On Sun, 1 Sep 2013 08:29:23 +0200 Liviu Andronic <landronim...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 1, 2013 at 5:10 AM, Ken Springer <snowsh...@q.com> wrote: > > If I'm going to try out LyX in the end, would it be of any value to > > me to do a little experimenting with LaTeX and Tex first, or just > > jump in the pool? > > > LyX strives to offer an authoring environment that requires no (or > truly minimal) knowledge of LaTeX. In practice, however, rudimentary > LaTeX knowledge is always required when working with LyX, be it when > setting up your bibliography, understanding the UI structures, > inserting appropriate symbols or when dealing with unexpected > compilation errors. I'd add that if you want to add your own environments and make them look a certain way, LyX requires a *huge* knowledge of LaTeX. This fact doesn't materially contradict anything you write in the rest of this document. The way I work is, when finding a need for a new environment or character style, I immediately put it in, perhaps with a CopyStyle, using just enough LaTeX to make it look different from surrounding text, even if it's nothing like my desires for the finished product. Ellapsed time, 3 to 5 minutes, and I'm back to banging out verbiage. Then, on a day when I'm not whomping out content, I'll search-engine all over the place finding out what I need in order to achieve my desired look, experiment, and code it. Sometimes, when it's super-challenging, I do the whole thing in LaTeX first, and only after the LaTeX is perfect do I port it to LyX. Doing it this way limits the number of variables involved, increases understanding, and *greatly* reduces the time consumed by each change/compile/view cycle. And this discussion wouldn't be complete without adding that a lot of people have outstanding memories and ability to search CTAN, and can find package solutions so they need no LaTeX knowledge at all (though a lot of those same people have a lot more LaTeX knowledge than I do.) If you want to become one of these people, I'd highly recommend starting with the LaTeX Configuration manual available under Help. It lists a whole lot of handy packages. The more packages you know and can use, the less LaTeX you need to know. > > I'd say that LyX works very well for novices to learn the basics of > LaTeX. Work on your document and see in View > Source how LyX prepares > the LaTeX code for you. So best would be not to worry about LaTeX too > much in the beginning; you'll pick it up on the way. > > The most time-consuming part of learning LyX is making your first > document. Which isn't very time consuming. You run LyX, say File->New, and start typing. Paragraph styles, which we call "Environments", are available from a dropdown on the toolbar. Character styles are available from Edit->Text_Style on the menu. > So a good way to proceed would be to make your way through > the Introduction and the Tutorial (and maybe the LyX Essentials: > https://sites.google.com/site/tsewiki/resources/latex ), and then > start creating some not-very-important document. In the process you'll > start learning a lot of things LaTeX (and LyX). Pre-Cisely! I didn't read the tutorial first, and was sorry about that later. Also, the User's Guide is a vital part of your every day lookups. Actually, every document listed under LyX's Help menu is very useful, but these are especially so. And once you're using styles (environments and character styles), be sure to look at the Customization manual under Paragraph styles (search is the easiest way to find it), and search Flex Insets to find the section about character styles. When you DO need LaTeX, I've written some easy to read stuff here: * http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/200210/200210.htm * http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/lyx_latex_tex.htm * http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/ownlists.htm Thanks, SteveT Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/ Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance
