Dear Steve On Tue, 2010-09-14 at 14:31 -0400, Steve Litt wrote: > I feel your pain. The changes you describe would be so simple in WordPerfect > and MS Word, and soooo difficult in LyX. And you'll find out that a lot of > people ask "well why don't you just use the defaults, why do you want to > micromanage your document's appearance?" You've identified the main > deficiency > in LyX -- everything else about it is wonderful. > > You mention you have no skill in writing layout files. Most folks don't. It's > gruelling, difficult work, and I'd estimate that getting all your styles the > way you want them will take you between 3 and 5 days of work -- a long time > but not so long compared to the time it takes to write a book, and don't > forget LyX saves you writing time in a hundred different ways. > > I was in your exact position in 2001 (actually, I kind of still am), so I > wrote several documents about making your own layouts and learning LaTeX for > the purpose of layouts. > > Here's the set of links for my LyX documentations and tutorials: > > http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/index.htm > > I'll give you one more word of wisdom. It gets better. As time goes on you > learn the in's and out's of making environments and character styles, and you > learn how to quickly make dummy environments to get on with your writing, and > later on go back and make your styles exactly how you want them.
Thanks so much for the friendly reply! I wish everyone in the world was as friendly as you. I will take a look at your links and let you know (much later!) about my progress. Thanks again for being so friendly Etienne
