On Tuesday 02 February 2010 05:49:35 Tommaso Cucinotta wrote: > Guenter Milde wrote: > > This is why I would greatly welcome improved support for external > > editing of the lyx source: > > > > * open a lyx file in LyX and jump to a specified place/line, so that I > > can easily go to `grep` results or the place I have been editing in > > my valued text editor. > > such use-case scenario would become much less likely to happen with > Advanced Search, wouldn't it be ? > > T.
Here's a use case. Your doc no longer opens in LyX. So using Vim, you successively cut out parts of it until it opens in LyX again, and then back out the changes til you find the offending code. I've had that happen several times. Another use case: VimOutliner to LyX converter. No matter how good the LyX outline mode gets (and it's getting great -- thanks everyone), VimOutliner will still be faster for slamming out outlines, just because it's based on Vim keystrokes rather than mouseclicking. So I created a VimOutliner to LyX converter. The more complex LyX code, the harder that is to do. Another use case. My Troubleshooting Course Instructor Notes have one section per slide of the course. Each of these section headings announces its slide's page number. Whenever I add or subtract slides, all these sections have to be renumbered. No problem -- the page numbers are all blue, and I have a program that runs through the LyX native format and renumbers every blue number. Perhaps the page numbering would have been better off done with some sort of counter attached to the sections. That's fine, but there's always another reason, and another, and yet another after that, to tweak with native format. There's ALWAYS going to be something LyX can't do, and direct file content editing gives me (and hundreds of others who take LyX beyond its intended usage) another way to do it. It reminds me of free software. Only 1 out of 100 free software users is ready, willing and able to mess with the source code. And yet the fact that the source code CAN be messed with means you're never limited to just what the program can do -- you always have a way out of every mess. It may not be pretty, easy, or cheap, but you have a way out. The same thing's true of readable, parseable, writeable native formats. In fact, editability was one of the reasons I chose LyX in the first place. Here's a quote from http://www.troubleshooters.com/tpromag/200109/200109.htm#_linuxlog: "The "no exports" problem turned out to be a paper tiger. After viewing a LyX document in VI it was obvious that it was simple, styles-based markup that could be easily manipulated, and yes, converted, with simple Perl scripts." And here's a quote from http://www.troubleshooters.cxm/tpromag/200201/200201.htm#_TheDecision: "The decision came when I looked at a LyX document in VI. The LyX native file format is simple, easily understandable and parsable, and you can recover all styles. It would be trivial to write an app to convert LyX code to XML." Never underestimate the power and desirability of a native format that's readable, parseable and writeable. SteveT Steve Litt Recession Relief Package http://www.recession-relief.US Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt
