Do the university machines all have LaTeX installed? If so, you're going to need to be sure that LaTeX is on the command path, so that LyX can find it. If not, you're going to need to install MiKTeX or another LaTeX distribution on the stick. The same holds for Ghostscript, ImageMagick and any other utilities LyX will need.Hello, I'm a real lyx newbie but I very impressed about the possibilities to work with lyx. Now I have one question. Is there any possibility to run lyx on an USB-Stick? I always work on different computers (university...) and I will take lyx with me ;-) The computers running with Windows XP.
Thanks for your help and sorry for my bad English.
Joachim
Installing all that on the stick might be best in any case, since it will minimize problems with variations in installations and paths across different machines. You'll also want to configure LyX on your stick to use the supporting programs on the stick (i.e., configure the stick copy of LyX appropriately).
Hopefully the university machines have a standard (user-writable) temp directory that you can set as the LyX temp directory in your LyX preferences. I suspect that using a directory on the stick as the temp directory would be rather slow.
If everything fits on the stick, and if you can get all the paths straight, you should be in good shape. You might need to write a batch file that opens a command window and sets the command path to use your stick directories, then leaves the command window open for you to run LyX etc. in. (This assumes that your university machines allow command-prompt access; some schools lock that out for security reasons.)
There's one possible wrinkle in this. AFAIK LyX does not need any registry entries, but I'm not sure if that's true for ImageMagick, Ghostscript or other external utilities, and I don't know if it's true for MiKTeX. If they do have necessary registry entries, you have two possible choices: use the existing installations on the PCs (assuming they are in fact installed); or install them on your stick (making the appropriate registry entries on your PC), export the entries from your PC to the stick (which presumes you know which entries you need, and know how to use RegEdit), and then install those entries whenever you use a university machine (which requires that you have enough user privileges to install registry keys).
-- Paul
