Say no to formatting with spaces and enterrs.

Acquaintance of each person with a computer sooner or later approaches the editing of documents.
But then, as they say, there are options.


A person can use a computer only as a typewriter, in which all the formatting tools are reduced to inserting extra spaces and moving the carriage to the desired interval.
And maybe learn how to correctly format a document using at least the necessary minimum of gaps in the functionality of the editor.

Here are those who are tired of seeing extra spaces from the text, who need to ensure joint development of the document with storage in git / svn and much more useful - they can click the button below to read a little more about the wonderful Lyx editor.

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Let's start with dating:
Lyx is a WYSIWYM editor (not to be confused with WYSIWYG ). Those. the main thing is not a visual representation of the document on the screen, but its content, which can be formatted as it should in a specific place.

Lyx is a free, open source application distributed under the GPL v2 license, cross-platform (Win / Mac / Linux / BSD, including unofficial ports for OS / 2 and Haiku).
In fact, even Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice do not have packages for such a variety.


Glancing at Lix’s main screen, you can immediately point out its good (but not perfect, as always) localization. There is also the Ukrainian interface language (but not, for example, Belarusian). However, this does not affect the support of languages ​​within the document - there are no problems with this.

The default screen is not cluttered with unnecessary panels that can be turned on / off if necessary.

However, as in the joke "- the difference is only in the 7th character of the letter, but what's the difference" - before starting to edit the document, it is advisable to choose the required class (format) of the document - two things depend on it - how you can format the document, and how it will in the end look.

Regarding the "formatting of the document" - in contrast to the presentation of Microsoft, which has already become classic, in Lix, the set of paragraph styles is limited to exactly those styles that are specified in the original class (template) of the document.
For example, in one of the standard classes “article”, the level of nesting of paragraphs is indicated through a chain:
Part, section, subsection, subsection, paragraph and sub-paragraph. The paragraph can be numbered or without numbering.

Actually, such a rigid division assigned to the document class distinguishes Lix from the WYSIWYG style, where you can make styles depending on the weather in Singapore and milk prices in neighboring villages.

The class of the document can be changed later, but in any case it will be necessary to make efforts to make the document look “in a new style”. For a start, you can use the standard article, and after a while you can come to the idea of ​​modernizing the style, or create your own styles. For the latter, by the way, you will have to work hard, because due to the lack of visuality, developing your own style is impossible without deep knowledge of the Lyx & LaTeX text format.

So we chose the style of the document and begin to write the text. And that's what's strange ... I want to leave a piece of space for the title page and retreat to the next. Is it true that we all once did that? However, Lyx does not allow inserting an extra line feed.

We try to write one paragraph. Behind him next. Now go between them - click Enter - voila - there is an empty space. One more? No, it does not. Leaving in another line. But what is it? Lix himself deleted an empty paragraph! Sadly, where is my Yatran ???
The same situation with spaces.

So we come to the fact that in order to format a document there is only one method - to choose the correct paragraph style, for which the document template contains in advance how many points or millimeters of space there are from the right edge and from the previous paragraph. Step to the left, step to the right - no, not shooting - there is simply no place to go.

Of course, not everything is so disastrous - if necessary, you can set the vertical indentation exactly as much as necessary.

With the other utilities, too, everything is in order - inserting images, auto assembly table of contents and index. Cross references work even if you generate a PDF (only if you generate it via PDFLATEX and include HYPERREF in the document properties).

Well, a little about the additional features and benefits of this editor:
Internal storage format is your own. The document file is a text file that is not compact at all (in 2.0 it was possible to store in a compressed format).
At the same time, all embedded images should be placed in separate files, but in the editor they are displayed so that you can see where and what is inserted.

However, the textual format for storing a document is a huge plus for someone who wants to organize joint editing of a document by several people and store it in a versioning system like GIT / SVN.
At the same time, Lyx itself has built-in support for VCS, as well as support for SVN (through external utilities).

I would like to say a separate word about content management - everyone who had to reorganize a document with transferring entire chapters and sections to another position had to deal with a long and tedious operation of selecting the desired piece. What if something happens with the numbering, it happens that it is easier to roll back the changes a couple of steps back than to fix it.
In Lyx, the chapters and the change of indents came from the other end - open the structure of the document, and then right in it, choosing the necessary part, section or paragraph - just move them up / down or change the level with all the nested paragraphs.

This editor has a lot of opportunities and there is no need to provide here all the documentation that can be read on the site .

As a summary:
Actually, the use of Lyx as a tool for working with documentation within the company was primarily due to the fact that working together on documents led to the fact that everyone pressed the buttons as he wanted and where he wanted. From this paperwork suffered.
The availability of storage capabilities in SVN helped us both to be able to identify the person who made a mistake in the document, and by means of SVN to correct these errors, rolling back some of the changes in the document that were sometimes made half a year ago.
It should be noted that the initial part of the document is taken from one place (title page, confidentiality information, etc.), another part of the document is edited by different people speaking different languages, and the third part is automatically collected (documentation from the source code , configuration and status of servers, etc.) and all this is beautifully assembled into a single PDF that can be downloaded by pressing a couple of buttons in CustomerCare.

I hope that this article will be interesting to those who are looking for a similar solution for the storage and processing of documentation.