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List:       klyx
Subject:    Re: What to do on docs - fairly long.
From:       Christopher Sawtell <csawtell () xtra ! co ! nz>
Date:       1998-12-04 22:21:34
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On 04-Dec-98 Jochen Kuepper wrote:
> On Fre, 04 Dez 1998 Christopher Sawtell wrote:
> 
>>The problem is that for any program you have to decide what the intended
>>audience is, and then write for them.
> 
> Sure.
> For KLyX probably technical or scientific educated KDE users.

That's something of a pity, because (K)LyX are both such tremendously good
programs. Ordinary secretarial staffs should be able to use them simply because
not only are they quite easy to use, but they also produce an output which is
orders of magnitude more beautiful than the output from 'normal' WP programs.

I am using LyX to prepare a set of policy documents for my son's primary school.
During discussions about the policies, one of the other parents, a seasoned WP
operator, said "That's a very nicely typeset document, what software did you
use?". I then explained about (K)LyX, and uttered the phrase "Free off the
Internet". You should have seen the expression on the face of this poor woman,
who had just spent nearly $2000NZ ( A $NZ and a German Mark are of similar
value) on a complete set of WP programs from M$ or somewhere similar.
It was a real complement to you and all the other members of the (K)LyX teams.

>> As they stand at the moment the grammatical structuring of the documents
>> seems to be heavily biased towards an American reader. I would like to see
>> a more concise, Universal English style. Others would of course like to see
>> their own native languages.

> Well, might be right, but it's probably not the right thing to do for a
> German:-?

German people, quite naturally, would like to see a user manual written
in German, & I hope Ronny is able to create one for all German users of (K)Lyx.

My own experience is that I have received many many e-mails thanking me for
unashamedly writing the "Notes for C Programmers" in the British English patois.
There are many millions of people all over the world who have been taught the
British style of the language in school and find that the American kind
is a definite hurdle to easy comprehension. I am currently "ploughing through"
the Sendmail "bat book" from O'Reilly & Assoc. The mental gymnastics I have to
go through to extract the meaning from the pages leave me totally exhausted.

>>After all we use LyX and KLyX simply because we do not want, or do not have
>>the time, to become full-blown TeX experts.

> Wrong ! 
> I am using KLyX to develop it further to give more people the opportunity to
> use latex, but I could definitely do the same productivity without it - even
> more if you consider the time I put into KLyX whenever I find a problem -
> xemacs and latex don't crash !

True, but please do remember that you are a pretty special kind of person.
For mere mortals like me, and to an even greater extent for the normal user of
WP program products, (K)LyX both make it possible for us to even consider using
LaTeX.

>>I can use HTML <tags>, but by far the best way would be to use the Doc-Book
>>SGML system, so that the output formats can be more or less anything desired.
>>Using relyx this could also go into the existing help system.
> 
> Very good point. probably we should try to get the whole documentation to
> Doc-Book - should be synchronised with the LyX-people !

The forking of any high quality OSS program suite is, imho, a tragedy. The
sooner both (K)LyX are combined back into a single CVS repository with
conditionals for the different GUIs the better.

I hope you understand the idiom all right? You seem to have a very good command
of English so I expect you will.

Sincerely etc.,

--
NAME  Christopher Sawtell
SNAIL 215 Ollivier's Road, Linwood, Christchurch, 8001. N.Z.
EMAIL csawtell(at)xtra(dot)co(dot)nz_I_hate_spam.
              The Notes for C Programmers
 - The most widely distributed C tutorial in the world -
                  are available from:-
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/C/tutorials/sawtell_C.tar.gz

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