LyX ⇒ Newbie, installing / MS Windows

[richp10]

Hi - I am interesting in using Lyx and like the overall approach. I am however finding it harder to get started than I would like and am not yet convinced whether the learning curve is worthwhile.

I used the 'alternate installer' that includes all the required additional programs, and Lyx runs (on windows 7).

If I create a document from a template, most of them don't work with an error that a 'layout file requested is not usable'. This might be fixable by a great deal of digging through documentation - but it suggests to me that the application is not mature, it is terrible usability that basic functions don't work out of the box.

Finding a template that does work, I create a document. If I click the pdf button, acrobat opens up but without any content, ie. there is no pdf being shown. If I click DVI I can see the results.

So suggestions for the above problems would be useful - but a couple of slightly wider questions.

Is Lyx really a tool for typesetting professionals, or can general technically competent users make good use of this without too many hours under the bonnet

A secondary question, does anyone have experience of hiring coders to amend Document Classes - I quite like the Tufte book class for a book I am working on, but it would need significant adjustment and I don't have the time to learn how to do this.

Many thanks for your thoughts..

Richard

[crgonzalez4611]

I see where you're coming from. I was there a few months back. LyX is not only for typesetting professionals. Anyone can use it. I am college student very proficient in MS Word. I used to write all my long reports with many graphs and tables in MS Word. If you have done this, you can understand how much time you have to spend on formatting the Word document so that you have a professional report. Not anymore, once I switched to LyX. LyX will do all the formatting for you. Now, there are two routes you can take.

1) If you're not too picky with the formatting of the book, I am sure you can find a pre-loaded book class in Lyx to use. And you can do this without learning much about LaTeX.

2) If you're picky about details in the formatting of the book, you can still, for most cases, use a pre-loaded book class in LyX. But... You will need to learn basic LaTeX (preamble, ERTs, installing LaTeX packages). This takes more time but the only way to learn LateX is by using it. There is an immense amount of help and answers to LaTeX questions online. You can pretty much find anything online that a beginner/semi-pro LaTeX user will need. Only you can judge whether the amount of time you spend on learning this is worth it. I know it was for me.

As far as the templates you said... I think you mean "classes." Most classes should work out of the box in LyX, except the ones marked unavailable. Recheck your LyX/MiKTeX installation. Maybe redownload and reinstall.

For PDF files, make sure the default output format in "Preferences" is pdflatex. That one has always worked for me. That might fix your problem with the output working on DVI but not PDF.

I have never heard of LaTeX coders for hire, though I am sure if you look hard enough online you can find some.

[StarValkyrie]

I'm not clear on what you are actaully saying about templates - because there are templates which you can access through the file menu but (aside from templates mostly being confusing and unhelpful) when new users talk about Unavailable document types in LyX, it's usually document classes that they're talking about. The latter is easy enough to fix so if you've opened LyX and clicked File>New and then clicked Document>Settings and then under Document Class, in the pulldown you're seeing everything or almost everything listed as Unavailable, just try this:

Go to the Windows Start Menu> All Programs> MikTeX> Maintenence (Admin)> Settings (Admin) and under Package Installation, change the pulldown to "Ask Me First". Then click Refresh FNDB, then close Settings and open LyX. Under Tools, select Reconfigure and wait. Allow all the packages it says are missing to be installed (choose one of the CTAN archives if you can't reach the default one). This may take 10-20 minutes and you'll have to babysit it to click all those messages but you only have to do it once.

If you really are talking about templates, I've never encountered a layout not usable error but maybe if you can list some specific templates, I can try them out and see if I can get the error.