Create math equations, formulas, and similar materials in a flexible editing environment. Access the scientific authoring toolset with options such as reference list and index creation. Alternatively, generate standard structured text documents with a basic writing module.
LyX is a word processor with a unique focus on not only the appearance of the documents but also the way they are structured. It supports TeX and LaTeX, which makes it most convenient for writing different types of scientific and specialized text types, like letters, theses, articles, books, movie scripts, slides and presentations. It is good that it supports multiple file types, such as DOC, PDF, RTF, HTML, PostScript and OpenDocument.
Luckily, its interface is not very different from those of other word processors, which is an advantage in terms of flattening the learning curve. Luckily, its tabs allow editing various simultaneous documents. There is also the outliner mode, which facilitates navigating and managing the different sections of your documents.
The application allows performing all common editing operations, like cutting and pasting. Likewise, it comes with a built-in spell checker. Moreover, the tool is also very rich as to other features. For instance, its built-in formula editor allows working on matrixes, theorems, algorithms and equations, which would otherwise be too difficult to do with a standard editor. Similarly, it supports inserting tables as well as editing images without the need for a third-party tool. Another undeniable advantage is that it supports version control, which lets you keep track of changes in your documents. What is more, it lets you manage bibliographies and generate indexes and tables of contents automatically.
In general, LyX is a great choice for editing scholarly documents. Fortunately, the product is open-source and cross-platform, which means you can use it on different operating systems without any cost. Its main downside is that it does not facilitate collaboration with other users who do not use Lyx.
v2.0 [Mar 23, 2011]
- Most of the improvements in 2.0.4 are bug fixes, some of them important. In particular, we have fixed several crashes.
- The main outstanding problem is the inability to cancel the background export process. Some improvement has been made here, by updating the timeout mechanism, but more needs to be done, and hopefully will be done for 2.0.5.
- There have been several updates to LyX's XHTML export routines. Work on this will continue for 2.0.5.
