Public release of LyX version 1.5.0 (beta 2) ===================================
We are glad to announce the release of LyX 1.5.0 (beta 2). Compared with the previous beta release we have fixed several bugs and added some graphical improvements: * A new math toolbar replaces the old (faithful) math panel. * The converter file cache can be now configured in the graphical interface. * The TOC dialog is now a dock widget, embedded in the main window. Apart from the described major changes, several minor improvements of the user interface have been made, such as: - Syntax highlighting for the user preamble and the LaTeX log file - Better parsing of BibTeX databases (in the citation dialog) - Support optional argument for environments Compared with the latest stable release this is the culmination of 1 year of hard work, and we sincerely hope this you will enjoy the results. The changes are too numerous to summarize in a few words, with initial unicode support as the flagship of new features, jump directly to the end of this message if you want to know more. As usual with major releases, a lot of work that is not directly visible has taken place. The core of LyX has seen more cleanups and some of the new features are the direct results of this work. See the file RELEASE-NOTES for some known problems in that release. In case you are wondering what LyX is, here is what http://www.lyx.org/ has to say on the subject: LyX is a document processor that encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents, not their appearance. It is released under a Free Software / Open Source license. LyX is for people that write and want their writing to look great, right out of the box. No more endless tinkering with formatting details, 'finger painting' font attributes or futzing around with page boundaries. You just write. In the background, Prof. Knuth's legendary TeX typesetting engine makes you look good. On screen, LyX looks like any word processor; its printed output -- or richly cross-referenced PDF, just as readily produced -- looks like nothing else. Gone are the days of industrially bland .docs, all looking similarly not-quite-right, yet coming out unpredictably different on different printer drivers. Gone are the crashes 'eating' your dissertation the evening before going to press. LyX is stable and fully featured. It is a multi-platform, fully internationalized application running natively on Unix/Linux and the Macintosh and modern Windows platforms. You can download LyX 1.5.0beta2 here (the .bz2 are compressed with bzip2, which yields smaller files): ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.gz ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.bz2 ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/lyx/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.gz ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/lyx/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.bz2 and it should propagate shortly to the following mirrors (which will also host the .bz2 versions): ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/lyx/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.gz http://lyx.cybermirror.org/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.gz ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/publishing/tex/lyx/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.gz ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/X11/LyX/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.gz http://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/unix/editors/lyx/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.gz http://lyx.mirror.fr/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.gz Note that due to the ammount of changes no patch is provided to upgrade from version 1.4.4. Prebuilt binaries (rpms for linux distributions, Mac OS X and Windows installers) should soon be available at ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/bin/1.5.0beta2/ If you find what you think is a bug in LyX 1.5.0beta2, you may either e-mail the LyX developers' mailing list (lyx-devel @ lists.lyx.org), or open a bug report at http://bugzilla.lyx.org If you're having trouble using the new version of LyX, or have a question, first check out http://www.lyx.org/help/. If you can't find the answer there, e-mail the LyX users' list (lyx-users @ lists.lyx.org). Enjoy! The LyX team. What's new in version 1.5.0 (beta 2)? ---------------------------- * Unicode LyX 1.5's big goal was to use unicode internally and so resolve a slew of existing problems with special characters and non-alphabetic languages. LyX 1.5 is able to output unicode (in addition to encodings current available), so that you can use LaTeX's new utf8 encoding or such brand new typesetting systems as XeTeX. Since the change to unicode touched much of the code base and some areas still need a cleanup it is very likely that some bugs related to the unicode transition still exist. Please have a look at the Known bugs in LyX 1.5 page if you encounter a bug that seems to be related to unicode. If it's not there, then please report it to the lyx-devel mailing list. * Integrated CJK support The very first result of the Unicode transition is that we have finally merged in the externally maintained CJK-LyX branch. * Multiple views of the same buffer LyX can now display multiple views of the same buffer. I.e., you can now open a single document in multiple windows and work on different parts of it synchronously. * Outliner and embedded TOC LyX has another long-awaited feature: a basic outliner mode, in which you can move chapters and sections around in the Table of Contents dialog. (The outliner has been backported and was released with LyX 1.4.4.) The TOC dialog is now a dock widget, embedded in the main window. * Session managment LyX is now able to remember window size and position and it will reopen the documents you worked on last time around. If you've selected the feature in the Preferences dialog, it'll even move the cursor to the place you were working on last! Furthermore, toolbars can (finally!) be switched on/off in View->Toolbars and moved about in the LyX window. The session managment will remember their state. * Source code Viewer As a kind of "anti-preview-latex", a dialog was implemented that lets you view the source code of a given paragraph/selection or the whole document. * New Font Selection Interface LyX's font selection abilities have been one of its weakest and most outdated components. A completely new interface was implemented that provides access to the power of LaTeX's font selection scheme. * Tabular extensions LyX's table support is certainly less powerful than that of LaTeX. support for the booktabs package was implemented, which provides beautiful and elegant tabulars. * Glossaries Native LyX support for the nomencl package was implemented. With this, you can treat your document with all sorts of nomenclatures, glossaries and fancy notations. * Tabbed Widget LyX now uses tabbed widgets to display multiple documents. * Enhanced Math Toolbars The math toolbar was enhanced significantly. Drop down menus were added, that allowed to integrate all of the math panel' content to the math toolbars. Since this input method is much easier than the clumsy panel, the math panel itself has been removed and superseeded by the toolbars. * Frontend News LyX 1.5 will use the Qt4 toolkit. This is especially good news for Windows users, since there's an official, GPL version of Qt4. They no longer have to rely on an unofficial port of the Unix Qt3 library to Windows. The good old XForms frontend went the way of the dodo. It was both hated and loved, and certainly shaped the unique look of LyX in the past. It was finally killed off, however, by the switch to unicode. The Qt3 frontend was removed. The work on the GTK frontend has been transfered to a branch because its development has essentially stalled. * Change tracking enhancements Major parts of the change tracking code were rewritten addressing several problems that existed in the existing implementation. * Converter file cache A cache for converted files, such as included figures, was implemented. This can speed up LyX's performance considerably when displaying documents with many included figures that need conversion to a format that can be rendered on screen. The converter file cache is disabled by default, and it can be enabled in the Preference Settings dialog, in the Converters section or, if you want to use it, add the line \use_converter_cache true to your preferences file. The default maximum age of a cached file is 6 months. You can change that with the line \converter_cache_maxage xxx where xxx is the maximum age in seconds. * Unified Windows installer The two windows installers are being merged and bug reports regarding both installers are welcome. * Minor user interface improvements Apart from the described major changes, several minor improvements of the user interface have been made, such as: - Syntax highlighting for the user preamble and the LaTeX log file - Better parsing of BibTeX databases (in the citation dialog) - Support optional argument for environments * Under the hood As usual, one big task has been the ongoing code cleanup of the LyX core. Performing this cleanup makes the code more understandable and easier to maintain. It also leads inevitably to a more robust application. Nonetheless, it's an unfortunate fact of life that ugly code is sometimes faster than pretty code. We're well aware that LyX 1.4 is slower than LyX 1.3. One important goal of this 1.5 development series has been to bring this speed back. ** Bug fixes Lots of long-lasting bugs have been fixed, as documented in LyX bugzilla. Probably some new ones have been introduced instead ;-) -- José Abílio
