Can We Live Without Backslashes? | /en/2012/10/lyx-vs-latex/

yihui 2022-12-16 23:01:59

Can We Live Without Backslashes?

https://yihui.org/en/2012/10/lyx-vs-latex/

6 Comments

giscus-bot 2022-12-16 23:02:00

Guest *Vlad Pascal* @ 2012-11-01 00:55:27 originally posted:

Totally agree with you. I use Lyx and love it.

giscus-bot 2022-12-16 23:02:01

Guest *Noba Dee* @ 2012-11-01 02:48:29 originally posted:

Call me another of those old-school dudes -- because I AM -- but I agree with the other guy. One of the things I miss most, and constantly, in e.g. MS Word, is the ability to "view codes" that we had in good ol' WordPerfect circa 1985. You know all those times when Word insists on mysteriously reformatting an entire document because you tried to move a graphic a half-inch to one side? With "view codes" you could figure out why it was doing that, and either fix it or reverse-engineer the workflow the programmers had in mind that will let you do what you want. Without, well, you're up that proverbial creek. You kids and your GUIs think things "just work," and eventually you're going to get bitten in the rear end by some situation where you need to understand, or can at least hypothesize about, what's happening "under the hood" in order to fix it. I hope on that day you remember these words.

yihui 2022-12-16 23:02:05

It is not "just work" that I really care. It is the fact that LyX is essentially LaTeX; there is nothing mysterious about it. If you understand LaTeX, you are good to go; if you are bitten one day, you are much more likely to be bitten by LaTeX instead of LyX.

I'm not a typical GUI guy. I absolutely hate Word, and LyX is probably the only GUI application that I want to promote. I read and write a lot of source code every day, but LaTeX source is just one exception.

You think you are more productive with LaTeX source, and I think I'm more productive with LyX. Everybody is happy. That's it :)

Originally posted on 2012-11-01 16:57:24

giscus-bot 2022-12-16 23:02:09

Guest *Alun Pope* @ 2012-11-07 23:33:34 originally posted:

I want to use knitr (love it!) and R. Can I do this via LyX or do I have to do this via ESS/AucTex in Emacs, which is what I am doing now?

I have tried mathtype and Word, but that is truly awful in my opinion. Presumably LyX is better than that!!

yihui 2022-12-16 23:02:09

Sure, see http://yihui.name/knitr/demo/lyx/

Originally posted on 2012-11-08 01:49:01

giscus-bot 2022-12-16 23:02:01

Guest *Zach Jones* @ 2012-11-01 04:23:03 originally posted:

You can render equations inline in Emacs as well.

yihui 2022-12-16 23:02:07

There are tons of other things. How about includegraphics{}, references, citations and tables, etc? It is incredible to me that LyX made everything visual but still with LaTeX behind the scene.

Originally posted on 2012-11-01 17:02:47

giscus-bot 2022-12-16 23:02:10

Guest *aa9169* @ 2015-04-05 02:04:26 originally posted:

Rendering graphics and tables in real time is understandable (though I wouldn't recommend rendering graphics), but why do you need to render references and citations in real time? The whole point of LaTeX citations is to hide the meaningless auto-updating numbers away and use meaningful keys instead (or write once and forget about them forever) — unless you are a humanities/social sciences guy and your citations are not just meaningless numbers.

yihui 2022-12-16 23:02:11

I see what you mean, but you misunderstood what LyX was really doing.

Originally posted on 2015-04-05 04:27:24

giscus-bot 2022-12-16 23:02:02

Guest *Nan Xiao* @ 2012-11-01 08:37:35 originally posted:

When someone tells me Lyx is better ...

@nanxstats

yihui 2022-12-16 23:02:06

Originally posted on 2012-11-01 16:59:45

giscus-bot 2022-12-16 23:02:03

Guest *Ramnath* @ 2012-11-01 19:49:46 originally posted:

I am all for doing stuff in plain-text, but LyX would be an exception to the rule. I write my research papers, lecture notes, exams etc in LyX and it has bumped up my productivity a notch. Seeing my LaTeX code rendered in real time has saved me many a heartache, looking for errors in equations and their like.

What differentiates LyX from Word is that the underlying source is still LaTeX and you can mix up liberal doses of LaTeX wherever you wish, and I still do that. The best example where I prefer LaTeX markup is two column slides in Beamer, which are a pain to get right in LyX. However, for 90% of my needs LyX simply rules.

Here is a thought on how to settle this. Let us do a controlled experiment. Prepare a standard document in LyX vs. LaTex and measure the time it takes. We would need to control for familiarity with the tool, but that can probably be handled. I am pretty sure that LyX would shave off at least 20% off the time, especially if the document consisted of lots of complex equations. I know this comment is an invitation for trouble, but hey there is nothing wrong in stating one's belief. I am happy to be proved wrong :)

yihui 2022-12-16 23:02:08

BTW, I just finished a book chapter on knitr with LyX yesterday, and am moving on to other chapters in another co-authored book on reproducible research. My own knitr book is also making slow progress. For all of these work, I really appreciate the help of LyX. It is a busy season of writing... :)

Originally posted on 2012-11-01 22:02:51

giscus-bot 2022-12-16 23:02:04

Guest *Maximilian Held* @ 2015-03-10 19:39:07 originally posted:

Changing a LaTeX tabular?
Yup, been there. Gif captures the experience wonderfully.