editorslyx
I'm relatively new to LaTeX and have been using TeXnicCenter. I've heard one or two people rave about Lyx and am debating if I should switch to it.
What are specific benefits and drawbacks to using Lyx instead of TeXnicCenter? Are there any issues or annoyances you run into when using Lyx that you don't with TeXnicCenter? Can using Lyx hinder your ability to learn LaTeX well?
This has nothing to do with LyX in the first place, it is just nomencl’s standard behaviour. The \nomenclature command just stores the entry for the list, but it does not print any text. However, you can redefine the \nomenclature command in order to print the text as well. You could, for instance, put the following in the preamble of your document:
\let\nomenclOrig\nomenclature
\renewcommand*{\nomenclature}[3][]{#2\nomenclOrig[#1]{#2}{#3}}
The first line stores the \nomenclature command in \nomenclOrig. This is necessary, since we have to redefince the \nomenclature command. This is done in the second line. Since the \nomenclature command has two mandatory arguments and one optional argument, we have to specify 3 arguments (the [3] bit). The optional argument has no standard value (the [] bit). Then we print the second argument (which is the first mandatory argument, since the optional argument is always #1) as normal text and use the original command that we have stored in \nomenclOrig.
I tried this with LyX, without problems. Note, though, that the two lines will give an error in a document without a nomenclature entry or list, because then LyX will not load the nomencl package and thus the \renewcommand will throw an error.
I think these are the ones listed in Tools --> Preferences --> File Handling --> Converters (see screenshot at the bottom). There you can see the command line arguments used.
The $$<letter> variables refer to the following (from the LyX Customization manual, found under Help --> Customization, section 3.3):
$$s The LyX system directory$$i The input file$$o The output file$$b The base filename of the input file (i.e., without the extension)$$p The path to the input file$$r The path to the original input file (this is different from $$p when a chain of converters is called)$$e The iconv name for the encoding of the document.Quoting the manual mentioned above:
In the Extra Flag field you can enter the following flags, separated by commas:
latexThis converter runs some form of LaTeX. This will make LyX's LaTeX error logs available.needauxNeeds the LaTeX.auxfile for the conversion.xmlOutput is XML.The following three flags are not really flags at all because they take an argument in the key = value format:
parselogIf set, the converter's standard error will be redirected to a fileinfile.out, and the script given as argument will be run as:script < infile.out > infile.log. The argument may contain `$$s`.resultdirThe name of the directory in which the converter will dump the generated files. LyX will not create this directory, and it does not copy anything into it, though it will copy this directory to the destination. The argument may contain$$b, which will be replaced by the base name of the input and output files, respectively, when the directory is copied. Note thatresultdirandusetempdirmake no sense together. The latter will be ignored if the former is given.resultfileDetermines the output file name and may, contain$$b. Sensible only withresultdirand optional even then; if not given, it defaults toindex.
Best Answer
I think you must first understand the TeX/LaTeX typesetting system. TeX and its offspring PdfTeX, XeTeX, LuaTeX, etc. are programs that interpret a specific markup/macro language to create a high quality printable document format. TeX's power resides in its line, paragraph, and page breaking algorithms for pieces of text and its power to typeset mathematics.
TeX itself is not very friendly, therefore macro packages was created to work on top of it. The most basic one is PlainTeX that has a few basic macro's and the user must do most of the stuff directly (references, counters, etc.). This is what Donald Knuth the creator of TeX uses to write his series of books.
Later more comprehensive macro packages such as LaTeX, ConTeX etc. were developed that use TeX as a base to output beautiful documents. A lot of support software was also created, such as BibTeX, Metafont, Metapost, etc. The LaTeX distributions such as MiKTeX and TeXLive consists today of TeX/LaTeX interpreters, the base macro and class files and thousands of user contributed packages and programs.
LaTeX code is normal text file that can be edited with any text editor, but a number of IDE's are available to help with the typing of a LaTeX code. There are for instance buttons to insert code and to run the TeX/LaTeX interpreters, etc.
TeXnicCenter is one of these IDE's. You can also look at others such as TeXworks, TeXmaker, TeXmakerX, Winshell, WinEDT, that are doing more or less the same thing. You need to know your LaTeX well, because you are working directly with the code and have to do all the markup yourself.
LyX employs a different approach, using TeX/LaTeX as a typesetting engine and showing something of how the output will look. It is still not WYSIWYG. It just hides most of the markup from the user, but in the process the user also looses most of the low-level control. It is a great program with lots of users, but you still need to know a little bit of LaTeX to do anything more than a simple document.
In conclusion TeXnicCenter, and LyX are two totaly different system that cannot be compared directly. At all depends on how deep you want to get involved with a documents's markup. The LaTeX purist will not touch LyX, while the LyX fanatics would say that anyone who want to suffered with direct LateX code is mad.