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List:       lyx-users
Subject:    Re: Big document
From:       Steve Litt <slitt () troubleshooters ! com>
Date:       2009-01-28 16:11:41
Message-ID: 200901281111.41655.slitt () troubleshooters ! com
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On Wednesday 28 January 2009 06:29:48 am Piero Faustini wrote:
> Hello fellow LyX users,
> I have to take a decision: wether to split my doctoral thesis in different
> files or not. Some people told me a thesis is HUGE and I should split the
> file into chapters or parts, but I'm afraid that something goes wrong at
> any time during the writing.
> It will be around 300 pages italian book (600,000 characters) in
> koma-script, with several Lilypond-imported examples, BibLaTeX-driven
> bibliography, indexes, cross-references, loads of tables, etc. etc.
> I'm using Lyx 1.6.1 in a quite healthy Windows XP sp3 environment on the
> best laptop system you could buy 4 years ago, a Dell Inspiron 9400.
> I already wrote something like 1/4 of the thesis and PDF output need some
> 10 seconds to be produced (less if I just refresh and made small edits) -
> if the proportion is the same, I expect to wait not more than 40 seconds
> once the work is about to the end (which is annoying but won't kill): am I
> wrong? Some opinion/suggestion/experience?

Hi Piero,

Your mileage may vary, but my experience with my 309 page, over 100,000 word 
book "Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist" is that it's 
been very practical to handle that document as a single unit. When I wrote it 
in 2001, I was using a dual Celeron 300 overclocked to 450mhz, with 1.5Ghz of 
RAM. The file size didn't slow printing, opening, scrolling, editing or 
anything else. I was using an HP4050 printer. Today I use an Intel Duo 2 Core 
processor running at 2527.000 mhz, and 8GB of RAM, so of course it works just 
fine.

My experience with LyX was that except for one brief version with a wrapping 
algorithm problem, LyX is extremely efficient with documents large and small. 
That's one of the reasons I like LyX so much.

This doesn't exactly apply to your situation, but in 1990 I chose to split my 
WordPerfect 5.1 written book, "Troubleshooting: Tools, Tips and Techniques" 
into chapters. It worked just fine, but over the years I forgot exactly how 
to put them back together in order to print (I forgot exactly what to do with 
the master document), and eventually ended up just printing off an lpd file 
created many years ago. What I'm saying is that over a long time period, it's 
much easier to use a single file than a bunch of chapters and a master file.

From reading the mailing list, it appears that a few people have had trouble 
with lists and the like when using a master and chapter files. Not problems 
the couldn't overcome, but problems that were a hassle.

Speaking for myself, I'd try to keep it as a single file unless it got up 
around 1000 pages.

SteveT

-- 
Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US


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