I'm a Mac user too and make extensive use of both Scrivener and LyX/LaTeX. But they are no competitive products. LyX is at the end of the pre-press cycle; it's about presentation. Don't get me wrong its f***ing good presentation given that LaTeX is behind it but none the less it's primarily about presentation.
Scrivener is near the beginning through to almost the end of that cycle. It is for research, for organisation, for establishing logical flow though the document. I wouldn't use LyX for any of those tasks because it maintains the entire text on the screen at all times even with the (unless I'm away from my Mac-based intranet and LyX is all I have). More than once my use of Scrivener has made me realise that I'm duplicating something in the narrative flow of the document (through using the corkboard or outliner displays). The Navigate menu in LyX is not a patch on neither can it hold a candle up to Scriveners corkboard and outliner modes. The document binder means it is trivial to restructure a document. There's also the GUI issue. LyX is a portable product. Scrivener was written for Mac OS X and is (has been) tightly coupled to it. Being a Mac zealot I find LyX menus, structures and personalisation more difficult to adapt to on Macs. As a product it does what it is supposed to and does it well enough in an OS X environment (certainly better than than having to run the X server as other writing tools would require) but I wouldn't use LyX as my primary writing tool. Scrivener is that tool and from it I Multimarkdown the near-completed document for a final burnish with LyX before publication. This Mac OS X-ness may change with the recent announcement that Scrivener now exists in a Windows version. As an aside I use Journler as a "commonplace book" for keeping quotations, reflections and general ideas prior to writing documents. When writing a document I copy-and-paste the quotes from Journler to Scrivener. Some quotes and reflections never get out of the commonplace setting but they ready for me to access. Sadly Journler is no longer maintained. Again I wouldn't be without LyX for what it does but I don't beleive it is a tool that covers the entire writing task. Keep both I say and make the best of Lyx and of Scrivener. Remember though that the final presentation of your document has little to do with LyX itself and everything to do with LaTeX. If you want to create your own presentation formats then concentrate on that first. Then adapt LyX to support your requirements. Personally I concentrate on the document content and leave the presentation to the defaults of the various LaTeX document classes I have available (everything from TeXlive 2010 in fact). On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 2:34 PM, Eric Weir <eew...@bellsouth.net> wrote: > > I have been dancing around moving to LyX/LaTeX for formatting and printing > documents. I have the MacTeX installation of the full TeX Live package and > LyX 2.0. For longer writing projects I use Scrivener, which can compile > Multimarkdown encoded documents to LaTeX. I am a complete novice regarding > LyX/LaTeX, having completed about half of the LyX tutorial, and tried > importing, formatting and printing a few simple shorter and longer > documents. I plan to devote the day to completing the tutorial. > > My writing is mostly letters, memos, short to medium length reports, and > longer projects including proposals and articles. I always keep formatting > to the simplest minimum possible. I would like to make the break and > actually start using LyX/LaTeX, focusing initially on shorter documents. So > far this has involved importing text or LaTeX coded documents into LyX, > modifying the format to suit my tastes using the menu and toolbar. My > ability to make documents look the way I want them to is limited. In > addition, I have to start from scratch with each document. I am not > developing what I think in LyX/LaTeX are called "layouts" that could be used > repeatedly. > > I am conscious of the fact that this may be the kind of excessively broad > question that makes it difficult for knowledgeable people to be helpful. > Nevertheless, since I am to a large extent at a loss regarding the answer I > will ask it: Where do I start? Perhaps better, how do I go about creating a > layout for a document type. At this point the document would be very simple, > e.g., a few pages, a flush left title with up to three lines of single > spaced bold text using the same font only slightly larger than the body > text, and a few flush left bolded section heads using the same font the same > size as the body text. > > I understand that to getting conversant with LyX/LaTeX will require more > than a little reading and study. My experience with software has been that I > learn best in the context of trying to actually use the software. > > If anyone can venture a suggestion that would help me get going I would be > very grateful. > > Sincerely, > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Eric Weir > Decatur, GA USA > eew...@bellsouth.net > > > > -- Regards, Trevor. <>< Re: deemed!
