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Lyx – Easy LaTex without Spell Check

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

I am a vocal WYSIWYG hater. I have my reasons, but I will not repeat them here for the sake of brevity. If you are interested, you can take a look in the archives to see why I feel the way I do. In fact, let me give you couple of links to start you off. It is a deeply flawed paradigm and a UI dead end as far as I’m concerned. WYSIWYG will always be quirky, annoying and frustrating by design. WYSIWYG editors try to do the impossible – to create marked up text while hiding the markup from the user. It works for simple documents, but as soon as you try to use it for something substantial (for example 100 page research paper) it falls apart. Not only that, but it teaches users bad habits. Just look in the links above for various examples of this.

This is why I use LaTex for most of the formal document writing needs. Actually that’s half the reason. The other half is that LaTex formatted documents just look so damn good. They stand out, in a good way – they are crisp, and professional looking. It has a powerful engine for generating complex mathematical formulas that far surpass what is offered by MS office out of the box, it is much better at managing figures, tables of contents and bibliographies, and unlike most word processing tools maintains separation between display and content. It’s an incredibly powerful system, but also a very complex one. Using latex is very much like programming – you learn the syntax first, then you find out about useful packages that do things for you, then you learn how to redefine and overload basic functions, later you find out about style files and eventually you can create your own. It’s a learning process.

Of course some people just don’t like to learn, and this is why we have Lyx – an editor that gives you a lot of the nice features of LaTex without any of the hassle. Every time I post something even remotely Tex related, someone invariably brings it up. So I decided I might as well try it and see what the fuss is all about.

Lyx combines the visual approach of WYSIWYG with a a more structured and pragmatic organization of content. In essence they try to convey markup by using various visual indicators. The website claims it is a WYSIWYM editor (which stands for What You See Is What Your Mom Said or something like that). The point is that it works better than a regular word processor. Not to mention that it also gives you access to the powerful LaTex typesetting engine and math formula functions. So you can totally just launch it, type in bunch of garbage, hit a button and get a pretty, nicely formatted PDF.

I could probably describe the user interface here but that would probably add another 1k words to this post. So I will cheat and just show you a picture and since 1 pic == 1k words the content should not suffer that much. Here is how Lyx looks (alliteration was literally unintentional):

Meet Lyx - LaTex Editor For Lazy People

I have used this toy to author a few documents and I must admit it is not half bad. You type in words, press some buttons and things happen. Unlike a WYSIWYG garbage-tron Lyx won’t just let you press enter a million times in lieu of proper vertical white space management. If you want to have vertical separation you need to break up your text into paragraphs, sections or insert special vertical space markers (as shown above). The environment gives you access to most of the popular commands you can pick from the drop down menus. It also ships with bunch of style templates you can load up and use. I don’t think you can directly import packages into your documents, but I guess the point of this tool is to keep things simple and easy.

What’s a bit peculiar is that Lyx seems to be on the fence on whether or not to use the LaTex nomenclature and function names. They try to avoid using the raw Tex commands verbatim, but they do show up here and there. So if you are a stranger to the Tex way of doing things, Lyx will probably be quite confusing at first. In fact, if you are looking for an easy way to start learning Tex, Lyx is probably the last thing you want to use. It hides enough to prevent you from learning anything useful, but not enough to avoid confusion. So essentially it is not really a drop in WYSIWYG replacement but rather a tool for people who kinda-sorta know their way around Tex but just want to type up a quick document without worrying about and/or being distracted by colorful markup everywhere.

In fact, I’d actually consider using it for that very purpose – it would be a perfect tool to type up a quick letter, memo or maybe even a short manual for some crappy code that I just vomited upon the internet. Unfortunately, Lyx continues the age old tradition of Open Source LaTex related products by not including an inline spell check function. In other words, no red squiggly lines under misspelled words. Some people may view this as a minor nuisance, but for me this is a deal breaker.

Let me put it this way: what would you use a Tex like tool for? I would use it for writing papers. Letters, memos, articles, homeworks – whatever. All these things require proper spelling and grammar. Not including an inline spell checking function is a rather odd choice. I understand that some people do not like that feature, but many do and offering it as an option would be a very logical choice. Especially since every other word processing tool has it. Hell, most LaTex IDE tools like TexMaker or TexnicCenter have it. Not only that, but the inline spell checking feature is also present in every modern web browser.

