The thing I love most about LyX is the "outline" view. Editing plain text e.g. in "vi" has nothing comparable, but neither does Word, or Google Docs, etc., in my opinion.
In the screenshot here https://pauljmiller.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/lyx-main-scr... you can see there is a pane on the left with the document structure. At the bottom of that pane, there are four buttons, the right of which are an up and down button. Those four buttons (left, right, up, down) allow you to take a section of the document and move it around. The up/down change its position relative to other sections, and left/right promote/indent the section (e.g. change heading to sub-heading, or vice versa).
When editing large documents (e.g. > 100 pages), I find this invaluable if I wish to restructure the document.
MS Word has an interactive draggable outline view with the promote/demote/drag features ("View"|"Outline"), it also has a navbar outline view ("View"|"Navigation Pane" checkbox). You can use both combined.
Org-Mode and Leo Editor have a collapsible outline view like that, but while you can use them to author documents, it's obviously hard to compare them to LyX.
I've used LyX for ~17 years. Did all of my homework in it in college, wrote my thesis in it, and pull it out anytime I need to write a TeX document for myself.
If you're new to LaTeX, just grab LyX and go. It is a great gateway to LaTeX, and a reliable friend even if you wind up working in pure LaTeX, in order to collaborate or satisfy a formatting requirement, some of the time.
Same here. I spent so much time using LyX, and it's a fantastic project - high quality, great documentation. It accompanied all the way through school and I still use it for letters and such.
One problem for me: the text always fills the full width of the window even though that quickly becomes ineligible. I haven't found a way yet to fix that
I've used LyX and had high hopes for it, but never really fit my workflow.
LyX is really good if you need to produce simple documents and don't need to invoke a lot of special LaTeX packages. I think LyX hits a sweet spot between Microsoft Word and full-blown LaTeX.
If you need to do anything out of the ordinary (like use TikZ), LyX will still let you do it but it's going to feel a bit unwieldy. LyX is also quite slow on very large documents like dissertations. I recall the WYSIWYM rendering of math symbols and the old-school fonts looking a little unpolished compared to the PDFs generated by LaTeX, which bothered me a little. Many advanced LaTeX heads are sticklers for correct aesthetics. I know LyX can generate PDFs too, but if I wanted that, I'd rather write LaTeX code directly (more control, much more lightweight and responsive).
I eventually wrote my dissertation on TeXworks.
p.s. as mentioned in another comment, TeXmacs has a higher fidelity WYSIWYG than LyX.
I think that GNU TexMacs [1] is a superior to LyX, albeit less well known. Unlike LyX, it doesn't depend on the TeX stack and all the baggage that comes with it.
I’ve found LyX good for getting a document started, allowing you to not think so heavily about formatting details while giving you decent output.
Eventually, though, I export to LaTeX and format the rest myself. I find that using LyX long enough, you don’t have the formatting commands available to you (and you end up with a ton of unreadable custom insets and inline TeX), and configuration becomes as complex as LaTeX itself.
It’s a neat project and I’ve been happy to see it steadily grow over the past 10+ years.
> you don’t have the formatting commands available to you (and you end up with a ton of unreadable custom insets and inline TeX)
Does this mean a LyX user can't easily collaborate with others? Most people don't use LyX. If in a collaboration one author uses LyX and everyone else uses normal LaTeX (possibly with lots of packages, tikz/pstricks, etc.), will this cause problems---either for the LyX user, for everyone else, or for version control?
> configuration becomes as complex as LaTeX itself.
I've been a happy user of LyX for about a decade and I have to agree whole-heartedly with you here. Creating a new document in LyX invariably starts with me copying a previous .lyx file and deleting all the content because the preambles and associated settings are very large.
I suppose I should just make a template, but copying and pasting a file is easier, and I like the analogy with a mother dough...
There's also WordTeX, a "WYSIPCTWOTCG" editor. There's a paper [1], but this is a rare case where the Youtube video [2] is both more entertaining and the medium lets the content shine.
The feature in LyX I miss most when using other document editors is "Branches" [0].
I like to write thoughts about what I'm writing, notes to myself etc and keep them within the document, knowing they won't be output in the final file.
Word's comments never work as well for this. For reviewing they're fine, for longer prose... no.
Trivia: LyX was initially developed by Matthias Ettrich who started KDE one year later. LyX is 23 years old, barely younger than Qt, the GUI framework it uses.
Wrote my master dissertation in LyX, it was great. The LaTeX-specific features that LyX did not support, I put in a "preamble". Never had a problem and it even worked on a then-rare iBook (2004).
I use LyX to write academic papers and really love it. Sure, there are quirks, but it's still makes for a better workflow compared to the alternatives.
Especially important for me:
- track changes, which makes collaboration convenient (especially with less technically-oriented colleagues)
- math typesetting with instant preview
- integrated BibTex support, which makes citing easy
- easy to reference equations, tables, and figures in the text
I use LyX a lot for writing manuals, especially operations manuals. It's worked out fairly well. I've written and maintained several large "Operations Manuals" with other members of my team by placing the LyX documents under version control.
