Re: [seul-edu] Formula Editor for handicaped High-School student.

[Gary Dunn <knowtree@aloha.com>]

On Wed, 4 Feb 2004 16:52:30 +0100
Jan Lühr <jluehr@gmx.net> wrote:

> Greetings,
> 
> 
> Am Mittwoch, 4. Februar 2004 01:41 schrieb Gary Dunn:
> > On Tue,  3 Feb 2004 16:23:09 -0500 (EST)
> >
> > Hans Paijmans <j.j.paijmans@uvt.nl> wrote:
> > > Jan Lühr wrote:
> > > > Greetings,
> > > >
> > > > currently we ar looking for a formula editor for one of our
> > > > stundents.'cause of an handicap he is forced to do every work on
> > > > his ibook. Is there a formula-editor, whose handling is quite
> > > > simular to a sheet, does no calculating and print formulas in the
> > > > way the user typed 'em? By that, I mean, that the student should
> > > > be able to edit the formulas in a print-like view.
> > >
> > > LaTeX?
> >
> > LyX is a nice graphical editor designed specificaly to produce LaTeX
> > output, and includes lots of features for creating textbook quality
> > math formulas.
> 
> Is it, WYSIWYG?

Not exactly, and the authors take pride in that. 

LaTeX is very good at determining page layout with nothing more than the
raw text and a few directives. This task is processor intensive, but the
beauty of it is that is does all the dirty work for you. It's like sending
a publisher a rough typed manuscript and getting back the typeset book.

LyX provides an intermediate view. It uses a GUI, text is in nice fonts,
but you don't position text yourself, and the presentation is simplified.

From the Tutorial:

=-=-=-=-=
Many commercial word processors are based on the WYSIWYG principle: "What
You See Is What You Get." LyX, on the other hand, is based on the
principle that "What You See Is What You Mean." You type what you mean,
and LyX will take care of typesetting it for you, so that the output looks
nice. A Return grammatically separates paragraphs, and a Space
grammatically separates words, so there is no reason to have several of
them in a row; a Tab has no grammatical function at all, so LyX does not
support it. Using LyX, you'll spend more of your time worrying about the
content of your document, and less time worrying about the format. 
=-=-=-=-=

Personally, I wish students were taught to use LyX and LaTeX instead of
Microsoft Word or the open-source alternatives such as Open Office for
work that involves printing of presentation text. At the same time, I
think that the bulk of classwork and homework should be done the same way
we communicate here, using simple text messages. The emphasis should be on
communication, on content, rather than format rules. Harder to grade, more
subjective, but that should be the goal.


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