LyX

LaTeX-related Notes

LyXis an almost WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) text editorthat uses theXformsGUI toolkit based onXlib.

KLyXis a port of LyX version 0.12.0 to theKDEthat uses the usingQtGUI toolkit.

The LyX team has written acomparison of LyX vs. KLyX

To run Lyx I gotlyx-1.0.1.Solaris.tar.gzandSolarisTools.tar.Z.I didn't find a precompiled binary when installing theseso haven't had a chance to try them yet.I will start supoprting LyX on Solariswhen I install all new LaTeX software...I hope this summer.

According to LyX's documentation:

The ``almost'' in ``almost WYSIWYG'' means that the line and page breaks aren't displayed exactly as they will appear in a printed document. Some people might be tempted to call LyX a frontend to LaTeX. This isn't quite fair. LyX performs some typesetting internally to generate the correct look on the screen. Furthermore, LyX has some extensions to LaTeX specially designed to work with the WYSIWYM [What You Say Is What You Mean ---Mark] concept. So, it's actually better to call LyX a High Level Wordprocessor that uses LaTeX as its backend.

LyX's advantages:

  • Some people like the almost WYSIWYG capability.

LyX's disadvantages:

  • No horizontal scrollbars to see wide equations, figures, or tables.
  • Running xdvi in the background will preview most recently LaTeX'ed input making LyX unnecessary.
  • No Emacs keymappings?
  • Can it do PostScript figures and fonts ok?

SGMLtools

SGMLtoolsis described on their web page as

a text-formatting package based on SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), which allows you to produce TeX/DVI/PS/PDF, HTML, RTF, and plain ASCII (currently via Lynx) from a single source; due to the flexible nature of SGML many other target formats are possible. As the front-end is written in Python, it is relatively easy to adapt to your needs.

Work on SGMLtoolswas been suspendedbecause the author got a joband doesn't have time to work on it anymore.

TeX and LaTeXcan do almost everything SGMLtools does.Since TeX and LaTeX are so capable,SGMLtools development has been suspended,and SGMLtools is written in Python(I like Perl much better)I don't plan to support it.

DVI

TeX and LaTeX produce DVI files directly.

PS

Dvipsreads DVI filesand writesPS (PostScript)files.

PDF

PDFfiles can be created bypdfTeXor runningthe Adobe distill programon a PostScript file to make a PDF file.

HTML

Because HTML doesn't have mathematics I stay away from HTMLand use PDF files instead.

(My non-ready-for-primetime HAS(Hypertext Authoring System)macros for the pro file processor can be used to produce HTML,LaTeX,or plain text.Sorry, there is no documentation on this per se now.MySimple Web Database Systemdocumentation briefly describes thepro file processor.

LaTeX2HTML,TeX4ht,andtthconvert LaTeX to HTML.

Programs to convert HTML to LaTeX are available.

RTF

Rtf2latexconverts RTF to LaTeX.LaTeX2RTF converts LaTeX to RTF.

plain ASCII

Most LaTeX documents don't convert to plain ASCII nicelybecause the LaTeX documents have non-ASCII characters.

SGML

LaTeX and SGML are both ``mark up'' languages.There purpose is essentially the same,The only purpose to convert between them would beto further convert to another format.Offhand, I don't know of any LaTeX to SGML orSGML to LaTeX converters.