Thanks for all the recommendations. For what I want to do at this time, which is very simple, I think the picture environment will work okay. I tried the diagrams.net and it was very simple to draw my block diagram, but when saved as pdf it did not want to import into Lyx. I saved it as svg and looked at in my my Rhino3D drawing program and found it to be huge and had to scale it way way down. I think that eventually I'll want to try Tikz/pgf and I looked into it and realize that there is a learning curve. So I'll stick with simple for now. In fact, I think I'm going to go back to plain old Latex that I used several years ago. I feel like I can know what's going on better. Incidentally, I don't have a good understanding of how this group works so I hope I'm responding in a good way. My apologies if not. I seem to be getting messages about other issues that I'm not interested in also. Joe
On Sat, Jan 16, 2021 at 8:17 AM Baris Erkus <[email protected]> wrote: > On 15-Jan-21 9:21 PM, Joe Babb wrote: > > I am trying to use Lyx to document some math and electronics and I need to > place a block diagram into my document. I can draw the diagram in a > separate program and insert the jpg into Lyx, but what I'd rather do is > draw it directly in Lyx and be able to place Greek characters in each box. > I used to use Latex years ago and have the fourth edition of Guide to > Latex which talks about the picture environment. But I find no picture > environment in Lyx. I read on the Internet about typing an M-x somewhere > to get to insert commands directly but can't get that to work. I keep > wanting to work in the code preview pane to insert Latex code directly but > can't. Is it possible at all in Lyx to to a block diagram? > thanks, > Joe > > Normally, you can insert any LaTeX code (including picture environment) > using Ctrl-L or Insert -> TeX Code. This is called "ERT" in LyX AFAIK. > > Since you want to write your code for graphics, I would recommend Tikz/pgf > for general sketches, instead of the old-school picture environment. Of > course, Some other WYSIWYG tools maybe more faster to generate some > specific graphics (e.g. the type of diagrams you want in your document) > without LaTeX coding, but I find Tikz quite powerful to invest in. > > CTAN says "PGF is a macro package for creating graphics. It is platform- > and format-independent and works together with the most important TEX > backend drivers, including pdfTEX and dvips. It comes with a user-friendly > syntax layer called TikZ" > > So, inclusion of LaTeX math is straightforward in Tikz, while other tools > may need some tricks to get full benefits of LaTeX. Tikz has some many > packages, maybe one of them is good for your diagrams. Please look at the > Pgf/Tikz manual. > > One recommendation here tough: Do not write your graphics code in LyX. > Generate it outside with regular LaTeX, and save your image as PDF. Then, > include the PDF into the LyX as figure. The issue with including the > graphics code in LyX is that, compilation times will get longer, and it > would be difficult to find the errors in your code as you have more > graphics and you have more text. Moreover, you will find out that the ERT > coding environment is not very user friendly as your figure gets > complicated, as it was not intended to develop code in there. I have done > this before, and I have found myself testing the code with LaTeX outside > LyX to find the errors. Therefore, LaTeX editors are better for this > purpose (e.g. TeXmaker, TeXstudio, even Notepad++). > > If you want to give a try, I have attached two files: one for the figure > and the other one is for the settings. Compile sample.tex with latex and > you have your figure as PDF, ready to insert into LyX. > > -- > ↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓ > Please bottom-post. Start your reply here: > > -- > lyx-users mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.lyx.org/mailman/listinfo/lyx-users >
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