Slashdot Mirror

I use the GTK+ based Dia (Diagram Editor) all the time. It's kinda like Visio and I find it even more intelligent in design (as did a few of my co-workers who use Visio). It comes with any Gnome bearing distro, and is part of the HelixCode HelixCode distro as well. I believe the latest version is v0.85 (just auto-updated my HelixGnome the other day).

Dia is extremly fast, powerful and flat out elegant IMHO. Dia is the vector graphics equivalent of GIMP, looks and acts very familiar. The native file format (.dia) is actually XML-based and quite extensible. All-in-all, I cannot find much wrong with any part of its design or implementation.

In fact, the only thing it lacks is a wealth of templates and object libraries (although there a some good base libraries, they are small). This, of course, can be easily added by regularly users over time.
[ Hey everybody, there's an OSS project you can easily contribute too! Help create a rich object library for Dia! ]

FYI, Dia can export the following vector formats:

• CGM (Computer Graphics Metafile)
• DXF (Drawing Interchange Format)
• EPS/EPSI (Enscapsulated Postscript)
• PNG (Portable Network Graphics)
• SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)
• TEX (TeX PSTricks Macros)

Using LyX and Dia, I can export both PS+EPS (easily converted in PDF) and HTML+PNG (or HTML+SVG) documents from the same original document in LyX+Dia (and the EPS graphics created in Dia show up WYSIWYG in LyX). If you're a tech writer, I think you'll find LyX+Dia a much, much better solution than anything else.
[ Now only if they'd get the LyX codebase over to GTK+ as planned instead of continuing crappy XForms! And yes, I know about KLyX, but it is so out of date with the XForms codebase that it's not nearly as good. ]

-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith

For a company, a simple fix is: don't use Word documents from outside - only accept Postscript or PDF.

Which would be a good thing for us Lyx, LaTeX or (insert non-MS office product here) users.

As for existing ports, KLyX (an aging but functional KDE port) was already mentioned. There is also a more recent Windows port.

I take it you know of LyX. It's nice to be able to output your document to just about any format possible. As for the annotation, I suppose one could write a seamless front end for RCS.

LyX is coming pretty close to this. I use it for all nearly all my LaTeX documents. You still need some base LaTeX to get the most out of it.

LyX is an advanced open source document processor running on many Unix platforms and OS/2, and experimentally under Windows/Cygwin. Unlike standard word processors, LyX encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents, not their appearance. LyX lets you concentrate on writing, leaving details of visual layout to the software.

LyX produces high quality, professional output -- using LaTeX, an industrial strength typesetting engine, in the background; LyX is far more than a front-end to LaTeX, however. No knowledge of LaTeX is necessary to use LyX, although it will give a user more power.

LyX is stable and fully featured. It has been used for documents as large as a thesis, or as small as a business letter. Despite its simple GUI interface (available in many languages), it supports tables, figures, and hyperlinked cross-references, and has a best-of-breed math editor.

Somebody should write an emacs-style editor with advanced Tex-style formatting features and WYSIWYG support. It should be able to import DOC, RTF, WPD and other popular formats.

LyX is an editor with many of these features. I don't think it has much to offer in terms of Importing Files, but perhaps that would be a good direction to go in for it?

-Felix

The typical requirements of a typical home/office user.

Ok, here's the poor programmer's office suite.

A word processor with standard features such as the ability to select fonts, a spelling and grammar checker, table generation, minimal ability to embed objects (images, etc.) and a UI to die for (none of this adding of every possible button and tray everywhere nonsense).

Use LaTeX and ispell for that. If you need a UI, try LyX, a WYSIWYG frontend to TeX/LaTeX. If you want to write a quick letter, go to vi/jed/joe, make it a postcript file and print it.

A money managment app.

Ok, as every /.er know, we now have GnuCash for that.

A schedule app. Because being late (or worse: forgetting completely!) is bad.

Use at and cron; you can have your todo's sent to your mailbox.

MAYBE a presentation program. This is something that a corporate user would need more than anyone else.

You can use XV for this. Make the presentation using the image editors below, and show it as slides with XV (or any other similar program).

A simple bitmap editing program. Perhaps a vector drawing program instead (Print quality higher per size/complexity ratio).

Try the GIMP for pixel manipulation and/or xfig for vector drawing.

The ability to share files and parts of files seamlessly within the app set.

Isn't this what stdin/stdout are for? :)

A spreadsheet/database program. (Personally, I would leave this out as I have no use for it, and most people don't either.)

Use MySQL, and access it through your browser using your http server. This way you can even customize the UI!

Anything beyond this is frivolous.

I agree 100%.

--

> %% I also worked in an office environment
> %% and fully understand that Hell would
> %% freeze over before even 1% of them
> %% attempted to learn LaTeX!

Of course, Hell wouldn't even need air conditioning before you could get people to learn to use LyX.

