While I am on a roll here, I have just installed Lyx after the discussion on text programs in the earlier thread.

Installation on Windows is a little bit of a chore as it needs to download several additional programs to get it going, such as Ghost View.

So far it has been an interesting experience as it is only partially WYSIWYG, with each part of the doc being set up using styles. It comes with many different styles and apparently is really easy to use if you can stick with the built in styles, but creating your own styles is difficult.

It is however, fascinating throwing sentences together, without thinking about layout or formatting, and then seeing a perfectly formatted professionally typeset document printing out. While its running its only using 4000kb of memory and everything seems to work very quickly.

An interesting discovery was some Perl script on the Brainstorm forum that converts Brainstorm models into a formatted Latex file which seems to show some promise of an attractive Brainstorm.Lyx partnership. However Lyx isn't pure Latex.

I have been playing with Open Office for a while, but it seems to be only marginally better than Word and I haven't really felt it was worth the effort, but Lyx looks really useful and a big step up from Word for the sort of writing I do.

I would be interested to hear if anyone else has had a go with Lyx.

Graham

Graham Smith wrote:

I would be
interested to hear if anyone else has had a go with Lyx.

I did try this some time ago when I was still using linux. In the end, I found it easier to just use LaTeX in Emacs, as it gave me more control over the document. Its really not that bad once you get a couple templates set up with all of the correct headings in the preamble. Many of those documents were long, graphics-filled and heavy-duty, though, and LyX might be better for shorter, simpler documents and for outlines and such.

I finally broke down and went MS after being asked one too many times to convert a document to Word for publicaiton. I don't have the kind of time it takes to do that any more. It's a shame. Word is fine once you learn how to use the functionality but the LaTeX documents look better and, as I stated above, I always felt like I had more control over the document.

Tom S.

Tom

In the end, I found it easier to just use LaTeX in Emacs,

That is interesting as until finding Lyx I had always been put off Latex by the work it seemed to entail.

Many of those documents were long, graphics-filled and heavy-duty, though, and LyX might be better for shorter, simpler >documents and for outlines and such.

I am generally looking at 40 to 100 pages with between 25 and 100 charts or figures

I finally broke down and went MS after being asked one too many times to convert a document to Word for publicaiton.

My problem most of the time I am collaborating with other people and everyone uses Word, but equally I publish my own reports and my brief foray into Lyx has impressed me at how easy it is to get high quality output, with little effort. As an aside, for both our last book and the one that we are doing now, Springer offered Word or Latex templates for us to work with.

Word is fine once you learn how to use the functionality

I really don't like Word, I seem to always have some annoying problem every time I use it. However, it is no where near as bad as people say it is, and most of the problems are a result of not knowing how to use it.

None the less, it still warrants the label of being the most annoying program I have ever used, and I would love to say goodbye to it.

Thanks for the reply, maybe I will have a look at the other Latex options, now having gained a bit of confidence with Lyx, and indeed HTML, so a mark up approach doesn't seem so daunting as it did a year ago.

Graham

Graham Smith wrote:

>Word is fine once you learn how to use the functionality

I really don't like Word, I seem to always have some annoying problem every time I use it. However, it is no where near as bad as people say it is, and most of the problems are a result of not knowing how to use it.

None the less, it still warrants the label of being the most annoying program I have ever used, and I would love to say goodbye to it.

Graham

======================================

MS WORD can be a pain, or worse. Here are some problems and suggestions that most people in this forum no doubt already know. (Have you noticed the high intellect of the members?):

1. Files can become corrupted. One small corruption can infect the entire document. I know of a case where several people contributed chapters to a document. When they were combined, a corruption in one contribution corrupted the entire document. The editor ended up retyping the entire thing.
SUGGESTION: a) Every time you save, save under a new, sequential name. b) If your material is to be combined with others, have the editor/coordinator frequently combine the contributors' drafts. This way, if a corruption occurs, it will be caught early, and contributors will have less of a burden backtracking versions to find the problem. c) If what you are writing is long, write it separate parts/files.

