From the website: 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 great for editing DocBook documents, like the Linux Howtos! Note that lyx is distributed under a modified version of the GPL, modified because lyx links to Xforms, the source for which is not available. However, RedHat already includes an xforms rpm in powertools. (There's talk of porting lyx off xforms.)
xforms is not in Powertools.
Lyx now works with QT as well, and xforms is now available under the LGPL or GPL, not sure.
Can this please be re-opened ? The original reason given no longer applies: xforms is now GPLed and LyX 1.3.0 upwards can build against Qt anyway. https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/xforms/
Not sure I like the idea of adding *another* way of processing documents; we already have several word processors and two DocBook tool chains.
Lyx feeds the top of the docbook tool chains, as well as directly into TeX. It's niether a word processor or a text processor, but designed from the ground up as a content editor -- layout/style being left to the toolchain it feeds. This is a significantly different approach than that taken by word processors, which have a strong emphasis on "look", while retaining a word processor like ease of use. Lyx is really a docbook/TeX extension. Word is OpenOffice 1.1 will feed docbook, which should improve it's html output. But OO will no doubt retain a strong integration between content and look. Document production needs Lyx for the same reason that web sites need template engines (like the Smarty PHP Template system http://smarty.php.net/) because the separation between content and presentation makes sense.
Can you edit DocBook to any real degree in LyX yet?
It's certainly *possible*, but is a long way from what we'd like. However, lyx does have a real unique value in terms of the LaTeX output.
It would be really great to see the addition of LyX to Fedora Core 3 or any earlier version if possible.
Lars, see https://bugzilla.fedora.us/show_bug.cgi?id=972 (Tangentially, somebody is working on www.blastwave.org packages for LyX too, which is good)
This is currently in Fedora Extras; I doubt it will be in Core in the near future.