![]() ![]() Note: LaTeX editors aren’t meant for basic text editing. Mathematical equations are exceptionally handled by these editors and they were the primary reasons leading to its development in the first place. These tools allow users to define formatting of text before hand through markup-level instructions and once the content is inserted, the document is ready to be exported as a PDF or any other file format. For people who have to deal with scientific papers and publishing, with a lot of mathematical equations thrown into the mix, LaTeX text editors are pretty much the industry standard. Quite similar to HTML in its formatting, LaTeX is one of the most commonly used text editor in the academia. I found the increase in productivity was literally a factor of three: I was writing up notes for a course in LaTeX and found they took roughly 9 hours for each 3 hour lecture, whereas when I switched to LyX I could write up each lecture in 3 hours.Still don’t get what this is all about? In simple terms, LaTeX (pronounced Lay-tek), is a markup level text editing tool that separates the word formatting from the content entry task. I was lucky enough to do it the opposite way round to you: I learned LaTeX first and typeset a few documents in it (including an undergraduate thesis) before coming across LaTeX, and that's how I'd recommend others learn it (well, maybe without typesetting a whole thesis in LaTeX!). I suspect if they returned to LyX some time later they'd find they still benefit from editing the vast majority of their document in the graphical view, while also being able to break out into raw LaTeX for the few features that LyX doesn't support. I think a lot of people go through a similar process to you, learning LyX first and then finding they can do more when they switch to LaTeX. ![]() Maybe using LyX's basic functionality has a shallower learning curve than LaTeX, but to use it effectively and completely I find you need to know all about LaTeX anyway, so by definition you actually need more knowledge. Admittedly, this does require more upfront effort than using the LaTeX package directly but I think the payoff can be worth it. \myfoo), map its real LaTeX to \foo and its LyX display to whatever LyX-recognised features look vaguely like the real thing and then use that macro in your equations. \foo) then you can make your own name for it (e.g. That means that if there's some command in a package that LyX doesn't recognise (e.g. These are a lot like LaTeX's \newcommand, except that in LyX a math macro has three parts: the command name (plus any arguments), what literal LaTeX should be output, and a visual approximation to show up in equations that you're editing. * Another useful well-hidden feature is math macros. Apart from that, it makes it feel like you're really editing the PDF directly. In both cases, when you actually edit the equation or ERT you'll still get the classic editor. You can also manually make preview environments to wrap around ERTs like your TikZ diagrams. ![]() This runs each individual equation through LaTeX so the equations you see are not some rough approximation of the PDF but very literally what you'll see. * A critical and unfortunately very well hidden feature of LyX is "instant preview" (disabled by default, you have to enable it in preferences). Sounds like you would've benefited from a couple of useful LyX features: But I also want to say to those who struggle with LyX, it may be worth the investment to write LaTeX directly. No knock on LyX - it does serve a certain niche. I was also using TikZ a lot for diagrams and working with TikZ via ERTs wasn't ideal. This mattered to me because I was writing long mathematical arguments with complicated expressions, which I had to inspect for correctness. The latter actually looked beautiful and I'd rather be able to see the actual final product than a WYSIWYM approximation of it (LyX does produce a PDF but it always felt like there was an additional abstraction layer separating the writing and the output, whereas LaTeX was more straightforward). The LyX rendering was an approximation of the final output (WYSIWYM), whereas the LaTeX generated PDF was actually the final output. I eventually just settled on full LaTeX - there's a slight learning curve, but ironically LaTeX felt easier to use and slightly more predictable than LyX because I didn't have to work around a bunch of limitations around displaying the final output (through ERTs).Īlso, aesthetics mattered to me. LyX's preview rendered simple math expressions alright, but it couldn't really render the custom math expressions (which required LaTeX math packages) that I needed for my dissertation. ![]() I think I tried LyX at least 5 times during grad school, but I couldn't quite get into it. ![]()
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