Lyx is fantastic!

[daacosta]

My! I was looking for nice frontend for LaTex and found Lyx (http://www.lyx.org) What a great piece of software! I don't even have to know anything about LaTex to start being productive with it and in a matter of 2 hours I was able to correctly format a chapter of my dissertation (almost there... almost there...)

I know Emacs and Vim are good, but for me, they are just too convoluted whereas Lyx is simple and good for what I need: a typesetting program that serves as a non intimidating front end for LaTex.

Note: LaTex in this context is not intended to describe the rubbery substance.

[genesus]

Nice, I love using LaTeX and VIM myself; however, I play around with another frontend sometimes, called Kile.

*going to try lyx*

[Vergil83]

does it have spell check? I have trying out GNU TeXmacs

[daacosta]

does it have spell check? I have trying out GNU TeXmacs

Yes, it has spell check Vergil

I am reading the tutorial right now...

[genesus]

does it have spell check? I have trying out GNU TeXmacs

Use VIM and LaTeX and you can spell check with ispell, or use the vispell plugin for vim

[TomX]

I whole-heartily I recommend using Vim with vim-latex (http://vim-latex.sourceforge.net/) for LaTeX. I only used LaTeX for typing up Maths but it seems amazing.

Install it and just go through the tutorial (http://vim-latex.sourceforge.net/doc...-tutorial.html), I think you'll see how great it is. I can't describe it but it's just really efficient.

Also, it allows you to execute compile and view commands. \ll compiles and \lv lets you view the DVI file (in the standard DVI viewer app). If there's any errors in compilation it shows them in the other screen in Vim and let's you go to the lines quickly.

It has syntax highlighting and auto indentation too

[daacosta]

Vim and Emacs are excellent tools for LaTex and choosing one of those is a matter of taste.

However, for pathologically lazy people such as myself, LyX allows you to use a WYSIWYG kind of tool without pain... That is, I don't need to learn combinations like M-C-c-c or C-C-v whatever those mean (I don't care!) or know when I am in insert or modal modes... Configuration files? HA!

After finishing the tutorial of LyX I was already typing my dissertation a dn making it look good! See, I bypassed the experience of having to learn an editor and LaTex

Of course, if you want to learn LaTex, Lyx is not the best tool for it and in my humble opinion either Emacs (used for none less than Donald Knuth) or Vim...

For Vim and Emacs users I'd give LyX a look... Please! You will see what a fantastic tool that is

[venik]

My experience with Lyx is quite different. I find almost every thing harder to do with it than without it. I think the basic idea is good, but the implementation is... well...

Examples?

• It ignores a \date{} entered as ERT. If I change the Latex preamble the margins get reset to default (but not always...
• After I export a file to Latex, makes some changes, and import it back to Lyx, it puts in front of the figure captions: SENSLESS! (what am I supposed to do with that?)

I could go on, but for the time being, when time is short, I shall bypass Lyx. I can afford to use it only when I have a LOT of time to learn its idiosyncracies, which proves the point-- it is still a fantasy.

[Vergil83]

True, but it isn't LaTex! It is good for people who want good formating but don't want to learn LaTex. However, for large projects I did find that pure latex is easier.

[genesus]

Ahh, a resurrected thread from long before I converted to emacs from vim...