Yes a web browser. Do you know what web browsers are for? Most people use them for posting “u guise r fags LOL!!1″ type comments on youtube. There is really no need to have an inline spell check in a browser, but we have it because it is a nice feature. It helps! Not including it in Lyx is… Well, odd.

It seems that the developers are on the fence about the feature. On one hand, users have been begging for it to be implemented at least since 2007 if not earlier. On the other hand, half the devs seems to hate the very idea of inline spellcheck, while the other half does not care either way. It seems that they are have been willing to include it in the future releases since 2007 if someone implements it, but they are not going to waste time working on it themselves. I’d jump in and help out, but frankly I don’t actually care enough.

It turns out that I was wrong. It appears that inline spellchecking was very recently implemented by Abdelrazak Younes. So if all goes well this feature will be available in Lyx 2.0. Big thanks to Brunda for pointing it out in the comments.

While I would consider using this tool, I’m really better off using TexMaker or something similar that includes inline spell check feature for now. Once 2.0 is released though, I think we will have a quite formidable alternative to both WYSIWYG editors and straight LaTex IDE’s.

Posted in technology | 16 Comments »

Tell me your best IT Stories

Monday, January 25th, 2010

I think we should really do something about Mondays. I mean, I don’t think there is one person out there who actually likes Mondays. I’m surprised we even keep them around. I’d say that on average they probably cause more unhappiness in everyone’s daily lives than disease, natural disasters, reality TV and lack of parking space at the mall. Someone should do something about it. I’m just saying.

On this fine Monday morning I decided that we should all sit around and complain. And so, I made this thread where we tell out best IT stories that feature annoying lusers who are to stupid to live. I’ll start it off, and you can join in at any time in the comments.

Wireless is Down

One nice summer day I was sitting at work, and productively banging my head against my desk hoping that this will maybe kill some brain cells, and allow me to relate to my users better. I assume it was summer, but frankly I don’t remember because I spent most of my days inside a cubicle, far away from windows and other sources of light. It could have been winter – it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I got a call, and had to answer it.

The company I worked for employed a lot of people who worked away from the main office. Some people telecommuted from their home offices, while others would travel and work from wherever. The guy on the other side of the line was just that type of the user, and he had a problem connecting to the internet. Of course since he was away from the office, the issue was more likely related to his ISP than us, but we were the first line of support for these folks. In situations like these, we were simply supposed to make sure that this is not a PEBKAC issue or a hardware failure. So we would troubleshoot whatever we could on the client side – check their settings, see if the hardware works, etc. If this was not a hardware/software/configuration issue we would just advise them to call the ISP.

But, a lot of networking issues can be magically solved by power cycling your router and gateway appliance. So I routinely would do this exercise with our employees. In best case scenario it resolved the issue and saved them lots of time they would otherwise spend waiting on hold with their ISP. In worst case, they already have performed the first troubleshooting step the ISP support would try.

Sometimes however you got a user who did not know what a router or modem was. They basically did not concern themselves with such issues, and tasked their spouse or son with network setup and/or talking to the ISP. So it was not uncommon for me to have to describe the device to them – you know, a little box with blinking lights and some cables sticking out of it. Some people had it set up in the living room by their media center. Some had it in their basement where the main phone box was. Some had to search for it a little bit. The guy on the other side of the line, had absolutely no clue.

In fact, he was confident that there is no blinkenlights box in his apartment. So I decided to hand him over to his ISP. I asked who handled his internet connection. He responded:

“I thought you were”

In fact, he informed me that he was planning to call us and complain about the signal strength. You see, few weeks ago he had a strong signal and could access the internet in any room. But at some point the signal dropped, and he was able to work only from the kitchen. Then the signal dropped entirely. Surely, this is no way to run a business.

