> On Fri, Apr 08, 2011 at 05:02 PM, Anthony Campbell <ac@acampbell.org.uk> wrote:
>
> On 08 Apr 2011, Eric Weir wrote:
>>
>> On Apr 8, 2011, at 4:30 AM, Anthony Campbell wrote:
>>
>> > I dislike word processors. (I've been forced to use OpenOffice for one
>> > particular purpose recently and hate it.) I think that the process of
>> > generating prose should be separate from producing print-ready copy. So
>> > I do all my composing in Vim, which allows me to change things easily as
>> > much as I like. If I want it to look nice I then import it into LyX,
>> > which gives me publishable files. For short things like letters, I have
>> > made latex templates which I read into vim.
>>
>> Thanks, Anthony. I did all my writing from the early '80s till just a couple years ago on MaxThink, the legendary outlining program, which had absolutely no formatting capabilities. I totally buy the developer's [Neil Larson] philosophy for that application. The emphasis was on supporting thinking, and keeping things that distract you from thinking out of the way. MaxThink was/is a DOS application. Totally command-driven. An attempt at a version with a GUI was a complete flop.
>>
>> Even today, having finally reluctantly moved on from MaxThink, I keep formatting to a bare minimum -- bolding titles and headings, italicizing subheadings, occasionally footnoting -- and apply it only when sharing long documents with others.
>>
>> Yeah, I think I hate OpenOffice Writer as much as Word.
>>
>
> I'd definitely suggest having a look at LyX, if you haven't done so
> already. It's described as a document processor, not a word processor.
> You can do all this stuff in Latex, and I did in the past, but LyX makes
> it easier and quicker.
>
> From the blurb:
> "LyX is for people who want their writing to look great, right out of
> the box. No more endless tinkering with formatting details, "finger
> painting" font attributes or futzing around with page boundaries. You
> just write. On screen, LyX looks like any word processor; its printed
> output — or richly cross-referenced PDF, just as readily produced —
> looks like nothing else."
>
> I think LyX is brilliant, but I still like to write first in Vim and
> import it into Lyx when it's more or less as I want it.
>
> Anthony
I am not a programmer but do most of my written work with Vim, aided and
abetted by other software to produce good looking documents, even if
they are only reports or letters.
For reports and longer texts, my use is similar to Anthony's with the
variation that I use VimOutliner for organising my text first, then
import it into Lyx with the otl2lyx.awk script (part of the VimOutliner
package) to preserve the structure of my outline. After that, when I
need to further edit the text in the Lyx document, I often do so by
opening the file with Vim and edit body text only (don't want to corrupt
the Lyx document) and making certain that I don't hit the CR while doing
so. Then I save the file and in Lyx I Reload it and compile the document
as needed.
For letters, I use VimLatex.
I also use Vim for emails with vmail. It is easier for me than Mutt and more
'Vimmy'.
Cheers
G
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