Bo Peng wrote: >> I would like to know, is there a way to paste pictures into lyx >> directly from >> clipboard - lyx could automatically create a subfolder containing pasted >> pictures. This would improve my speed drastically when working with >> pictures!
> It is not possible now, and I doubt that this would be a good feature > to have. The first problem is resolution because figures copied from > clipboard are not in vector format, and in bad resolution. > The second > problem is file management. In SWP, I often end up with a bunch of > .wmf files (this format is not usable other than SWP) that I have no > idea which is which. Things can become worse if you replace or remove > a figure, but the related file is not automatically removed. > > If you treat your figures seriously, saving them to files with > reasonable names and insert them manually makes more sense to me. I agree that the manual management of figures makes a lot of sense, especially with respect to referential integrity and reusing of figures. Let me point out, though, that on Windows quality would *not* be an issue. The native clipboard format is GDI metafile, which in fact is a vector format. The system does an on-the-fly conversion to a bitmap format only if the requesting application (the one you paste into) does not understand the vector format or otherwise explicitly asks for a raster presentation. If streamed into a disk file, the GDI metafile format is either "Windows Meta File" (.wmf) or "Enhanced Meta File" (.emf). The latter was introduced with Windows NT and is more powerful than WMF as it provides native support for rotated text and more. Therefore I really do not understand that your .wmf-Files are usable only in SWP. In my experience, WMF is *the* common graphics format on Windows. It can be imported into and exported from almost any application. I see it as the "EPS of the Windows world" (up to the fact that there are "GDI printers", which use it as page description language and run only on Windows.) Unfortunately there are no good converters WMF <--> EPS. Moreover, almost no Windows application is able to export (good) EPS, whereas almost no UNIX application provides native support for WMF. The only exception I am aware of is OpenOffice Draw, which provides high quality EMF and EPS export. For people who have to work in both worlds (e.g. use the same figure in a powerpoint presentation and a LyX document, I can strongly recommend it. Daniel
