[ILUG] LaTeX (was Red Hat in Easons.)

[Peter Flynn]

Peter Dempsey p.dempsey at faac.ie writes:

> In fairness, it is possible to do a number of the things you can do with
> lyx in Word. There are a number of built in document styles and it is
> possible to write first, apply styles later. I find that a lot of people
> are just crap at using Word. I find I tend to spend too much time tweaking
> when using word.

It's possible to spend a long time tweaking in LaTeX too, but most
users don't need to. I've never need a wordprocessor if I have TeX.
I did, however, once write a style file for LaTeX that made its output
look like A Crappy Wordprocessor[tm] (winword.sty)

> Having said that, lyx is cool when it comes to writing mathematical
> formulae. You don't gave to go pulling down menus or fecking about with the
> mouse once you learn a couple of keystrokes. I also like the fact that I
> can stick a lyx doc on my low powered laptop and edit it in vi while on the
> move or the desktop CP is being used for bloody freecell.

:-) Those who don't like/want Lyx (which does have its limitations)
probably need to use Emacs for editing LaTeX rather than vi, as it
comes ready to fly, with LaTeX-specific menus, colorisation, 
foreknowledge of the syntax so source linewrapping/reformatting
doesn't screw up, ispell skips over TeX commands etc.
[no flames, please]

If you want to see LaTeX pushed to the limit, see the draft mock-up 
brochure I did for this year's TeX Users Group meeting at
http://www.silmaril.ie/documents/latex-brochure/

///Peter