Interesting comments. I too have found small vendors to be much more helpful. Often the developers help with or even do all of the tech support at small vendors. And they actually read my emails, instead of replying with canned responses.
My experience with LyX has been mostly excellent. I started using it at work a number of years ago because I need to produce some technical manuals quickly. I wanted something that would not lose track of things in the cross-references and TOC (as Word is wont to do as documents get longer and more complex). LyX allowed me to get to work right away on content and produced very professional output. I've used the KOMA-script versions of report, article and book, and I've also used the letter template that comes with LyX. Yesterday was the first time I ever tried to use one of the examples that come with LyX. With scant documentation, the only way to figure out how the example worked was trial and error. I wanted to concentrate on getting the document done, not futz around with the example. Something good did come out of this. In searching for information about moderncv, I chanced upon this site: http://www.latextemplates.com They have a template based on moderndv very similar to the example that comes with LyX, but the TeX source file has complete and detailed comments. So I switched to TeXShop and got good results right away. First time I've had to do that. I like the words of the Kiwi whose site it is: "I am by no means an expert on LaTeX, but I recognize that others are similar to myself and only want to use LaTeX as a tool to create a document, without having to dig around in forums for solutions on how to tweak the document in some small way. There is no reason that LaTeX cannot be a simple platform for creating documents where little more is required than to change example text to your own text in a pre-configured template. To this end, templates on this website have been carefully pulled apart, cleaned up and made easier to use for the average person just starting to use LaTeX." -- Rich On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 11:52 AM, Ken Springer <snowsh...@q.com> wrote: > On 10/23/13 11:24 AM, David L. Johnson wrote: > >> On 10/23/2013 12:33 PM, Ken Springer wrote: >> >>> >>> The program I filed the bugs with is one that wishes to take on a >>> commercial program in the marketplace. And they add new features, >>> some of which are inevitable buggy. But the attitude exhibited by not >>> fixing existing bugs is very unprofessional. If you are a business, >>> with competition, you want tools that work, not tools you spend a lot >>> of time finding work arounds. >>> >>> 3. When the new version comes out, and the developers have broken >>> something, they say it's a "regression". Oh, BS!! That's just >>> political spin for not saying they screwed up and didn't catch it. I >>> would appreciate the pure honesty of admitting a mistake than >>> political spin. >>> >>> 4. My impression is, for most open source software I've tried over a >>> period of time, the quality assurance/testing program to look for and >>> find bugs is seriously flawed. Some bugs are blatant, and I ask >>> myself, "How did they miss that?" >>> >> >> I look at those complaints, and wonder that you don't see such issues, >> and worse, with commercial software as well. >> > > Invariably, there will be bugs in any sophisticated software. The > question that arises for me is, are they important to the developer? I > think, when the developers are being paid for their work, they are more > attentive to fixing the bugs, as their next paycheck depends on it. > > These days, when I do suggest software, it's often a program that has both > free and paid versions. My theory is, that programs developers will be > more attentive to bugs in the free version as the incentive is to get you > to purchase the more sophisticated paid version. I don't think very many > people, when finding a lot of bugs in the free version, will opt to > purchase the paid version. > > > For me, the difference >> between commercial software and open-source is that, when you do have a >> problem, you have a chance, with open-source software, to actually ask >> for help from the person who wrote it. >> > > Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I think smaller developers are easier to get > in touch with. > > > For example, this list is >> well-populated by the actual developers of LyX, who are very helpful. >> > > Which is what I'd read online, and why I'm going to try LyX. Also, > because it's a typesetting program. And I want better output than the > average word processor. > > > Commercial support will connect you with a call center full of people >> reading from scripts. >> > > Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I've found the smaller vendors to be much > more helpful than the larger vendors. > > I have a file management program on this Mac, and when I found a problem, > I ended up talking via email about the problem. We finally figured out > what triggered the problem, but I'm not checked for an update. > > > -- > Ken > > Mac OS X 10.8.5 > Firefox 24.0 > Thunderbird 17.0.8 > LibreOffice 4.1.1.2 > >
