(This is probably grave-digging :P)
I left LyX (and TeX) alone since that thread. Recently I was asked to
create a paper in LaTeX and therefore looked at the LyX site again. I
saw that LyX 2.0 beta supports "XeTeX", which presumably does exactly
what I described in this thread!
So after all, thanks LyX devs! I just tried it out and indeed it works
like a charm after enabling XeTeX in the Document Settings. I can write
Latin and Greek characters at the same time without being driven insane
by constantly selecting text and switching language. :-)
On 02/17/2009 05:46 PM, Guenter Milde wrote:
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.
