[OS X TeX] LyX or TeXShop?

[Joachim Kreimer-de Fries]

Moin Mac-TeXters,

in the thread "tlmgr failure", reacting to my footer
>>> MacTeXLive 200 - TeXShop 2.14-svn - LyX 1.6

On Nov 30, 2008, at 11:58 AM, Alain Schremmer wrote:
> By the way, why TeXShop AND LyX?
>
> I am not about to switch but a friend who picked LyX asked me why I  
> picked TeXShop.
>
> (My response was that, learning curve apart, TeXShop (inter alia)  
> could do a lot more than LyX since I could control the packages I  
> used. He seemed a bit skeptical though—he is a professional  
> programmer.)

I'm not!

For not to run still further OT that thread I start for my answer  
another one on "LyX or TeXShop", OK, it remains a little bit OT of  
Mac-OSX, but I think that Mac-User in there majority are not  
programmers and impassionate Unixers or TeXers and have similar  
problems with LaTeX like me. So because asked that here by Alain, I  
give my answer.

I'm not at all a preacher of LyX ... and of LaTeX neither - I really  
sacrificed myself already more than half a year to know some  
fundamental use of LaTeX (also tried ConTeXt) and LyX for my projects  
only because there is no "normal" word processor which is able to handle

==> _indexed sidenotes/marginalia_

in a reasonable way (instead or in addition to real footnotes).

For the same objective (many many numbered marginalia as translation  
help for foreign or elder languages or other additions to the main  
text) I choose the tufte-handout.cls (and the LyX "handout (tufte)"  
layout, produced by Jürgen Spitzmüller from the LyX team, on my  
demand, BTW).

Of course I take advantage of the good typography and - with  
necessary adaptations to European style - layout capacities of TeX.

The final reason that let me end up (for a while or more) mainly with  
the LyX-editor is:

==> I can input IPA and other phonetical characters directly

(by switching to an IPA Unicode keyboard or by copying them from  
http://weston.ruter.net/projects/ipa-chart/view/keyboard/ ). That is,  
I need not to have in mind the the TIPA-Codes, because the LyX editor  
itselfs puts the Codes into the LaTeX source file.

Only far after these two reasons (the first one - marginalia -  
depending more of the document class, without regard to the question  
TeXShop or LyX), once I made up a template for certains uses, I like  
in LyX not being forced to seek and scroll down to the first line of  
concrete input, especially when writing letters of the scrlttr2 class.

Finally I find it easyer to make little, local changes e. g. in  
character and paragraph style in LyX than in TeXShop, because the  
change is let's say "insinuated" a little bit in the shape of the  
document representation in the LyX GUI and not only readable or  
"decipherable" from the self insetted LaTeX-code. (Other might feel  
that an disadvantage.)

In other respects, I know very well, that for compositions and tasks  
beyond the respectively given classes you need to find out how to  
achieve these goals with LaTeX instruments. For me that is annoying  
and highly time consuming.

Happy TeXing in different GUIs,

Goutgaun! joachim

PS: Thanx also for Herbert Schulz' hint for
> TeXShop 2.18 since you can then set things up to use synctex to get  
> really nice synchronization between source and pdf

Of course I'll update my second editor, too, and test it.
--
MacTeXLive 2008 - TeXShop 2.14-svn - LyX 1.6
MacBook Pro OSX 10.4.11 Tiger



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