No Subject

> > We've got that.  That's why Apache and Emacs/vi and TeX have such
> > large shares of their respective markets.  No?
>
> Precisely. The only problem with them is that their user interface
> tends to scare people. And understandably so. I remember learning
> vi, and I still have the scars from my early days with TeX. What
> they could do with is a good user interface, for the general public,
> to make them more easily accessible. A gentler learning curve is
> going to attract more people, at least some of whom will want to
> get to the power lying underneath and who'll go on to learn the
> base tool.

Hmmm. TeX is kind of a bad example, because it's not the age of the software
that enforces that kind of ugliness, it's the age of the problem. Look at
DSSSL - that is similarly awful. It's them people with the bloomin' printing
presses, needing everything 'just so' ;))

> Speaking of user interfaces to TeX, has anybody used LyX recently?
> I haven't looked at it in a coon's age, and would be interested in
> hearing if it's improved at all.

LyX is very good, and KLyX is also very very close. Last time I used it, my
main problems were insertion of eps/ps diagrams, etc. - ie., they didn't.
But apart from that, it handles everything *very* well. I particularly enjoy
the hyperlinking facilities - they *are* very good. Just a shame I had to
resort to the text editor every now and then for an insert, but it wasn't
that common. And I imagine that's fixed by now also.

Cheers,

Alex.

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