LyX ⇒ Engineering Student considering LyX for Thesis

[Johnston81]

To the ones that can and will help,

I apologize if this has already been covered in another topic; I have searched but been unable to find any such. If, however, you know of such topics, if you could please point me in the right direction?

My current situation is this: I am working on my Master Thesis and currently doing my research and such. As it is now, I am uncertain how large my final project will be - I imagine that the final document will probably exceed 100 pages, but where I am uncertain of size I am certain that the document will contain considerable amounts of graphs and tables - rather more than I am comfortable working with in Word 2010.

My questions are fairly simple to ask, I am not certain that everybody will agree on the answers but rough estimates are all I am looking for anyway. So here goes:

1. Considering LyX over Word, how much time would I approximately need to learn LyX to the extent that I can actually produce text, including graphics and formulas(!), from a template?
2. What can I reasonably expect my learning curve to be after having learned the bare basics; what I mean is, is it simple to teach LyX to oneself and how easy is it to solve problems when encountered?
3. And finally, being a skilled user of Word would I - ultimately - save or spend time if I did try my luck on LyX?

I have many more similar questions, but for now this will have to do - I shouldn't take to much of your time! But if you have any other advice or experiences that relate to my post, that you feel could help me or others that are doing the same kind of contemplations, please do not hesitate and do share!

Thank you very much for time. I look forward to read your replies!

Johnston81
on81
Johnst

[miljenko]

I was in exactly the same situation a month ago. I'm writing my physics thesis. I had previous experience with writing lots of formulas in Word, and it was nightmare experience. I spendt more time checking out what has moved, what is not aliened etc. that on writing. My thesis adviser suggested that I use Latex to write my thesis. I found a book on Latex and after seeing how tick it is, I didn't think that it is worth investing so much time in learning Latex. And than I found about Lyx (Completely by accident in Ubuntu software centar), and decided to give it a go. After an hour or two reading tutorial from help (great read btw.), I was ready to go. Every thing is very intuitive, and after only a day I felt like a master, my text looked amazing, writing complex formulas was a breeze, even multi line formulas. All the formula labels where correct, and ever chapter had same font. Only real problem I had with Lyx so fare was when I tried implement thesis style I found on net, but nothing I couldn't solve in a few hours using Google .

Trust me, give Lyx a try, and you will never go back to Word. You will have beautiful looking thesis, with minimal effort on your side to make it look that way. Typing formulas, and cross-referencing is a lot easier than in Word equation editor. Read a manual (short read), and try exploring Lyx a bit, its really not that difficult, and few hours learning Lyx is well spent time, when you compare it to hours and hours of frustration with typing you thesis in Word.

[ecdemic]

I agree. I recently made the switch from Word to Lyx in order to write an economics textbook. The time is took to learn Lyx was trivial by comparison to the pain and suffering associated with Word, which couldn't handle the equations, figures, and cross-references and kept crashing.