2. Sending a WORD file as an email attachment can change it! If your recipient is close, it's better to hand-carry the digital file. Otherwise, send a zipped version of the file. Hopefully, any corruption/change will make the file unreadable. Among the email-generated changes I've noted are changes in style, headings, and punctuation, which could only be found by re-reading the entire recipient's version of the document.

3. Turn off all of WORD's "helpful" automatic features.

4. Create keyboard macros for things you do frequently & that are a pain to do. I did this for creating tables of contents, etc.

5. Customize your toolbars.

-c

Cassius :

Here are some problems and suggestions that most people in this forum...

The most important lesson is to do everything with styles. We solved most of our problems by me creating templates with styles for all of our needs, and staff were banned from using any manual formatting.

But we never solved the more bizarre problems like printing a proof of a report,checking it was OK and then, without doing anything except hitting the print button again, print 50 copies to find that a table now had a page break through it.

And I shall stop with that example for I can go on for pages describing my Word experiences, and it just gets me annoyed.

Graham

Tom

I finally broke down and went MS after being asked one too many
times to convert a document to Word for publicaiton.

A folllow up to this.

I see that some of the journals I have kicking around seem to accept Word or PDF originals, so maybe PDF is becoming a more acceptable format and opening

AND have you tried/looked at ALLPDF

http://www.bcltechnologies.com/document/products/allpdf/samples_allpdf.htm

My trial ran out on this, before I fully tested it, but it seemed to do a pretty decent job of converting PDFs into Word file.

I think I might go ahead and buy a copy as, I now and again want to convert PDF to Word (nothing to do with Lyx/Latex) and it might also offer a relatively painless way of getting Lyx into Word.

Graham

I must be the only person left in the world who likes Word. :)

Thanks for the suggestion. I might have tried it 5 years ago but its too late now. FWIW, the only reason that I ever got these journals to give me for requiring Word was that they want an accurate word count. Pdf's don't give you that. Or, I should say, they didn't back then. I'm not sure about now. It always seemed like a lousy excuse to me since I could think of half a dozen ways to get around it but that's the way it goes.

Its really OK. I'm not complaining any more. I've got the whole thing set up with Reference Manager and it integrates with other programs so well that it make it worthwhile. Its nice to compose Outlook emails in Word with all of the functions tht come with it. I was unhappy at the time, of course, but after making the adjustment, I've had few problems.

Tom S.

Tom,

I must be the only person left in the world who likes Word. :)

I'm sure you aren't but most people I know, either hate it or tolerate it. I certainly don't hate it with a vengeance the way some people do.

If you are happy with it, that is fine.

I'm not sure, however, why you couldn't do a word count in Lyx, before converting it to a PDF, or did the journals want to do their own word count?

Graham

Graham Smith wrote:

I'm
not sure, however, why you couldn't do a word count in Lyx, before converting it to a
PDF, or did the journals want to do their own word count?

As I said, there must be half a dozen ways at least to get around it. It was a lusy excuse but there comes a time when you don't fight city hall.

Tom S.

Tom

As I said, there must be half a dozen ways at least to get around it. It was a lusy
excuse but there comes a time when you don't fight city hall.

yes, I agree.

Graham

Graham -

And I shall stop with that example for I can go on for pages describing my Word experiences, and it just gets me annoyed.

A pretty fair reflection of my feelings. As part of my recent plain-text obsession I did look at Lyx, but I have the usual problem of having to collaborate with others, or follow journal guidelines - even when I am doing reviews for them. The decision I finally came to was just to put off using Word until the last possible moment. Now that I am drafting in a plain-text editor the way I used to a few years ago I can feel the BP falling rapidly.

Derek

Derek

> And I shall stop with that example for I can go on for pages describing my
Word experiences, and it just gets me annoyed.

A pretty fair reflection of my feelings.

And many others I know

As part of my recent plain-text obsession I did look at Lyx, but I have the
usual problem of having to collaborate with others, or follow journal guidelines -
even when I am doing reviews for them.

Well, I have a similar problem, and Word will still be my most used tool. However, I can still see good use for Lyx when I am working on my own, especially when I need to provide a well laid out hard copy report. The final layout is often where a lot of time is wasted in Word.