And BTW, you don't need a PostScript printer.

--

there's a really good LaTeX front end called Scientific Workplace, though it's for windoze and it's not free.

take a look at abiword (it's linked from gnome.org somewhere) or lyx. both these do a lot of nifty stuff without being bloated.

jon

There has been some interest on the LyX mailing list regarding extending that software with a symbolic math-package. I am happy to coordinate this project and can personally work on QC simulation code (mostly linear algebra). (The reason we need yet another QC simulator is a topic for another day!) If you are interested in this idea please Email me! Be sure to try out LyX if you are not already familiar with it. Math-package(s) will be selected based on their ease of interface with LyX and selfishly if they have the operations I need. Obviously people who can code or test are very important but at this stage Email from any potential user will be helfpful in convincing the LyX team this is a project they should support.

A flood of thoughtful email would be great-- I think it's pathetic that universities around the world are pouring millions into proprietary closed-source "Scientific Workplace" type solutions when they could be using that money to support an open-source effort instead!

--Alexander (Sasha) Wait

If the TMS5400 was to be used for laptops and the TMS3120 was to be used for handhelds... why is the TMS3120 smaller than the TMS5400? Does this make sense? Are they fabbed on the same process? If not, then OK, I understand, but if they are why would a better performing chip be smaller than a slower chip? I would think added complexity and increased performance would make a chip bigger. Either the sizes are wrong or they are fabbed at two separate feature sizes. (I dunno maybe .22 and .18, or .18 and .15?)

Also if one is bigger than the other there will probably lower yield associated and thus higher cost. So a slower chip would be more expensive than a faster one? Again, it doesn't make sense.
-
-alex-
lyx me.

Also, I adore Lyx. It is the best thing I have ever seen for writing up math, the equations are excellent.

Ralph Furmaniak
The Great AIP (Artificial Intelligence Project)
http://GreatAIP.sourceforge.net

A word processor is intended to be easy to use and to give you an integrated environment to do fancy stuff with your text. If you want raw power, use TeX or LaTeX.

My friends, it's time to stop using programs that turn your computer into a glorified typewriter. You need the power of a document typesetting system, you want the ease of use of a GUI interface, you can have it all - LyX.

Well, he is intending to do a review of KLyX, which is based on the LyX program, which is a WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean) word processor that basically acts as a GUI front end for LaTeX.

Although, I do have to wonder, why KLyX instead of LyX? While I will admit, I prefer the Qt appearance over what's used in LyX, it's not enough to get me to switch. LyX seems to be, in my experience, a more stable and more featureful program.

If you want the power of LaTeX with the ease of a word processor, you really need to give LyX a try.

Please review LyX instead of KLyX, there is lots of development effort for LyX and many new features. KLyX, which looks nicer, will very soon be reintegrated with LyX.
Also, the goal of LyX is quite different from an Office suite or a Wordprocessor.
More info on this great document processor here .

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that they'll take "Mini-Howtos" written in HTML. So maybe I should've just called my stuff a "mini" and sent it in? Yeah, here's the policy from the HOWTO-HOWTO:

Also note that all HOWTO submissions must be in SGML format (currently using the LinuxDoc DTD). The mini-HOWTO submissions may be made in either SGML or HTML formats, but only SGML-formatted submissions will be included in printed versions of the HOWTOs.

It could be that this is the key development that will "lower the bar": Also from the HOWTO-HOWTO:

Programs like LyX (right now my LinuxDoc editor of choice) allow you to write in TeX format, then export it as SGML and render from SGML to whatever you chose.

Check out LyX - basically a WYSIWYM GUI front end for LaTeX. Once you wrap your mind around a few powerful concepts, it is MUCH easier to use than Word.

From the Lyx.org page:

LyX is an advanced open source document processor running on many Unix platforms. It is called a "document processor", because unlike standard word processors, LyX encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents, not their appearance. LyX lets you concentrate on writing, leaving details of visual layout to the software. LyX automates formatting according to predefined rule sets, yielding consistency throughout even the most complex documents. LyX produces high quality, professional output -- using LaTeX, an open source, industrial strength typesetting engine, in the background.

If you can't tell yet, I like LyX. Powerful, open-source, and easy to use. What more do you want?

1. Download LyX
2. Use the "letter" template to write your letter
3. Export to postscript
4. use ps2pdf to create a PDF file
5. Send it to the LOC.

Glad to be of service,
jwb

LyX encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents, not their appearance. LyX lets you concentrate on writing, leaving details of visual layout to the software.

LyX produces high quality, professional output -- using LaTeX, an industrial strength typesetting engine, in the background; LyX is far more than a front-end to LaTeX, however. No knowledge of LaTeX is necessary to use LyX, although it will give a user more power.

Some people might like their bloated word processors, but I'll stick with raw LaTeX, thanks. Doesn't suck down all my memory and I invariably get better output than that of any GUI word processor I've ever seen.

