LyX is a free and unique text editor, mainly aiming at academic use, facilitating work on formulas and professional editing of scientific studies. The program won’t provide an exciting interface, but you may find attractive the way it handles the creation of bibliographies or indexes, tables, and of course equations, etc. It also lets you compare several versions of your document to review changes.

LyX builds upon TeX/LaTeX actually adding a graphical interface. Besides its math orientation, the program can help you prepare academic publications with ready made templates. If you are not that competent in formatting, you will appreciate what LyX has to offer. As the authors of the program write, “LyX lets you concentrate on writing, leaving details of visual layout to the software.”

To have an idea, think this; you may hit the spacebar 10 or 20 times only to find out that nothing happens: LyX decides automatically how much empty space your document needs in that particular location! The same creating a header. In fact, you don’t need to create it at all, as you know it from Word. Just write a section title, and LyX automatically uses it as a header and an entry in the Table of Contents.

Lyx supports import and export to LaTeX, PDF, Postscript, DVI, ASCII, HTML, OpenDocument, RTF, MS Word, and others. Especially if you create complex academic documents, you should check LyX and see if it meets your needs and style; after all, it is free.

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Download Lyx without MikTex (if you don’t have already LaTex) or Download Lyx with MikTex

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