It already implements the features needed for at least 90% of the documents (though floating object support is yet a bit problematic), including a very good mathematic typesetter. Its only dependences on Knuth work are METAFONT and BibTeX, it does not use TeX at any level. I hope that if you are still reading me, you are assuming that there exists no alternative to TeX which is as good at typesetting, with cleaner typesetting language, complete support for WYSIWYG interactive edition, and as inherently structured document model.Īctually there is one, and it is called GNU TeXmacs. Texmacs vs lyx code#They end up implementing a lot of ad-hoc code to provide support for every individual feature of TeX without improving TeX itself. Texmacs vs lyx software#The LyX developpers do their best to work around the fact that TeX is a 30 years old software which does not know what "user feedback" means, and actually has no support for structured documents behind the LaTeX facade. But why do everybody who want high quality typesetting and structured documents stick to TeX? Still, a lot of effort is going in more modern languages. However, C++ is still widely used because it is useful though ugly. To make a parallel with programming languagues, C++ is arguably a pain to program in, and a lot of other programming languagues (like lisp, Perl, Python, Eiffel, Erlang) are vastly superior for the vast majority of software. Worse, LaTeX documents are notoriously hard to convert to any other format, loosing one of the most interesting features of structured documents: media independance. But LaTeX stays very difficult to use when you venture off the road marked by the twenty-or-so basic macro you can make you mother use. Actually TeX is just batch typesetter with a very elaborate macro processor, LaTeX tries to make it structured. A useful hack, indeed, but a hack nevertheless. And sometimes you want a very WYSIWYG display, for example, when fine-tuning line and page breaking, or when designing tables or writing formulas.Īdditionnaly, anyone who tried to do some elaborate document presentation with LaTeX understand what a hack is the whole TeX/LaTeX system. But sometimes you need to show more structure (in way similar to what is allowed by SGML editors). When producing content, WYSIWYM is fine, since at this point visual layout is a distraction, moreover it allows to display structure information which would otherwise be hidden (like index entries) or less handily editable (like footnotes and floating objects). However I argue that WYSIWYM is only a work-around the extreme difficulty to use TeX in a truly WYSIWYG and interactive way.Īctually, the good feature is to be able to choose the exact level of WYSIWYGness you need at a given point. That belief allows them to conciliate their desire for a graphical editor and their belief that WYSIWYG can only lead to unstructured documents. LyX developers argue that "What You See Is What You Mean" (WYSIWYM) is a good feature. There are other ways to do visual word processing than the M$-Word way. However, WYSIWYG document editors do not necessarily incite the user to produce documents with no or little logical structure. On one hand they recognize that the era of command line interfaces and batch processing is over, and that the reasonable way to work today is with graphical interfaces and real-time processing but on the other hand, they stay faithful to the common sense belief that "with a visual design system, authors usually produce aesthetically pleasing, but poorly designed documents" (quoting Leslie Lamport).Īctually that is true with "traditional" word processors derived from MacWrite, and including M$-Word, which were initially designed as glorified typewriters. But it seems to me that those LaTeX front-ends are a bit schizophrenic. Knuth designed it, and that LaTeX does a decent job at making TeX a little more usable. Texmacs vs lyx free#Posted 21:48 UTC (Thu) by DeletedUser1650 ((unknown), #1650)įirst of all, I want to thank the LyX developpers for their continued good work in making LaTeX a more generally useful tool.īut then, I want to ask a question which I think is important: why is there so much work and investment in developping user-interface layers over LaTeX, and so little in good projects free of the TeX legacy? Here I do not speak only of LyX, but also of other projects with a similar goal, like whizzyTeX, or the various LaTeX editing environments.ĭo not misunderstand me, I agree that TeX was an considerable breakthrough in computer typography, back when D.
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