[texhax] Using XeTeX to select fonts

Reinhard Kotucha reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Wed Jan 30 04:22:36 CET 2013


On 2013-01-29 at 08:33:20 -0500, William Adams wrote:

 > For those who're working w/ the younger generation, I'd definitely
 > suggest pointing them at:
 > 
 > http://www.texmacs.org/ --- for a Plain take
 > 
 > and
 > 
 > http://www.lyx.org/ --- for the LaTeX GUI

Hi William,
I'm not convinced that Lyx is the best choice.  IMO it hides too much.
I always recommend

  http://www.tug.org/texworks

to beginners.  Though newcomers are not accustomed to see control
sequences in their source files, in the long term it's better if they
immediately see what they are doing.  In order to see the result, it's
sufficient to press the compile button.  And if they have questions,
it's easier for me to tell them what to type rather than which buttons
they have to click.

Lyx tries to prevent people from reading documentation, which is
definitely a step into the wrong direction.  Nice at the beginning,
but it bites poeple later.

I suppose that the author of Lyx assumed that learning LaTeX is
difficult but in my opinion this assumption is wrong.

Did you try TeXworks (or TeXShop) already?  I can't imagine anything
better for newbies.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
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