On 2009-02-16, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> Guenter Milde wrote:
>> On 2009-02-09, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>>> I'm using LyX 1.6.1 with TeXLive 2007 on Linux (Gentoo).
>>> I created a new document using the "article" class and selected "Greek"
>>> as language. The document is a mix of English and Greek, but there's a
>>> problem: even though English words appear correctly in LyX, the final
>>> PDF output shows English using the Greek alphabet.
...
>> You need to tell LyX which parts of the document are Greek and which are
>> English
...
> This is too slow, really, and in contrast with every other software out
> there where you simply press Alt+Shift (or whatever combination you've
> set up) and type away.
However, this software will most probably not do correct hyphenation and
spell-cheking...
For single foreign words in Latin script, where this is not a problem, you
can use a customized "unicodesymbols" file:
* Copy it to your LyX directory (~/.lyx).
* For all the latin Letters (and maybe also the question mark and other
punktuation), you need to add lines like::
0x0067 "\textlatin{g}" "" "force" "" "" # LATIN SMALL LETTER G
However, this will stand in your way, if you want to compile e.g. English
or German documents, so it needs a way to "switch off". (one possibility
is a to put the modified file into another userdir (say ~/.lyx-greek) and
start LyX with the "-userdir ~/.lyx-greek" option.
> It's not really an option to have to type two shortcuts to switch
> language
You need to switch two things: keyboard layout (in LyX or in the OS) and
language (in LyX).
To achieve both with one key-combo, you could:
a) use the lyx-server and a script to let the shortcut switch the
OS keyboard settings and send the lfun to LyX, or
b) define a keymap in LyX (see Help>Customization) and define a shortcut
in LyX to switch the language + the keymap.
Option b) is preferable, if you wish to have a persistent keyboard
mapping outside LyX (e.g. for Greek-ignorant applications).
> But if this is a limitation of TeX or LaTeX then I guess LyX has to live
> with it.
No, It is one of the limitations that LyX (due to its consequent use of
Unicode) can "easily" overcome.
> As it stands, it's too painful to use LyX for multilingual
> documents that way, where the second language does not use a Latin
> alphabet.
Actually, it's no problem in the (worldwide more common) case that the
*second* language uses a non-Latin alphabet (like Greek words in German
text). The other way round is the problem.
> I suppose most people can't really comprehend the painfulness
> of this because their language is based on the Latin alphabet and
> Alt+Shift does the right thing for them.
This might be one of the reasons for this feature still missing in LyX.
After all, LyX is a project by volunteers that need to be interested in
fixing this by one of
* own need for the feature,
* "scientific", "sportive" or some other interest in solving the problem,
* financial stimulus.
So, a first step towards a solution would be to file an enhancement
report to bugzilla.lyx.org that gets the developers interested.
A second step would be getting involved with the development and e.g.
provide a patch for unicodesymbols or a "greek.kmap" file that translates
Latin input to Greek Unicodechars for LyX.
Günter
