Hi Steve

I've cc'ed the list (I hope you don't mind - I couldn't see anything private
in your email)

LyX itself is OK, I've got through the first few hurdles, my LaTeX Companion
has arrived, I've created a new document style with its own set of character
styles and it works (well, sort of; the problems I have with it I know are
just a question of detail - e.g. stuff like images appearing at a different
scale in the LyX window and in the DVI/PDF output - and the user list or the
archives (or the LC) are good with the details).

The bit which I can't seem to fathom is the whole XML/LyX connection. This
is a big picture problem. I can load a small DocBook file into LyX and it
looks OK. I can edit this file, save it, and export it to DocBook - but only
to a super-simplified DocBook, AFAICT. In any case, our documents aren't
DocBook, but (if LyX could handle the full range of DocBook element
definitions) I could probably add an extra XSLT step so that they pass
through a DocBook version on their way in and out of LyX. Not as it stands,
however, because if I tried to roundtrip I'd lose most of my markup. I've
tried cloning the docbook layouts and adding my own character styles - but
when I do this the 'export to DocBook XML' option is no longer available.

If I dropped the DocBook pretence I'm confident that I could write XSLT
stylesheets to take our XML files and generate LyX documents for printing.

What we'd really like is to be able to use LyX as our document editor,
because alternative XML editors really suck big time. However this would
mean we have to be able to go in the other direction, converting LyX
documents back into XML. That's a requirement because the principal output
method we use is either HTML or CSS-styled XML. And the LyX (or LaTeX) to
HTML path is still worse than useless.

If LyX really could act as an (excellent) editor for DocBook and
quasi-DocBook documents we'd be over the moon, Brian (sorry, gratuitous UK
sporting reference there).

Thanks for your reply

Cheers
Trevor

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Litt [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Tuesday, 12 June 2007 4:59 p.m.
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: lyx tutorium

On Tuesday 12 June 2007 00:25, Trevor Nicholls wrote:
> > LyX vs. Docbook: I believe that LyX can be used to front-end docbook.
>
> So I am led to understand (in principle), but if this is really true then
> it is one area where the LyX help files are sadly deficient. I'm quite
> willing to accept that it's my ignorance that is responsible for my
failure
> to get LyX working with the content of my documents - but there doesn't
> seem to be any practical information out there which addresses this
> ignorance.

I could be wrong about the "front end to docbook" thing.

As far as LyX help, I'd start here:

http://wiki.lyx.org/LyX/Tutorials

http://tug.org/TeXnik/mainFAQ.cgi?file=docs

The docs are out there -- it's just hard to know which doc applies to your 
current needs.

SteveT


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