Somewhat offtopic: I recently started using LyX, basically a WYSIWYG front-end to LaTeX that's actually pretty cool. I find it nice when creating documents containing lots of greek to actually see what the formulas are going to look like. It even supports macros (though only in math mode). Plus, it's open source! I used it to write a conference paper submission and found it way smoother than hacking the raw LaTeX. Not everything is as intuitive as one might hope -- I had a few points of confusion early on, mainly because I didn't RTFM, but the developers were quite helpful and set me straight.

Granted, LyX still has some stability problems (i.e. it randomly dumps core) but since it makes emacs-stlye emergency backups, in addition to creating recovery files just before giving up the ghost, I've never lost a single keystroke of data, unlike some other word processors I've used.

I personally use LyX for all my non-business word processing. It always does The Right Thing, allows you to get a sense for the structure and organization of your document (which I've always had trouble doing with plain Latex or SGML), but discourages/prevents using ad hoc formatting. It is essentially a visual tool for writing Latex (or DocBook or Literate Programming): its paradigm is WYSIWYM: What you see is what you mean. www.lyx.org.

i never wanted look at a "normal" word processor again!

dont know about the other stuff. never really had need for "office stuff". anyone who insists on a resume in word97 format, i already know i dont want to work for. (mostly because of what that says about them)

Depends on how you define "Office Apps". I certainly have had a lot of success using LyX or just writing LaTeX in Emacs for word processing.

Debian 2.1 ships GNOME (albeit a prerelease, as there was no release available before the start of the code freeze); Red Hat does so too (GNOME is in RH 5.2, right?).

It is very important to provide an unquestionably free desktop NOW. There is no time to waste. We have a parisitic company to fight. If they get control of critical libraries, Linux users will have lost their freedom.

I've been critical of Troll in the past, and I've been extremely annoyed by their dismissal of the importance of freedom. But since then, Troll have made what I think is a sincere effort at improvement in this area. They've worked on a DFSG-free license to be used for the forthcoming Qt 2.0, the QPL 1.0, and they've been quite responsive with regard to the input they've received from Debian's Joseph Carter.

Whatever Troll's failings in the past, in my opinion they deserve at least the benefit of the doubt for this change.

Let's worry over the remaining issue wrt KDE: is QPL 1.0 GPL-compatible, and if not, how do we get KDE to take licensing issues seriously, and get them to put in an exemption clause in their license to allow binaries of their code linked against Qt 2 to be redistributed (similar to how the LyX folks fixed the LyX license.

QPL 1.0, the license under which Troll Tech will release Qt Free Edition 2.0, is a DFSG-free license.

But the problem with KDE's licensing is more subtle than that. Debian can't at the moment distribute KDE at all (not even as part of "contrib"), because Qt's license isn't GPL-compatible. (See the news item for details)

Even when we have a DFSG-free Qt, there is still the issue whether its license is GPL-compatible. If it is (I haven't seen an analysis of QPL 1.0's GPL-compatibility status, so I really don't know), KDE can be included in Debian's main. If it isn't, the licensing issue continues until KDE's licensing changes (e.g. by an explicit exception clause to the GPL allowing redistribution of KDE binaries linked against a QPLed Qt [1]), or the QPL is made GPL-compatible.

[1] A similar exception clause for non-free Qt would have made KDE suitable for contrib. Unfortunately, the KDE project refused to take the licensing issue seriously, and did not chose to fix it this way, unlike for instance the LyX developers. With LyX, there was a similar situation of GPL-ed software linked against a GPL-incompatibly licensed (binary-only non-system) library (xforms). The LyX developers explicitly added an exception to the GPL's requirements wrt. libraries, making it possible for Debian to distribute it in "contrib".

Errm... need a GUI for LaTeX? There is lyx you know :) Pretty darn good program imho.

WordPerfect isn't the only word processor. There is StarOffice and Applix too isn't it?

The beta programs I have work fine. Some of them are beta simply because their makers consider them not matured enough yet. I think my WindowMaker 0.51 is really stable, although they choose to call it a development release.

CS and Maths majors' writing styles, in my experience, tend to be crystal-clear to the point of tedium. There is no choice when using an inexact medium (English) to convey precise meaning.

Secondly, for a touch typist, typing \emph takes less time than Control-B. I've generally found, however, that most Word users will use the mouse to format text - a far slower process. I'd say the LaTeX approach is pretty efficient, by comparison. Wouldn't you?

I've also noticed that most people who use Word for their theses/dissertations don't use it effectively. They will spend hours at a time propagating formatting changes that should have been encapsulated in a style. If they're not even using the tool they have in an efficient manner, how can they even evaluate whether the alternative would be better?

By the way, you might want to have a look at LyX - a tool that promises to combine the best of LaTeX and a WYSIWIG word processor.