Hullo all...
I know it's more important that LyX we WYSIWYM that WYSIWYG, but it's
still nice, when typing maths formulas, to be able to see \wedge
appear as a wedge-shape.
But the problem is, that is discouraging the user from using symbolic
markup, since I really should use \lor, not \wedge (because Logical
OR is what I mean), but I tend to use \wedge in LyX so I get the nice
preview.
So I'm thinking it would be nice to give LyX the capability to
interpret simple macros (e.g. macros with no parameters, for
starters). Suppose I have defined \entails to be the entailment sign,
and maybe adjusted the spacing a bit. Here are two ways LyX could use
the underlying TeX to work out my macros:
\def\entails{\;\vdash\;}
\edef\temp{\entails}
\message{[\string\entails: \meaning\temp]}
\setbox5=\hbox{$\entails$}
\showbox5
\bye
I prefer the \showbox version to the \edef version, but both provide
useful information. Here is the output of showbox (get it from the
.log file, if you run my example)
\hbox(6.94444+0.0)x11.66653
.\mathon
.\glue 2.77771 plus 2.77771
.\tensy `
.\glue 2.77771 plus 2.77771
.\mathoff
Now, I don't think it would be impossible for LyX to parse that. It
might possibly decide to ignore the glue totally, but it could get
that entails is the backquote character in the sy font.
Now, in many modern systems the CM fonts are available to the X server
as postscript fonts, so in principle LyX could access these fonts and
print exactly the right character.
Is this madness, or does it make sense to people? I think LyX would
be greatly enhance by the ability to preview simple macros like this.
Jules
