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.
For more information please see the LyX home page at http://www.lyx.org.
The new version fixes several bugs, e.g. possible crashes when a selection is started when the cursor is over a blank, and slow loading of large files, and adds support for more encodings and the "kluwer" class.
To run LyX, an X server (e.g. XFree86/OS2 or Hoblink X11), the Xforms library and LaTeX are required. If you want to take full advantage of LyX's feature, you also need the Perl scripting language, DVIPS, GV and Ghostscript. The package contains a setup guide.
The LyX distribution is available at UnixOS2.org:
ftp://unixos2.org/incoming/lyx-1.1.6fix4-bin-os2.exe or
ftp://unixos2.org/incoming/lyx-1.1.6fix4-bin-os2.tar.ppmd (this archive is a lot smaller, but you need GNU tar and the ppmd archiver to unpack it)
Later, the files will be moved to ftp://unixos2.org/pub/xfree86/ports/LyX/.
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