Sunday, August 06, 2006
Some musings on writing with LyX
A while back, I wrote a review of a Linux distribution called GhostWriter. This particular flavour of Linux is intended for writers and the one way it's unique is that it uses an application called LyX as its editor. LyX is a WYSIWYG document preparation tool that uses LaTeX (a powerful typesetting program) as its backend. In the review. I mention that LyX isn't very intuitive, and that perhaps a lightweight word processor might have been a better choice.
I received an email from a person who took minor umbrage with my comments about LyX, and included a lengthy description of how to teach someone to use LyX. I'm not a LyX newbie, but I am a realist. LyX is good for some tasks, but it's definitely not an all-around writing tool.
The approach to teaching LyX that this person outlined is similar to the one that I used when showing a few friends (also writers) how to use the app. The only difference was that I took a slightly more task-based approach to it -- "So, you want to write a report/whitepaper/whatever? Let's start with this template ..." The template was one that I cobbled together, so it was easy for me to quickly get them up and running. A couple of those friends still use LyX.
LyX isn't incredibly difficult to learn, but it does require a shift in the way in which people write documents. I equate it with a technical writer moving from Word (yep, some shops use Word) to FrameMaker or DocBook. You need to adopt a more structured approach to writing with the latter two.
LyX has its strengths, and it's a great tool for certain tasks. I've written and published a number of whitepapers and reports for corporate clients, and have done various personal and professional documents with it. I was going to use it on an eBook project that I'm working on, but found that getting my hands dirty with LaTeX was a better solution for this project.
But when writing for publication -- articles or books -- or even for business/corporate clients, LyX isn't always the best tool. Editors and clients like to use formats that are supported by commercial software, and which fit into their workflows. And that means Word .doc format or, in a push, RTF. Of course, some publications accept text. Asking an editor at, say, Smart Computing (with whom I've worked) to adopt LyX will cause my emails and phone calls not to be returned. Business/corporate clients often like to have the source files for a project. Once again this means providing them with Word or FrameMaker files.
LyX is a great tool. It's not for every writing task, but it's not meant to be.
I received an email from a person who took minor umbrage with my comments about LyX, and included a lengthy description of how to teach someone to use LyX. I'm not a LyX newbie, but I am a realist. LyX is good for some tasks, but it's definitely not an all-around writing tool.
The approach to teaching LyX that this person outlined is similar to the one that I used when showing a few friends (also writers) how to use the app. The only difference was that I took a slightly more task-based approach to it -- "So, you want to write a report/whitepaper/whatever? Let's start with this template ..." The template was one that I cobbled together, so it was easy for me to quickly get them up and running. A couple of those friends still use LyX.
LyX isn't incredibly difficult to learn, but it does require a shift in the way in which people write documents. I equate it with a technical writer moving from Word (yep, some shops use Word) to FrameMaker or DocBook. You need to adopt a more structured approach to writing with the latter two.
LyX has its strengths, and it's a great tool for certain tasks. I've written and published a number of whitepapers and reports for corporate clients, and have done various personal and professional documents with it. I was going to use it on an eBook project that I'm working on, but found that getting my hands dirty with LaTeX was a better solution for this project.
But when writing for publication -- articles or books -- or even for business/corporate clients, LyX isn't always the best tool. Editors and clients like to use formats that are supported by commercial software, and which fit into their workflows. And that means Word .doc format or, in a push, RTF. Of course, some publications accept text. Asking an editor at, say, Smart Computing (with whom I've worked) to adopt LyX will cause my emails and phone calls not to be returned. Business/corporate clients often like to have the source files for a project. Once again this means providing them with Word or FrameMaker files.
LyX is a great tool. It's not for every writing task, but it's not meant to be.
