[texhax] Using XeTeX to select fonts

Reinhard Kotucha reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Thu Jan 31 02:41:40 CET 2013


On 2013-01-30 at 09:14:37 -0500, William Adams wrote:

 > On Jan 29, 2013, at 10:22 PM, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
 > 
 > > I suppose that the author of Lyx assumed that learning LaTeX is
 > > difficult but in my opinion this assumption is wrong.
 > 
 > I believe that LyX is attempting to address the difficulty which
 > most naïve users have w/ matching up semantic tagging w/ visual
 > appearance --- most people view code as too arcane to bother with.

Sure.  But if they have to use a LaTeX package which isn't supported
by LyX, they have to insert LaTeX code anyway.  Isn't it easier then
if they've learned LaTeX at the beginning?

I'm an engineer and the people I have in mind happily write programs
for microcontrollers in C or assembly language.  This is even more
challenging.  TeX provides error messages, but their programs run on
machines which don't even have a screen.  The problem is that they are
not accustomed to use a text editor.  On Windows each program comes
with its own IDE.

In the humanities the situation is even more difficult.  Humanities
scholars have to prepare critical editions.  Some of them come to our
local TeX meeting regularly.  Curiously, these people are quite
familiar with LaTeX internals and are able to investigate the [l]edmac
source code, if necessary.  None of them would ever consider to use
something like LyX.

So I'm wondering for whom LyX is beneficial.  BTW, a friend of mine
tried to write his bachelor thesis with LyX but gave up quite soon and
created a standard LaTeX file instead.  This was amazing because he
always prayed that the LaTeX approach (typing control sequences) is
completely wrong and control sequences should be inserted by GUIs
instead.  I was really surprised when I saw that he gave up LyX so
early. 

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
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