supervision, they are my partners, my clients, some employers, etc... random business people. While on the other hand, authoring documents with MS tools is extremely painful to me (i got the skin of a tux i guess!) and working with OpenOffice is also quite painful... I've tried converting HTML to Office documents and got great results sometimes, while I got horrible results other times (compatibility issue, like the story about MSword not allowing tables inside tables!). Conversion seems a dangerous route (specially that I only own an old copy of office to test the result...). I used to do my lab reports and several homework in LaTeX long ago when I was in highschool and college, so I do have some memory of what it's like to use tex. The ideal route would be: myProg -> (lyx?) -> msword Thanks in advance for help and suggestions, Simon =)
