Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomrod | Hacker News Reader

I tended to introduce LaTeX to new folks through LyX.

Haven't used it for several years though, so no idea if the WSYIWYG is still up and running.

This might come off as pedantic, but LyX is explicitly designed to be What You See Is What You Mean (WYSIWYM) rather than What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG). It gives you the gist of how things will end up without attempting to actually represent the final LaTeX output while you edit. It's an incredible piece of software, and I strongly prefer it over raw LaTeX despite the fact that I learned LaTeX first.

Pedantic, but precise. Thanks for the clarification.

I've just checked LyX, actually it's quite good and similar to Mathcha, but actually it serves different goals/features than Mathcha.

- LyX: full Latex compiled, and Mix between WYSIWYG and Latex Script. Mainly use to create Latex Document

- Mathcha: can export some parts to Latex (mostly Math mode) but does not guarantee to compile, a full WYSIWYG editor. The goal to just create Document without constraints to Latex format

I love Lyx but wish there were a less involved setup. Takes a very long time to install over LTE, and TeX distro feels 50/50 dice roll. If it’s slow on LTE in Silicon Valley, it’s slow in Africa. Hard to recommend.

Well, if bandwidth or transfer quota is a big issue, it is always possible to use a CDROM or DVD with the packages...?

A what now? What’s a cd/dvd???

Why, you know, it's like a tiny and shiny vinyl record!

> If it’s slow on LTE in Silicon Valley, it’s slow in Africa.

No, "Africa" is far too huge and varied to generalize about like that. Plenty of African countries have reasonable mobile infrastructure, and low enough costs.

  $ apt install lyx
  …
  Need to get 216 MB of archives.

(This is coming from nothing, LaTeX isn't installed.) At 5Mb/s, that's about 6 minutes. That's not unreasonable for a one-off installation, especially in a country where these speeds are normal. (And 5Mb/s is slow: https://www.speedtest.net/global-index .)

The more likely hurdle is that it doesn't run on low-end smartphones (or maybe it does?) I know a Chinese university student who writes homework reports using Microsoft Word for Android because she can't afford another computer in addition to her phone. The situation in most African countries is probably not much better.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com