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List:       lyx-users
Subject:    Re: Help for paper about LaTeX/LyX and the meaning of life
From:       Stefano Franchi <franchi () philosophy ! tamu ! edu>
Date:       2009-03-24 19:55:16
Message-ID: 200903241455.17052.franchi () philosophy ! tamu ! edu
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On Tuesday 24 March 2009 12:18:38 Steve Litt wrote:
> On Tuesday 24 March 2009 09:52:32 am Charles de Miramon wrote:
> > stefano franchi wrote:
> > > On the other hand:
> > >
> > > * LyX produces glorious output--through LaTex---but that's not that
> > > important to me, because no one in my field would accept a LaTex file.
> > > In fact I doubt they would even know what it is. And they would not
> > > accept a camera-ready file either. Almost everything is retyped or,
> > > most likely, imported from Word into a DTP program. I personally enjoy
> > > looking at the beautifully formatted output produced by LaTex, but it
> > > is a purely narcissistic pleasure. No added benefit there. I believe
> > > this to be pretty much the norm in the humanities (after you graduate:
> > > your dissertation may be the last piece of writing you control from
> > > beginning to end).
> >
> > From my point of view (working in the humanities in France) is that copy
> > editors and typographical work are quickly disappearing in Academic Press
> > in Europe. Nobody is making any money selling books in humanities and
> > even serious book publishers  are transforming in a simple book printers.
>
> From my perspective, it's not just Academic Press, it's not just Europe,
> and it's not just copy editors and typographical work. I belong to a
> mailing list of small publishers, and not a day goes by when the changing
> book industry isn't discussed.
>
> In the old days, an author hired an agent who pitched a publisher who hired
> a printer and sold to a wholesaler, who maintained warehouses and sold to
> the bookstore chains who sold to the reader. That's A LOT of middlemen,
> each of whom wants his cut.
>
> Meanwhile, book printing costs a fortune, especially in reasonable
> quantities. I've heard that the average title sold by a top tier publisher
> sells three thousand copies in its lifetime, meaning that a modest 2000
> book print run can be a year's supply or more. Warehouse costs, sometimes
> water damage costs, and if the book only sells 500 copies, remainder costs.
>
> With the advent of the eBook, it doesn't have to be that way. "Printing" an
> eBook, complete with personalization at the bottom of every page so the
> reader thinks twice about posting his copy for the world to see, it the
> running of a one minute computer program. I have no doubt that one could
> sufficiently automate Paypal, a website and home-brew computer programs to
> fulfill 1000 book orders per day with no human intervention, straight from
> author to reader. Bye bye middlemen!
>
> The publishers of old used MS Word because all authors were likely to know,
> use and own it. Also, MS Word has great versioning so queries, answers and
> modifications can be seen if needed. The publishers of old had special
> computer programs to turn MS Word into a typographical format (probably
> LaTeX), and an army of artistes to properly format pictures. It worked out
> great and the author received five to fifteen cents on the dollar.
>
> Today, more and more there's no publisher or other middlemen. The author
> gets up to 96 cents on the dollar (Paypal still gets their cut, and I'm
> glad to give it to them). The author not only writes content, but also does
> the typography. LyX is EXACTLY what the author needs to go it alone. The
> typography benefits of LaTeX are obvious, but in addition, LyX offers a
> simple text format that's perfect for book personalization, which in my
> opinion is a must for eBooks that are sold instead of given away.
>

Well,

we're obviously coming to this issue from two very different perspectives. I 
agree that that if you want to publish your own books LyX is the way to go. 
However, the gap between what LyX produces "out of the box" and a 
professionally produced book is huge. Smaller that with Word, but still huge. 
You'll need a rather solid study of the various and excellent LaTex resources 
available, plus some good readings in typography, etc. Many of this issues are 
fascinating (I am personally very keen on typography, for instance), but have 
very little if anything to do with the required everyday activities of a 
scholar. The overwhelming majority of scholars do not publish their books and 
do not want to publish their books. They became scholars to do research and 
teach in their fields. Moreover, many  if not the vast majority, care very 
little about typography. They are not compensated anyways in any serious ways, 
so why bother? Scholars are interested in getting their stuff out, since (1) 
their livelihood depends on it and (2) that's what they elected to do.
So the arguments about the overall (and overall poor) shape of the book 
publishing industry are not that relevant to this specific context---convincing 
present and future scholars in the Humanities to switch to LyX from Word.

In other words: all Steve said may very well be true, but I do not think it is 
a selling point for LyX<--->Humanities. Remember that LyX exists only because 
Latex exists. And Latex became what it is because it solved (and rather well!) 
a specific scientists' problem---how to produce quickly and efficiently decent 
looking technical material---and a specific publishers' problem---how to format 
cheaply complex technical material. Scholars in the humanities have neither 
problem: Word is efficient enough to write text and their publisher could not 
care less about Latex. 

At any rate, I would be interested in hearing the opinions of  other humanists 
on the list (if any?).

Cheers,

S.











> We've recently seen the demise of local newspapers, and the migration of
> surviving newspapers to electronic format. Electronic format is MUCH
> cheaper, and can be done on a "just in time" basis. The same changes are
> starting to occur in the book world. More and more, the author will need to
> be responsible for formatting. A computer programmer Geek like me could
> probably do the formatting in plain old TeX, but Joe Average author needs a
> tool to make formatting simple. That tool is LyX.
>
> The one thing I'll add is that LyX's simplicity has one hole in it -- the
> difficulty of creating and modifying styles (environments and character
> styles). I'd anticipate that the new "layout module" feature will help
> quite a bit with that, by making a single style a single file and therefore
> easier to build and debut, and more likely to have already been done, and
> able to be added to whatever document class you're already using.
>
> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt
> Recession Relief Package
> http://www.recession-relief.US


______________________________________________________________
Stefano Franchi
Department of Philosophy          Ph:  (979) 862-2211
Texas A&M University              Fax: (979) 845-0458
305B Bolton Hall                  franchi@philosophy.tamu.edu
College Station, TX 77843-4237



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