So far I am enjoying Lyz, (1.4 seems to have added a lot of useful features over 1.3) and it seems to fill that middle ground between Word and DTP that I wanted for my printed reports as well giving a useful writing environment.

Now that I am drafting in a plain-text editor the way I used to a few years ago I can feel the BP falling rapidly.

What are you using for the drafting?

Graham

Graham -

What are you using for the drafting?

EditPad Lite. I have a small collection of other ones to try out, but haven't got round to sampling them yet.

Derek

Derek

> What are you using for the drafting?

EditPad Lite.

That was the one that looked the most promising during my search, but I have actually been using (or trying to use) Emacs the last couple of days. I can use Emacs or indeed Winedt with R and I would like to choose something that has the appropriate add-in, but as a writing tool EditPad looks very good.

Thanks,

Graham

Graham -

...as a writing tool EditPad looks very good.

Yes, I had considered EditPad Plus, but I really don't need the extra features - just something plain and simple that I can link to Zoot. I'm even considering going back to converting pdf files to text. It's something we both used to do I think. For many purposes short of final presentation the pdf format is just a nuisance. I'm wavering on that one, though, as I remember that it took a lot of self-discipline in the midst of trawling for information on the internet to set aside time to convert and often rename pdf files. And leaving it until later meant that it often didn't get done.

Another problem of converting to text, and one that I don't see often mentioned, is that it can sometimes increase the risk of unconscious or inadvertent plagiarism. This also applies to html2text conversion. One chunk of plain text looks much like another once shorn of its fancy formatting, and sometimes not so different from one's own notes.

Derek

Derek

I'm even considering going back to converting pdf files
to text. It's something we both used to do I think.

Yes, I did but this was mainly to do with OCRing the image based files so Zoot could read them, and because although Zoot can read text based files so much of the beginning of a PDF is taken up with header, it was never that useful anyway. Equallly I was linking the text file to the original PDF so it was the original PDF that Zoot opened

I also have may PDFs with images and graphs so text is of limited use for many of the PDFs I store.

remember that it took a lot of self-discipline in the midst of trawling for
information on the internet to set aside time to convert and often rename pdf files.
And leaving it until later meant that it often didn't get done.

My problem as well :-(

Another problem of converting to text, and one that I don't see often mentioned, is that it can sometimes
increase the risk of unconscious or inadvertent plagiarism.

This hadn't occurred to me, but I see the point you are making.

But I do think the Text based approach is still very good, and seem to be more and more of a convert.

Graham

Graham -

Yes, I did but this was mainly to do with OCRing the image based files so Zoot could read them, and because although Zoot can read text based files so much of the beginning of a PDF is taken up with header, it was never that useful anyway. Equallly I was linking the text file to the original PDF so it was the original PDF that Zoot opened

Yes, I remember that [anyone who is interested, see #3700 in the Archives], but didn't realise that Zoot had the problem you mention with OCR'd PDF files. As I work mainly with standard non-image PDF files, the text conversion process - done either by the Acrobat reader or xpdf - edited out the header automatically.

It may be my imagination but I seem to come across fewer image PDF files (outside JStor) than I used to. Maybe it's because I look mainly at government reports. It's the preponderance of standard pdf files I deal with that is making me think again about using Zoot's file folder sync feature more often.

If I had to pinpoint one thing that's given me the most grief over the years it's been dealing with pdf files - getting the Acrobat Reader to work reliably, getting its plugins to work in different browsers, getting text out of pdf files, getting pdf files indexed and searched. Things are much better nowadays, but I still find the transigence of the pdf format a regular irritation. Maybe I should upgrade to v8 of the Reader, but I'm apprehensive about yet another round of problems :-(.

Derek

Derek

Derek,

imagination but I seem to come across fewer image PDF files (outside JStor) than I used

It is Jstor files that I have the problem with, as I have a local library of downloaded PDFs that I search

to. Maybe it's because I look mainly at government reports. It's the preponderance of
standard pdf files I deal with that is making me think again about using Zoot's file
folder sync feature more often.

Maybe I should upgrade to v8 of the Reader, but I'm apprehensive about yet another
round of problems :-(.