The main issue I had at one point was producing usable HTML output from the LaTeX conversion process, but I found a tool that processes the LyX file directly into HTML which produced acceptabled results.
I haven't used LyX in years, but I still probably would if I was doing the same math-heavy work I used to. WYSWIG is really helpful when doing equation editing and learning the shortcuts enabled me to mostly keep up with note taking on my laptop during math lectures.
Lyx is great. Although I’ve moved on to just typing straight latex, I probably would never have gotten started if it weren’t for Lyx. I still use it to set tables and such, because coding latex tables can be a huge pain. A great project.
LyX is a wonderful program and I do love it, but one thing I will caution against is tables. If you need to use tables, consider not using LyX. LyX looks like it can do tables, the UI in LyX is great for editing tables, however...
Tables do not split across pages (at least not by default). Word and Google Docs etc. can do this out of the box. Maybe there is a way to get this to work. For e.g. the description of a database table, as a table in the document with columns like "column name", "type", "description", not being able to use multiple pages is a real limitation.
I am a fan of LyX but using version control with the resulting tex document is near impossible and does not work well with others editing in a regular text editor. Wonder if anyone else had this experience?
We put the software architecture document (about 100 pages) in a single .lyx file in a "doc" directory of our Git repository, which stores our software source code.
We love feature branches, so we update not only the code, but the documentation as well, in the branch. When we merge, everything gets merged together.
What I mean to say is, we're not just using Git to "check out, check in", we are also merging and branching as well.
The workflow works perfectly for us.
We've been using this for 2 years, with many many commits. Hardly any merge errors. And no times where Git merged wrongly and corrupted the document or similar. I fix merge errors in a text editor if they occur (maybe once every few months, takes a few minutes to repair.)
One thing I would say is that LyX always writes the newline endings native to your platform. Git, by default, checks out Windows newlines on Windows and converts them to UNIX newlines on commit. So that works well too. But if you don't use that feature of Git, you might experience problems.
We haven't had a need to edit the generated TeX document manually. We just use LyX.
Different levels of abstraction. TeXstudio is akin to an IDE for LaTeX, whereas LyX is more a nice frontend on top of LaTeX. IMO, if you're already experienced and happy with LaTeX there's no reason to switch, but if you don't already know LaTeX or you find the workflow clunky LyX may be a good fit.
I've been using this for years and somehow continue to be able to amaze academics when I show them they don't need to write LaTeX tables and equations etc. by hand.
While there's an argument for writing plain text, I don't think it applies to most of the academics who can barely run a python script and wish they had secretaries typesetting their papers like the good old days.
I appreciate the efforts of LyX as it makes LaTeX writing more creative and less technical. I did use it at some point. But being rather absolutist when it comes to this, as a student i still preferred Word and Libreoffice because i like to play with the placement of pictures to explain technical things. But LyX might be your best bet if LaTeX is a requirement.
[+] [-] adrianmsmith|7 years ago|reply
In the screenshot here https://pauljmiller.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/lyx-main-scr... you can see there is a pane on the left with the document structure. At the bottom of that pane, there are four buttons, the right of which are an up and down button. Those four buttons (left, right, up, down) allow you to take a section of the document and move it around. The up/down change its position relative to other sections, and left/right promote/indent the section (e.g. change heading to sub-heading, or vice versa).
When editing large documents (e.g. > 100 pages), I find this invaluable if I wish to restructure the document.
[+] [-] MagnumOpus|7 years ago|reply
MS Word has an interactive draggable outline view with the promote/demote/drag features ("View"|"Outline"), it also has a navbar outline view ("View"|"Navigation Pane" checkbox). You can use both combined.
[+] [-] lima|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tincholio|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chaoticmass|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Keyframe|7 years ago|reply
Also, I've seen this recently: https://innovationdilation.com/ but there are many many more like that.
[+] [-] ma2rten|7 years ago|reply
https://support.google.com/docs/answer/6367684
[+] [-] syrrim|7 years ago|reply
for markdown at least.
[+] [-] ISL|7 years ago|reply
If you're new to LaTeX, just grab LyX and go. It is a great gateway to LaTeX, and a reliable friend even if you wind up working in pure LaTeX, in order to collaborate or satisfy a formatting requirement, some of the time.
Thank you, LyX!
[+] [-] lima|7 years ago|reply
Edit: I took the opportunity to donate :)
https://www.lyx.org/Donate
[+] [-] Quanttek|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amadvance|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wenc|7 years ago|reply
LyX is really good if you need to produce simple documents and don't need to invoke a lot of special LaTeX packages. I think LyX hits a sweet spot between Microsoft Word and full-blown LaTeX.
