Re: Typesetters?
* timothy@smasher.rs.itd.umich.edu
|
| Am I correct in understanding that things like Tex/Latex/LyX/Kalyx are
| typesetters? And can someone explain what they are for and what the
| difference between them is?
TeX is the base level of formatting. In TeX you can specify exactly how
your document will look, but there are no abstractions for high-level
formatting. In TeX you say how text shall look (big, bold, ...), not what
it is. You won't usually need TeX.
LaTeX is a layer of macros built on TeX. With LaTeX you can say that
text shall be a heading and LaTeX will automatically decide how it shall
look. LaTeX can generate table of contents for you, and including tables
and such is very easy.
LyX is a WYSIWYG-editor (What You See Is What You Get). It uses LaTeX to
format your document but also shows how it will look. Since writing
LaTeX-documents can be a little daunting for the starter, LyX is a
very good idea for beginners.
KLyX is just LyX for the KDE environment.
All these are especially superb for scientific writing, but also highly
usable for normal text.
--
.elOle.
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