On Tue, 22 May 2001, John Weiss wrote:
> On Mon, May 07, 2001 at 11:42:57AM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > You've presented some good ideas. Anyone else care to weigh in? I suspect
> > John W will have some strong thoughts on the matter - I'm not sure if he
> > reads this list or not.
>
> Oh, I listen. ;) Real life, however, intrudes from time to time, and
> I can go for weeks without cleaning up my lyx-box. But when I have
> something to say, I'm hard to shut up! :)
;-)
> If you don't put something in the UG, there's this silly political
> implication that that feature is somehow "unimportant" or "too
> esoteric".
This is true, but I actually think you got the balance of the UG content
right - other than updating and perhaps smoothing the tone a bit, I really
don't want to change it. I imagine the UG as the thing to read if you want
to write complex LyX documents, but don't want to have anything to do with
LaTeX. The one common theme of Extended is that virtually everything
requires some LaTeX knowledge, or at least knowledge of LaTeX philosophy.
> > Might work. I've often wondered if we could recombine Extended,
> > Customization, and (the almost thoroughly useless) Reference Guide into
> > two, more compelling, documents.
>
> RefG and Custom, yes. Extended, no. Here's why:
Well, there are my two documents :-) I imagined one remaining essentially
Extended, with perhaps a few things moved in or out; the other would be
Custom with the most relevant parts of Ref moved in (e.g. keybindings).
> ... I (or a future Editor) would then clean them up, move them to the
> proper RG chapter, and add any cross-refs. The other documents could
> then be maintained and updated by using the RefGuide as the
> information source.
>
> Didn't work. No one even bothered to keep the keybindings up to
> date. :P
Hey, I tried, but then 1.1.6 came along and changed almost everything :+|
When 1.2.0preX comes out, then I'll try to catch everything up, but the
user interface is changing too much right now.
> So, Customization and the one or two useful chapters from the RG
> should be merged into one doucment.
Oops, I should read ahead before responding ...
> Maybe it and the UG should be renamed to "User's Guide, Volume 1" and
> "User's Guide, Volume 2".
No, I think "Extended Features" accurately captures the intent. Maybe
"User Guide" should change :-)
> > Yeah, most of the into in the UG could probably be moved to Intro.
>
> Don't bother moving it. Let's drop the propaganda (a holdover from
> the Matthias Ettrich days, anyhow ;) ) and just have a paragraph or
> two "tooting our own horn", just to demonstrate to the M$ Word crowd
> what they gain from LyX. And, we can be magnanamous and state what
> you lose.
Okay, I like this idea.
> Last Topic: The "daunting" LyXDoc Style Sheet.
>
> Sorry boys, but this one has to be strident ... or, better put, as
> strict as a nun in a 50's era catholic school. There is no way around
> this.
I agree - I didn't think this one was open for discussion. I consider it
gold-plated, stainless steel. We must continue to follow this one.
Ahh, I see George just chimed in, and that we agree fairly well. Perhaps
in thinking about the outline of Extended (well, really all the docs), we
should keep in mind the LyX/LaTeX "split" between UG and Extended, and
base the overall structure on that. Perhaps this should be stated
explicitly in the Intro as well.
Well that's my idea of the day. George - might this help address some of
the "linearness" in Extended that you see? Something like
Common LaTeX extensions (minipages, etc. things commonly found in teTeX)
Alternate styles (aapaper, AASTeX, RevTeX, etc.)
Operating System extensions (fax, lyx2html, etc.)
as the overarching sections, then the current contents merged
appropriately ...
Time to go do some real work. Let me know what you think.
Mike
--
Mike Ressler
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
OK, I'm lame: I don't have my own website ...
