# [SciPy-user] New Lyx Version eas(ier) to install on Windows.

Fernando Perez Fernando.Perez at colorado.edu
Fri Feb 10 09:32:20 CST 2006

massimo sandal wrote:
>> you have all the
>>section subsection etc machinery visible from the page layout, without
>>having to constantly do an implicit parse of stuff like:
>>
>>\subsection{Specific Aims}
>>\item{{\bf Aim 1:}
>>
>>It's simple enough to do in your head, but just soaks up brain
>>processing power that I would prefer to use for the writing.
>
>
> What parsing? I just read "subsection" and that's exactly what I want to
> know: that it is a subsection. It's a logical chunk of my document. To
> see the logical structure of my document exposed is actually more
> straightforward for me.
>
> Probably our brains are just hardwired differently... :)

Probably :)

For me, it came down to very much what Matthew says (and I'm glad I won him
over:).  It was the mental overhead of running a latex compiler in my brain in
parallel all the time.  I found that I could concentrate more on writing and
less on dealing with formatting and latex details thanks to lyx.

The joys of reading (and getting right in the first place):

\begin{eqnarray}
g_{n} & = & \mathbf{T}_{n}^{b_{n}}f_{n}+\uparrow\left[\left(\mathbf{T}_{n-1}^{b_{
n-1}}-\mathbf{T}_{n-1}^{\left\lfloor b_{n}/2\right\rfloor
}\right)f_{n-1}+\uparrow\left[\left(\mathbf{T}_{n-2}^{b_{n-2}}-
\mathbf{T}_{n-2}^{\left\lfloor b_{n-1}/2\right\rfloor
}\right)f_{n-2}+\ldots\right.\right.\label{nsf.eq:apply_algo}\\
&  & \left.\left.\ldots+\left[\uparrow\left[\left(\mathbf{T}_{0}-\mathbf{T}_{0}^
{\left\lfloor b_{1}/2\right\rfloor }\right)f_{0}\right]\right]\ldots\right]\right
].\nonumber

\end{eqnarray}

are replaced with a perfectly clear equation on screen, where I don't have to
worry about any latex errors and which is visually clear enough that I know
_exactly_, immediately, whether I typed what I meant or not.

Bonus points for not having to deal manually with the graphicx package, for
lyx converting all graphics formats into whatever is actually needed by latex
for me, managing bibtex (esp. in conjunction with the joy of pybliographic),
etc...

I am very much a command-line,
life-is-not-worth-living-outside-of-an-Xemacs-buffer kind of guy, but lyx is
the one tool where I'm willing to pay the price of a more primitive editor
than Xemacs (though I curse every day the lack of dabbrev) for the payoff it
gives me.

But again, it may not be your cup of tea.  I'm just trying to explain why _I_
(and perhaps Travis, Matthew and others with similar inclinations) have found
it to be a productive tool for our latex-related needs.

Best regards,

f