Did I mention this guy was located somewhere in Texas while our office was in Jersey? Somehow he got it into his head that we magically beamed “the internet” to him, across half of the nation. It took me almost half an hour to explain to him that we don’t actually do that, and that he was probably leaching off his neighbors internet all this time. I told him that he should look into some inexpensive broadband internet plan – suggesting calling his Cable company to see if they offer it. The company may even foot the bill for him. When I was hanging up, I had the impression that he did not believe me at all. Turns out he called my supervisor right after our talk who basically told him the same thing. He never mentioned it again.

Spring Cleanup

Once upon a time, I was sitting in my cube contemplating whether I should commit suicide or just get some ice cream. If you have never worked in IT you probably won’t know, but these two things go hand in hand. When you work with users, you face the most extreme manifestations of human stupidity every day. It is frightening, and incredibly depressing. When faced with such unspeakable horror, most people reach for alcohol or drugs, but we IT folks are way past that point. You can only abuse these substances so much, until you build up almost complete immunity. Also, it is a bit difficult to be condescending and rude to the users when you are too drunk and stoned to even move. And since that is a crucial part of the job, we are left only with the two alternatives listed above.

I personally was leaning toward ice cream, but then a wild luser appeared and ruined my day. The creature that entered by cubicle was carrying a poorly maintained laptop that sported various cracks, grease stains and brown smears of unknown origin. Apparently the device stopped booting, which was not surprising considering it’s poor condition. I quizzed him on some of the standard troubleshooting questions on my checklist like:

Did you sit on it? Did you drop it into the toilet? Were you using it in the shower? You know, standard stuff. If I had a penny for every time someone at the company forgot that the laptops are not waterproof I would have like… Five pennies.

Turns out that the luser didn’t do any of that. The laptop just stopped booting on him, and he didn’t do anything to cause it. He didn’t install any software, he didn’t even touch it. It’s funny but when something breaks every fucking lusers will swear up and down that he was not even in the same room when it happened. I mean, it’s not like I will blame them for doing it just like I wouldn’t blame a mentally challenged person for accidentally saying something inappropriate. They just don’t know any better. But knowing how you broke the computer will help me fix it – so making up an alibi on the spot is counter productive. In fact, it is also stupid because I will find out what you did sooner or later.

The filthy computer was throwing up the NTLDR missing error when I booted it up. So I launched Knoppix and started poking around only to discover that the error was right. NTLDR file was not there. Neither was boot.ini, pagefile.sys and all the other garbage that resides in the root of the system drive. I asked the luser about it, and he scratched his head and said:

“Actually, I wanted to ask you about that stuff. I found all these useless files on my C: drive, and I figured that they were just taking up space so I deleted them.”

Apparently my friend read on the interwebs that you can reclaim hard drive space by deleting your temp files. The article showed him how to make windows display hidden system files and he went on a cleaning spree. Apparently he deleted pretty much every hidden file and folder he could find that was not in use. Then he used the machine for the rest of the evening, and powered it down for the night.

It didn’t even cross his mind that deleting bunch of hidden fucking system files could be in any way, shape or form related to his NTLDR Missing error message.

Needless to say, I skipped ice cream that day and committed ritual suicide in the employee bathroom. Twice.

Your turn kids. Post funny IT stories – they don’t have to be job related. Feel free to make fun of clueless friends relatives as well.

Posted in rant, tech support, technology | 13 Comments »

Dragon Age: Characters, Spells and Strategy

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

Now that I have the spoilers out of my system, let’s talk about strategy and spell combos. We did touch upon this in the previous thread but it was chock full of spoilers. So now I want to discuss strategy in a spoiler free environment so that the readers who didn’t finish the game yet can join in.

First off, what is your favorite team? I don’t know if this is how everyone plays games like this, but I tend to find a group of characters that work, and then stick with them throughout the game often neglecting others. For example, in Mass Effect I would always take Liara and Tali. In KoTOR2 I walked around with all female Jedi harem consisting of Visas, Handmainden and Kreia. This has some downsides – the neglected characters tend to be ill equipped, and I usually don’t develop strong relationships with them. When I need to take them along with me, they tend to slow me down. Still, I always seem to have a preferred team that I use as much as I’m able to.

