TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Re: TeX OR Lyx From:Peter Harkins <ph-tw -at- malaprop -dot- org> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com Date:Mon, 11 Aug 2003 22:44:23 -0500
On Mon, Aug 11, 2003 at 07:18:13AM -0400, Eisbruchs -at- aol -dot- com wrote:
> Does anyone have experience using TeX or Lyx?
> What are their strengths and weaknesses?
TeX is very powerful, but has a steep learning curve. LyX is a graphical
frontend to TeX/LaTeX, and it's "what you see is what you mean" rather than
"what you see is all you get". I use LyX for the documentation I produce,
and it's a great tool. The LyX community has recently jumped in size a
little with the creation of an easily-installed port to OS X (LyX is
natively a Unix/Linux application). As another poster mentioned, it can be
run on Windows with the installation of the Cygwin tools.
LyX has an excellent mailing list for users -- answers to complex questions
about how to do things usually arrive in a day at most, and the atmosphere
is friendly and supportive. http://www.lyx.org/internet/mailing.php3