I've been using it for a few days now and stopped using Foxit. I was using Foxit because of its speed but V8 acrobat is just as fast.

I have also bought V8 professional to use the review features. As I am now really sold on Lyx my grand plan is to send clients PDFs that they can comment on with Acrobat viewer, rather than Doc files that they can edit.

V8 allows you to set up a proper email based review process and dealing with multiple files with comments, once files are returned - or so the brochure says!

I have also started using Emacs to extend the plain text approach, and I am completely amazed at what it can do, but that is another post.

Graham

Graham -

I have also started using Emacs to extend the plain text approach, and I am completely amazed at what it can do, but that is another post.

I look forward to hearing more about Emacs. Have you looked at the Vim text editor? There are versions for Windows, see: http://www.vim.org/about.php
There is also an outliner add-on for Vim, I believe. Needless to say Vim has a similar reputation to that of Emacs for difficulty, but as I have never user either of them I'm not sure to what extent this is geek hype and mystification...

Derek

I look forward to
hearing more about Emacs. Have you looked at the Vim text editor? There are versions
for Windows, see: http://www.vim.org/about.php

I will stick with Emacs because it also works as a front end for R (with an add-on)

There is also an outliner add-on for Vim, I believe.

As there is for Emacs, which also has time management tools, and a tutorial on using it for GTD. there is also a wiki type inofmation management- web publishing add-in, and a bibliographic add-in, Latex, address book, and other planning tools,plus others I haven't found

Needless to say Vim has a similar reputation to that of Emacs for
difficulty, but as I have never user either of them I'm not sure to what extent this is
geek hype and mystification...

It isn't easy, configuration is manually by typing into a config file in a home directory you need to set up rather than a nice dialog box, but as there are lots of very clever emac people out there it means you can do some really clever customisations of how emacs works. Getting it to print was fun and games and even now I can only get black and white printing.

Its heavily into key strokes so a lot of initial remembering, but this also means that once learnt, it is very very fast to use.

Menu items and functions change with the context of the file loaded, So if you have a Jabref bibliography (which I am now using) and you want to quickly look something up, you can type "Alt-x bib" and it will open the bibliography data base inside Emacs as a properly formatted bibliographic data base that you can search and edit. "Alt-x tasks" will then open your outline based task list, "alt-x wiki" will open your wiki based information store. etc, and you can do the same thing with an address book, mail client, newsgroup client and even web browser, plus many other things I haven't grasped. There seems to be a tool called remember, that looks at what you are writing and searches all your existing text based files, and pops up reminders of anything it finds that seems relevant to what you are writing about. Of course you need to set this up in the config file, but it isn't that difficult.

Working with text is great as there are lots of good navigational key stokes to whiz around your doc and clever keystrokes to transpose letters, words and lines. Its also dead easy to add tables with calculated fields, albeit not very pretty tables.


I certainly now understand why people say they can spend all day working on their computer and never leave emacs.

It still a bit geeky, and you do need to put a lot of work into it. but Lyx and Emacs are the first two programs I have come across for years that have inspired me into thinking the effort is really worth it.

You do have to feel happy with the text only interface of course.

Graham

Graham -

Sounds exciting. So emacs, as well as being a text editor, is also something of a control centre for other activities. I especially like the way Jabref works. Are you starting a bibliographic database from scratch or can one import existing bibliographies into Jabref?

How do you parcel out your time as between emacs and Lyx for writing? Presumably you could use emacs for LaTeX, as well. It looks as thought Zoot "as is" would fit in well to this way of working.

Sorry about the further questions. If you have a url to your version of emacs I'd like to go and take a look.

Derek

Derek

>Are you starting a bibliographic database from scratch or can one import existing

bibliographies into Jabref?

Jabref imports most things, so I exported my biblioscape database as something that imported directly into Jabref. Refer-endnote is what I used. You can also access the same *.bib database in Lyx to add in text citations which automatically add the full reference at the end of the document. So I can fully access the same database in Jabref, Emacs and Lyx

How do you parcel out your time as between emacs and Lyx
for writing?

Errmm, still working on this, I've only had them installed for a couple of weeks. But I get the feeling that Lyx will probably only be used for "full reports"

Presumably you could use emacs for LaTeX, as well.

