# Introduction to LyX – a (non latex) text editor

Last Thursday we had our first tool meeting (a kind of “show and tell”) during the weekly Rényi hour. The Rényi hour is a weekly meeting for Barcelona GSE Data Science students where students, faculty, or invited speakers present a topic for discussion.

In today’s meeting, Jordi, one of the Master students, introduced LyX – a free LaTeX (not latex) based text editor. He shared his experience on this software with us, focusing on the suitability of LyX to write down equations in a visual and more efficient way.

$\lim_{n\rightarrow\infty}\left(1+\frac{x}{n}\right)^{n}$
an equation written using LyX

After the presentation, we opened a discussion about the suitability of this and other complementary software to increase the productivity in writing reports and papers. Beyond equation edition, Omiros recommended Emacs, the one he uses, to edit plain texts because it recognizes all the standard programming languages.

After the interactions, we got the take-home message that if you are planning to use plain text intensively, e.g. for programming, text editing, or equating, some available software will facilitate the task, so it is worth to spend some time finding and getting used to the available software. Ultimately, the choice will depend on personal preferences.