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LyX specific posts on tex.stackexchange.com are not really been answered so often as a post that is specific to a real LaTeX editor (non WYSIWYG) or even most if the post is not specific to an editor but to LaTeX distros or to LaTeX (The Last case is the best in order of the possibility to get an answer).

The situation is almost like questions about installing Kali Linux in unix.stackexchange.com ... (And I mean that you have much less possibilities to get an answer when the question is not just tagged as LyX question, but when it is real LyX specific.

PS: Of course I can understand why, and I am tending to answer myself since I didn't found such a question here.

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    If you don't use LyX, there really i no point in answering LyX specific questions (or even knowing if the question is LyX specific or not). See tex.stackexchange.com/questions/283272/… for example. Mar 16, 2019 at 3:01
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    I don't think they're ignored. I read them and sometimes answer them, when they're not LyX specific. Whether the OP is then able to use the answer in LyX is not a concern for me; in this case I tell the OP that I threw away LyX shortly after trying it.
    – egreg
    Mar 20, 2019 at 9:58

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Apart from the question raised by KJO whether the data really substantiates the claim that Lyx is being often ignored, I would not be too surprised if Lyx questions tend to be less answered than questions other topics. The reason could be as simple as the fact that among the more expert users, i.e. the users that tend to answer the majority of questions, not too many are using Lyx. This is clearly speculative, but I have a hard time imagining that @egreg or David Carlisle, say, use Lyx to prepare their documents.

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    +1, I'm not an expert, but I gave up LyX because my documents were so full of ERT that writing them directly n LaTeX was easier!
    – CarLaTeX
    Mar 16, 2019 at 5:56
  • Thanks @marmot for your answer... I could add that LyX users also are mostly these kind of users that need (and not offer) help because of their limited LaTeX knowledge... (+1)... It is not an absolute truth... but tends to be one because of the nature of LyX that goes straight to the opposite direction than TeX philosophy...
    – koleygr
    Mar 16, 2019 at 10:21
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  1. LaTeX is a typesetting system that (initially) was designed to give a nice layout (ready to be printed and to be published) without the creator of the document need to take special care about the output during his work. It supposed to make its own calculations by the internal compiling procedure and give an already beautiful result (but of course adjustable with many ways).

As such a system, the "WYSIWYG" approach seems to be completely inappropriate for it. The result after the compilation should be better that "what you see".

  1. LyX is an approach of LaTeX typesetting that is preferred mostly by newcomers to LaTeX world. Mostly from people that can't (or don't want) get over the "Office" habit and in most cases they want to "force" their document to "look like LaTeX" but without the "real coding part" of creating a LaTeX document.

  2. Any LaTeX user that will use LaTeX more than once or twice will expect to have something more specific than the default LyX abilities by pressing buttons, and will possibly come here to get an answer on how to accomplish this specific layout or behavior etc. So, the LyX user will have to use the non-graphical interface of LyX to add some real code hopping that the LyX will afford this code and will result a document behavior like if this code had been added to a "real" LaTeX document. (But as far as I have seen here... this is not always the case).

In any result of the above situation, surely (s)he will need again and again such a help and thus will be driven to learn at least some basic LaTeX commands in order to not make again and again the same question with just another variable/command/whatever. But then, by gaining soem basic skills in real LaTeX coding and getting to know how more abilities LaTeX "coding-approach" is offering, (s)he getting over the bad habit of the WYSIWYG approach and becoming a LaTeX user from a LyX user.

So, there are not really many people here familiar with LyX that are able to help in questions specific to LyX and in most cases their answer is a general LaTeX answer by using the "code-mode" of LyX and the hope that it should/could work.

If the question is LyX specific, there are people that could help, but they possibly didn't needed much from tex.stackexchange.com and they are not active here, or they have already forgot the LyX interface as "ex-LyX" users

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  • LyX is not WYSIWYG, but WYSIWYM and, honestly, I really think that this should not be considered as a "bad habit".
    – Daniel
    Mar 17, 2019 at 20:18
  • @Daniel, thanks for the comment. I didn't really understood the difference between "WYSIWYG" and "WYSIWYM" initially, and I thought that the pdf will be exactly "WYS". You are right about the bad habits, in order that "Using vi for just 1-2 times (without have use it before) to create one of the totally three small LaTeX documents that you will leave with their default settings and will compile with your created from source but not adjusted LaTeX executable file is a bad habit too [if you are not doing it for the experience or for a reason like been afraid of the build executable(s)]".
    – koleygr
    Mar 18, 2019 at 18:57
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I've set LyX as an ignored tag. I'm probably not alone. Looking at the 30 most recent questions tagged LyX, 18 are posts that would be pointless (too LyX-specific) for me to open based on the title and excerpt alone. Several more are probably too LyX-specific but if I didn;t notice the tag I might open them anyway. And that would feel like a waste of time once I did read the question, hence ignoring them.

I'm probably not alone in ignoring a tag that I can't really contribute to. The downside is that some questions tagged with a particular piece of software are actually more general problems and I won't see them - but it's not much of a downside for me.

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    I didn't knew that you can set a tag as ignored... But I am sure that many people that actually see these questions (me too) without having this "ignored-tag"... just doesn't even read them if the title doesn't shows that the answer can be a general LaTeX answer. (+1)
    – koleygr
    Mar 18, 2019 at 19:01
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I started to venture into the TeX world using editors such as TeXStudio and LyX. After I learned how to handle Arch Linux agile, I undertook to use the Vim code editor inside my xfce4 terminal to edit TeX and LaTeX code and mainly deal with TiKz and PGF. To make my work smoother, faster, and efficient I've added auto-save plugins to compile the code and display through the Zathura view-pdf. Since then, I have felt no need to ask about LyX as there is an astounding wealth of questions about solving compilation problems here at tex.stackexchange.com if you ask only about the TeX's themselves, and I spend my time asking and some rarely answering questions as they are still a newbie as well. And I add that from what I read of Donald Knuth's books, like METAFONT and TeXbook, TeX was made to remain much more logical than aesthetic, which is typical of the daily work of programmers who are also mathematicians.

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    +1 for adding the non yet added problem with tikz and graphics in LaTeX... If even a LyX user continue to want use it... he has to get in the codding option of it to add graphic's code... and thus this would not be just worse and late process... but really strange too. (If anyone of us add the combination of the software he uses -editor DE distro, packages...- and also the book have read... the answers will be all different but will not really offer here)
    – koleygr
    Mar 21, 2019 at 0:46

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