Richard Heck wrote:
Dave Hewitt wrote:
I for one would be glad to tackle writing some layouts, but the hang
up for me is what Paul points out here - that the syntax and rules
aren't laid out in simple form anywhere. I realize it takes trial and
error, but a few hours with the User's Guide (Customization) and some
other layouts as examples left me frustrated and unwilling to continue.
Would it be hard to generate a short piece about layout syntax, with
some examples, to go along with the new module format in the new
version? I think it would be immensely useful. And, if you could do
that, we might convert some journals/editors to write their own
layouts and let us submit LyX-generated LaTeX PDFs instead of ugly
Word documents (I've had to write in Word for two papers nearing
submission b/c of resistance from publishers [I'm in a field not on to
the LaTeX thing; sad, i know.]).
I'll try to have a look at this when I'm otherwise revising that part of
the Customization manual. But I'd encourage others to do so as well, and
I'd especially welcome information about what's not clear in what's
presently there. I know that stuff well enough now that it is hard for
me to know what won't be clear to a newcomer---though, I'll tell you,
I'm still not sure I understand the margins stuff.
I was crawling through a bunch of .layout and .inc files trying to infer
syntax from usage, and I ran across a whole lot of commands whose impact
(if any) was, shall we say, not entirely obvious to me. If you look at
the agu_* or db_* files and their "standard" siblings, the former
contain commands the latter do not (for the same environments). As one
example, db_stdlists.inc includes ItemTag for Itemize, Enumerate and
Description and InnerTag and LabelTag for Description. None of those
commands occur in stdlists.inc. Can't find them in the Customization
guide, either, so maybe they're vestigial?
Personally, I think the customization guide is reasonably clear. I'm
not sure whether it's complete and up to date.
/Paul