If you need to do anything out of the ordinary (like use TikZ), LyX will still let you do it but it's going to feel a bit unwieldy. LyX is also quite slow on very large documents like dissertations. I recall the WYSIWYM rendering of math symbols and the old-school fonts looking a little unpolished compared to the PDFs generated by LaTeX, which bothered me a little. Many advanced LaTeX heads are sticklers for correct aesthetics. I know LyX can generate PDFs too, but if I wanted that, I'd rather write LaTeX code directly (more control, much more lightweight and responsive).
I eventually wrote my dissertation on TeXworks.
p.s. as mentioned in another comment, TeXmacs has a higher fidelity WYSIWYG than LyX.
[+] [-] bovine3dom|7 years ago|reply
Have you tried it again in the last year or two? I've found that scrolling, for example, has become a lot faster since I first started using it.
[+] [-] snicker7|7 years ago|reply
1: http://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/welcome.en.html
[+] [-] jordigh|7 years ago|reply
https://packages.qa.debian.org/t/texmacs.html
[+] [-] letitgo12345|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reikonomusha|7 years ago|reply
Eventually, though, I export to LaTeX and format the rest myself. I find that using LyX long enough, you don’t have the formatting commands available to you (and you end up with a ton of unreadable custom insets and inline TeX), and configuration becomes as complex as LaTeX itself.
It’s a neat project and I’ve been happy to see it steadily grow over the past 10+ years.
[+] [-] greeneggs|7 years ago|reply
Does this mean a LyX user can't easily collaborate with others? Most people don't use LyX. If in a collaboration one author uses LyX and everyone else uses normal LaTeX (possibly with lots of packages, tikz/pstricks, etc.), will this cause problems---either for the LyX user, for everyone else, or for version control?
[+] [-] bovine3dom|7 years ago|reply
I've been a happy user of LyX for about a decade and I have to agree whole-heartedly with you here. Creating a new document in LyX invariably starts with me copying a previous .lyx file and deleting all the content because the preambles and associated settings are very large.
I suppose I should just make a template, but copying and pasting a file is easier, and I like the analogy with a mother dough...
[+] [-] chaoticmass|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] porker|7 years ago|reply
If you have the skills please help out.
C++ and Python: https://www.lyx.org/GetInvolved
[+] [-] nift|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amhouse|7 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/twildenh/wordtex/
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlX_pThh7z8
[+] [-] a-nikolaev|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] porker|7 years ago|reply
I like to write thoughts about what I'm writing, notes to myself etc and keep them within the document, knowing they won't be output in the final file.
Word's comments never work as well for this. For reviewing they're fine, for longer prose... no.
0. https://wiki.lyx.org/LyX/NewInLyX14#toc6
[+] [-] adiM|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ahartmetz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] delib|7 years ago|reply
Especially important for me:
- track changes, which makes collaboration convenient (especially with less technically-oriented colleagues)
- math typesetting with instant preview
- integrated BibTex support, which makes citing easy
- easy to reference equations, tables, and figures in the text
[+] [-] rkeene2|7 years ago|reply
The main issue I had at one point was producing usable HTML output from the LaTeX conversion process, but I found a tool that processes the LyX file directly into HTML which produced acceptabled results.
[+] [-] hatmatrix|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelmior|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lewis500|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrianmsmith|7 years ago|reply
Tables do not split across pages (at least not by default). Word and Google Docs etc. can do this out of the box. Maybe there is a way to get this to work. For e.g. the description of a database table, as a table in the document with columns like "column name", "type", "description", not being able to use multiple pages is a real limitation.
[+] [-] lima|7 years ago|reply
You can enable the "multi table" option in the table properties, which will use the longtable package to extend the table across multiple pages.
[+] [-] memling|7 years ago|reply
The formatting is a bit different, but I believe it will split the table across pages while supporting headers, footers, captions, and other options.
[+] [-] costrouc|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrianmsmith|7 years ago|reply
We put the software architecture document (about 100 pages) in a single .lyx file in a "doc" directory of our Git repository, which stores our software source code.
We love feature branches, so we update not only the code, but the documentation as well, in the branch. When we merge, everything gets merged together.
What I mean to say is, we're not just using Git to "check out, check in", we are also merging and branching as well.
The workflow works perfectly for us.
We've been using this for 2 years, with many many commits. Hardly any merge errors. And no times where Git merged wrongly and corrupted the document or similar. I fix merge errors in a text editor if they occur (maybe once every few months, takes a few minutes to repair.)
One thing I would say is that LyX always writes the newline endings native to your platform. Git, by default, checks out Windows newlines on Windows and converts them to UNIX newlines on commit. So that works well too. But if you don't use that feature of Git, you might experience problems.
We haven't had a need to edit the generated TeX document manually. We just use LyX.
[+] [-] binarez|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gh02t|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Y_Y|7 years ago|reply
While there's an argument for writing plain text, I don't think it applies to most of the academics who can barely run a python script and wish they had secretaries typesetting their papers like the good old days.
[+] [-] timwaagh|7 years ago|reply