Indeed it does - but I can't get it to work, at the moment ! See below

It looks as thought Zoot "as is" would fit in well to this way of working.

It seems to fill an obvious gap.

Useful URLs.

I downloaded the windows version of emacs from http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/

This only requires you to set up an emacs directory and extract the files into the directory.

Auctex is the Latex addin for Emacs, and by downloading emacs from their site it is already set up. However, you do need other applications loaded. GhostView, Ghostscript, MikTex, ImageMagick, for me these were pre-loaded because I had already installed Lyx so it was pretty painless install for me. But I see Lyx as part of the whole "package" so I would install Lyx first.

You also need to set up a home directory - instructions in some of the links below, and a .emacs configuration file, except you can't do this in Windows so you can use _emacs instead.

The Org Mode wiki is at http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/OrgMode (addins are called "modes")

The org mode home page is at http://staff.science.uva.nl/~dominik/Tools/org/

emacs wiki at http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki

Lyx wiki http://wiki.lyx.org/LyX/Welcome

The Woodnotes guide to emacs for writers is at http://therandymon.com/content/view/16/79/

Some comments on the Plannner option is at

http://pigpog.com/node/1974 and the wiki is at http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/PlannerMode


That should be enough to get started !

Graham

Derek,

Just to add to the all in one idea of Emacs, I have just found a firefox extension that gives Firefox the same look and key strokes as Emacs. Its still Firefox, but it does extend the value of leaning all the emacs key strokes.

http://conkeror.mozdev.org/

It doesn't work with any other firefox extensions so a bit limited at the moment, but I would have thought a good leaning tool for the emacs keystrokes.

Graham

Graham -

Thanks very much for the urls. I'm going to have a go with Lyx and emacs as soon as I've cleared the decks this week.

The Woodnotes Guide was particularly helpful. How are you dealing with the word wrap issue (Section 14)? The author seems to hint that using "filling" as a way to achieve the usual word-wrapped display may lead to problems if, instead of sticking with LateX, one decides to hand the finished text over to a publisher instead.

If it were not for Zoot and a few other programs, the temptation to move over to Linux would be hard to resist...

Derek

Derek

How are you dealing with the word wrap issue (Section 14)?

The org.mode defaults to using longlines.el and I have been using this mode for my experimentation with emacs, so haven't had to think about it that much.

using "filling" as a way to achieve the usual word-wrapped display may lead to
problems if, instead of sticking with LateX, one decides to hand the finished text
over to a publisher instead.

So far not had the problem, but clipcache and other clipboards, and indeed Zoot have plain text clean up modes that I thought might work. On the other hand many publishers accept PDFs so that is one route.

AND, Adobe Acrobat Professional has a convert to Word capability, and there are low cost PDF to Word converters available, such as AllPDF, which I am using.

If it were not for Zoot and a few other programs, the temptation to move over to Linux would be hard to resist...

Yes, I ran Linux for a few months in a spare box, and my long term plan is to move over to it as my main OS, but like you I have a few important Windows only programs that are slowing the transition. Indeed my current plan has Adobe Acrobat playing a critical role, so I am going to have to have a Mac or Windows box in my system somewhere.

Having said that, I bought Crossover office when I was using Linux and I had MSoffice running happily in Linux. Didn't try anything else, and not all programs work with crossover office as it is only emulating Windows. But, of course there are also programs like Win4lin that run Windows inside Linux. These allow you to run (I think) any Windows program inside Linux. Both these options still allow you to drag and drop between linux and Windows programs etc so it is pretty seamless in use.

A bonus being that Windows programs run faster on Linux than they do in Windows !!

Certainly MSOffice on my 663Mhz Linux box using Crossover office ran at about the same speed as it was running on my 1400Mhz (AMD 1600) Windows box. Both with 512Mb RAM.

Proper tests did show that the Windows box was still faster, but only fractionally. Of course the Windows box wasn't fresh install so it was probably running slower than it could have been.

Good luck with your foray into Lyx and emacs, it is certainly very different from learning your average Windows program. At least as a Scot, I can pronounce Latex properly :-)

Graham