LyX ⇒ 7 questions from a beginner

[PascalF]

Hi there,

I'm new to Lyx, Latex and this forum. I'm a student of linguistics and found out, that Word isn't the right program for studying at university.

I know the differences of Lyx and many things about the program, but I still have some questions.

1.
In the document settings is the option to separate paragraphs by whitespace or indent. But I would like to have both. I know there is an option to insert space between paragraphs manually by the insert-menu. But doing that manually after every paragraph is a bit annoying. How can I use both: indent and whitespace between paragraphs?

2.
I prefer to work with programs in maximized windows. But the text-lines are a bit long then. I would like to have them shorter. (In a classical word-processor I would do that with the ruler.) How can I make the text-lines shorter in editer mode, so that they are easier to read?

3.
How can I use diacritic signs without everytime opening Insert -> Symbol, searching the right one and then insert it. That's annoying when you often use one them. In word there was an auto-correction whereyou e.g. wrote ~n and then came the n with a ~ above. Is anything like that (or shortcuts,...) in Lyx?

4.
Is there a spellchecker-while-you-type that marks all unknown words while writing (without the repklace-window). That would be a nice option, because then you see it directly and can correct it.

5.
In long texts it's hard to finde the cursor. I've found the option to change the cursor-color. Is it also possible to change its width, so that you can easier find it?

6.
I've switched the literatur-style to author-date. But that doesn't look like our university wants it. Lyx makes the author-date and then all lines of this book/article begin after it, so that there is whitespace under author-date. But our university wants the lines after the first one to have a little indent, but go under the author name. How can I change that style?

7.
When changing the page-margins there is a standard-size and the option for manually set it. But if the standard is checked, the fields don't show, what these values are. Is this correct? If yes, this should be a suggestion for coming versions.

Maybe somebody can help. Thank you.
Pascal