On Monday 21 September 2009 11:34:16 rgheck wrote: > On 09/21/2009 10:27 AM, silvio grosso wrote: > > Hello everybody, > > > > I am sorry for asking such a trivial question so bear with me :-) > > In essence, I would like to know why there are not two buttons, in the > > Lyx interface, to underline or bold a text. > > > > Don't get me wrong. > > I know you can perform these two options easily with Lyx :-) > > Actually, there are really plenty of ways to do so. > > For instance, my "preferite" way (because it is fast) is to press ctr+b > > (to bold) and ctr+u (to underline). However, in my opinion, it is a bit > > "strange" to have a button in the Lyx's interface which allows to > > emphasize a text. I am referring to the one with the big E on it (its > > shortcut is ctr+e). On the other hand, there are not the two buttons > > needed to bold or underline. I suppose there is a reason for it?
[clip] > > Emphasis is semantic. It means something. So does "noun", for which > there is also a button. The others are not. LyX discourages their use; > hence the lack of a button. Of course, you could also have something > equivalent to HTML's <strong> tag, which defaults in most browsers to > boldface, and the Logical Markup module defines such a thing. But at > present there's no way for modules to add things to the toolbars. Such a > button would have to be added independently. Hi Silvio, First, your question wasn't the slightest bit trivial -- it in fact is one of the most profound questions asked here. I'd like to put even more **EMPHASIS** on what Richard said. It's my personal opinion that on any document more than five pages long, you're walking the trail of tears if you use things like "bold", "italic", "Smallcaps" and the like. This is because what you **REALLY** want to do is reveal special usage of the word(s) to the reader. If you always used italic for emphasis, you'd need to remember that and make sure you never used bold for emphasis. Here's another problem. Let's say you use Italic for emphasis, and also use Italic for the four suits of a card deck, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades and Hearts. Now you want to change the four suits to be bold. If you'd used two different character styles for the two, you'd simply change the definition of the character style. If you'd strongarmed them all to italic, you'd need to search and replace throughout the document. Emph is really a kinda sorta character style built into LyX. I'm pretty sure it can be redefined to produce bold output, or bold italic output, or Large output, or whatever you want. I know for a fact you can do that with real character styles. You noted in your original post (not quoted here) that your MS Word and Texmaker using friends have buttons for underline and bold. If they use those buttons, they've fallen into some very bad habits, because they've substituted appearance for meaning. As a document gets long and you need to maintain consistency, the only way to do that is with styles, both for paragraphs and for smaller runs of text (character styles). MS Word has excellent paragraph and character styles -- they should be used. I've used paragraph and character styles ever since Wordperfect 5.0 came out in the late 1980's. Personally, I don't use Emph, Noun (the little man on the button) or the Font button. Instead I have character styles for all. In that way, I can have styles named for their meaning and appearing how I define them to appear. That way, if 6 months after writing a book I decide that a chapter name should be large and italic instead of bold, I can make the switch in my layout file, and all chapter names will change accordingly. No discussion of this subject is complete without thanking the LyX development team for implementing character styles. Thank you! HTH, and excellent question. SteveT Steve Litt Recession Relief Package http://www.recession-relief.US Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt
