On 12-Sep-18 12:20 AM, Richard Kimberly Heck wrote: On 09/10/2018 11:02 PM, Baris Erkus wrote: On 9/9/2018 4:15 AM, Peter Taylor wrote: Hi,
I have upgraded MiKTeX relatively recently – I don’t want to upgrade again if I don’t have to upgrade – so please could you update your webpage which says: (start quote) Due to a bug in MiKTeX, installation of LyX 2.3.0 can sometimes cause the MiKTeX installation to be corrupted. (See https://github.com/MiKTeX/miktex/issues/82.) If you run into problems, the solution will be to uninstall MiKTeX and then re-install. We highly recommend that MiKTeX users update to the latest version before installing LyX 2.3.0. If you have any questions about how to update MiKTeX, you can email lyx-users@lists.lyx.org<mailto:lyx-users@lists.lyx.org> for help. (You do not need to be subscribed to the mailing list to do so, but you may wish to do that anyway. See this page<https://www.lyx.org/MailingLists#toc2> for information on subscribing.) (end quote) This information does not mention specific versions – just says “latest version of MiKTeX”. My MiKTeX console window tells me it is version 2.9.6751. I am actually using another TeX editor which works fine for me but I want to collaborate with a colleague and I heard that LyX might be an easier editor for him to use on shared documents. Before doing that I want to check that LyX is something I can recommend to him. However seeing this message on your website has made me reluctant to try out LyX in case my MiKTeX installation gets corrupted. Regards, Peter Sent from Mail<https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows 10 Hello, I am trying to follow the conversation(s) regarding the MikTeX issues. I have just observed from the MikTeX web page that MikTeX has gone through some major changes. I do not know exactly when these changes occurred, so some of them may have been there for a while. The major changes are: * A completely new GUI have been implemented. * MikTeX was originally for Windows. Now it can be installed on Mac and Linux. * It can be rollout to a group of computers. * It an be installed through a Docker container. * The concept of "scalable TeX (minimalist TeX, install-on-the-fly TeX)" has been introduced. * May be some other changes... This suggests that the author of MikTeX is putting a big effort into it and changes it constantly. This is quite opposite of what conventional TeX systems does (at least this is what I have been observing). Systems like TeXLive publish major versions with larger periods of time and do not update the system in a continuous manner, which provides robustness to the TeX system and avoids surprises. Further, MikTeX is more prone to failures and issues due to this reason. Just by considering all these changes to MikTeX, I would say it is quite normal for LyX users having issues with MikTeX all the time since it changes, being updated, modified frequently. It would be really difficult for LyX developers to follow all these changes and provide a LyX setup that is compatible with these changes. Particularly, the concept of minimalist TeX may be an issue. When I installed the latest version of LyX, I observed that MikTeX was updating some packages online. So, the MikTeX was updating itself from within the LyX installation. This sort of installation approach may be a problem for LyX if a problem occurs with the MikTeX update during the LyX installation. Luckily, I did not have issues in my case, since I keep the full TeX system on my computer (about 6 GB), even tough MikTeX switched to a minimalist version without telling me. In conclusion, It would be more surprise-free to use a more stable and "not-constantly-being-updated" TeX system -such as TeXLive- along with LyX rather than MikTeX. Otherwise there should be another Lyx-specific-minimalist MikTeX system available on the PC of the user not to have major issuesö and the user should not update MikTeX frequently. That is certainly the sort of problem we've had here at LyX. There have been more than a few times that releases were delayed due to these kinds of issues. So we're making an effort, at least, to disentangle LyX from MiKTeX, so that we don't feel like we have to fix or work around MiKTeX bugs in our own releases. The first step in that direction is to terminate the production of the 'bundled' installer. Riki Hello Again; This is a tough one. I think the target audience and intended scope is also important. If the intention is more like a complete WYSIWYG software package (or bundle) allowing users to produce documents right after installation without much hassle of Tex and other setups and preventing them from dealing with low-level Latex programming, it would be more reasonable to develop LyX as a bundle/package of LyX Frontend+TeX system+misc components. This would make the bundle more predictable and manageable if the components of the package are package-specific and they are developed specifically for the package. In this case, the TeX system should be customized by the LyX developers and should not be allowed to be updated by a third party software. This is the approach taken by Scientific Workplace and Bakoma, I guess. If the intention is develop only a powerful frontend that allows users to juggle around the TeX system, to do their own customization, allow different TeX systems to be used (and let the TeX developers to do job of developing TeX systems) and even maybe allow users install their own addons and functions to LyX, then LyX should have a module that can communicate with different TeX systems efficiently and should be immune to changes and updates in the TeX system. In my opinion, it is just not feasible/meaningful to achieve these two different-and conflicting-by-nature intentions at the same time. One of them should be chosen. My preference is the second approach since one can never avoid a certain level of low-level intervention when dealing with LaTeX even if the first time users(!). Eventually every single user of LyX goes to SE, mailing list or other resources to achieve a specific thing. One can probably develop beautiful documents if well-defined styles and classes are used, but if you want something just a little bit different, then you need to get into latex and sources such as SE. In my case, this always happened to be the case. So, I did not make investment into Scientific Workplace or Bakoma. I prefer LyX. Anyhow, I again want to thank to everyone, who put a big effort into development of LyX no matter what direction is to be taken. Baris