My go-to team: Morrigan, Leliana, Wynne

In Dragon Age my go-to team was this:

Morrigan – used as the main offensive mage. I specked her to use dps (primal magic) and crowd control spells (like sleep, force field and paralysis). I actually wanted to get her into blood magic, but I don’t think you can unlock it when you play as a non-mage. I found her shape-shifting spell line to be quite useless and I never invested in it. Instead I spent the points on primal, spirit and entropy lines.

Wynne – was my main healer buff/counter buff specialist. I basically spent most of the points on creation spells, and spirit healer line. She had few crowd control spells as well. I remember giving her Petrify, Paralysis Glyph and etc.. Also she was tasked with casting Spell Bloom on Morrigan when her mana fell below 50%.

Leliana – was my Rogue tasked with pick-pocketing, and opening chests. Since I already had 2 ranged specialists (Morrigan and Wynne) I re-specked Leliana to be dual wielding weapon specialist. I invested in that and in the rogue skills that would give her better dps abilities. Later I made her either an assassin though I considered having her be a ranger to summon a living meat shield in tough battles.

My main character was a tank with a shield specialization. I decked him out with the best one-handed weapon I could find, best armor and etc. Later I invested in the Champion and Berserker specializations to make him even more formidable. Once I got him into Berserking I changed Wynne’s tactics to cast heroics on him all the time, to offset the stamina drain.

This worked extremely well for me, and I would actually get upset when the game would force me to take a specific character along with me. When I had to, I would simply swap out Leliana for whoever needed to be in the party at a given time. Unfortunately this meant I wouldn’t be able to open locked chests, but it was better than fighting without an offensive mage or a healer.

What was your dream team?

Question number two is to give me your top 5 favorite spells/skills in the game. Here are mine:

  1. Force Field – initially I got this spell because I wanted to gain access to Crushing Prison and mostly neglected it. It seemed limited. Making a character invulnerable for a short period was cool, but it essentially froze that character in place, making him useless until the field expired. Halfway through the game though I noticed you can cast it on enemies as well as allies and started experimenting. I quickly discovered that it is possibly the best crowd control spell in the game. It lasts longer than any other paralysis/freeze type spell and has almost no cool-down time. I could easily cast it on enemy mages and keep them in stasis almost indefinitely. And by that I mean that if the field dropped I could almost immediately re-cast it on the same target. Unlike other paralysis/stasis type spells, it is actually impossible to resist Force Field making it a sure thing. That’s not all though.

    Casting it on someone affected by Crushing Prison would create a massive shock wave that could easily wipe out large clusters of lightly armored missile troops. Not to mention that casting it on a taunting ally would temporarily nullify almost all the damage output the enemy could actually dish out as they would fruitlessly slam themselves against the field.

    IMHO it is probably the most flexible spell in the whole game.

  2. Cone of Cold – the only spell from the Cold line that guarantees to freeze a target offering it no chance to resist. Furthermore, it will freeze anything – including the High Dragon, Brood Mother and the Archdemon. Combine this with very short cool down time, and you have an incredibly potent spell. Works wonders in doorways and narrow corridors where you can shoot it off from behind your tanks and freeze everything in front of them.
  3. Fireball – it’s an instant classic. Deals a lot of damage, has big area of effect and it not only sets enemies on fire, but also knocks them down. Perfect spell for dispatching clusters of low level mooks. I personally like to combine it with grease spell. For one, it will slow down the movement of your targets allowing you to aim the Fireball better. Once it hits, it will give you additional DoT effect. By the time the affected enemies get up, and run out of the burning area they are bound to receive some additional damage. I successfully cleared out whole rooms full of enemies this way.
  4. Cleansing Aura – this one is a must have. It removes injuries from all characters in range for free. Once you obtain this spell, you can stop hoarding your injury kits. In fact, you might as well just sell them all. You will never have to use one again.
  5. Sleep – is my favorite opening spell. While it can be resisted by ranked characters, it has a huge area of effect and lasts quite a while. I usually cast it on missile troops at the beginning of a battle and most of the time it keeps them out of my hair long enough for me to take care of any close combat troops on the field. I sometimes follow it up with waking nightmare. Since sleeping targets can’t resist it, it usually causes infighting to break out amongst the enemies.

How about you? What are your favorite spells? What is your usual opening move? Let me know in the comments.

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