Re: feature request: edit tex files
On 1. Nov 2010, at 14:22, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote: Yann Disser wrote: Your arguments make sense. However, I think many people must have my problem. Perhaps it would be sufficient to provide a way to keep the .lyx file and the .tex file in sync. Whenever one of the two would get changed, lyx would automatically import/export. This approach would then work for all file formats for which there is an import and an export handler. It would make my life dramatically easier when trying to collaborate via svn/git/... Of course, the approach has limitations, like what to do, if both files get modified at the same time. Also it does not deal with the preamble problem. But I think, even ignoring these things (by asking the user which file to take over), the feature would be incredibly helpful. What do you think? I agree it would be nice. But it's almost impossible. The problem is that (La)TeX provides multiple ways (packages) for achieving the same thing. LyX will never be able to support them all, so either your LaTeX collaborators will needs to know what LyX supports (which is not what they will want to know) or the LyX file will be cluttered with ERT. Also, some of the non-tex- relevant information will get lost on the way. So, like Pavel already notes, if you collaborate intensely with LaTeX users, using a LaTeX editor is probably much more adequate. Jürgen What would also already be very helpful would be the ability to export not the entire document, but only the part which is currently selected (we usually have one .tex file per chapter/section). At the moment I am doing this by copy-pasting from the source view to a text editor. But exporting individual parts, say sections/tables/etc..., might be very useful not only for me. And it should not be so difficult to implement, right? I am thinking about a checkbox in the export dialog à la export selection only. Yann
Re: feature request: edit tex files
On 1. Nov 2010, at 14:22, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote: > Yann Disser wrote: >> Your arguments make sense. However, I think many people must have my >> problem. Perhaps it would be sufficient to provide a way to keep the .lyx >> file and the .tex file in sync. Whenever one of the two would get changed, >> lyx would automatically import/export. This approach would then work for >> all file formats for which there is an import and an export handler. It >> would make my life dramatically easier when trying to collaborate via >> svn/git/... >> >> Of course, the approach has limitations, like what to do, if both files get >> modified at the same time. Also it does not deal with the preamble >> problem. But I think, even ignoring these things (by asking the user which >> file to take over), the feature would be incredibly helpful. >> >> What do you think? > > I agree it would be nice. But it's almost impossible. The problem is that > (La)TeX provides multiple ways (packages) for achieving the same thing. LyX > will never be able to support them all, so either your LaTeX collaborators > will needs to know what LyX supports (which is not what they will want to > know) or the LyX file will be cluttered with ERT. Also, some of the non-tex- > relevant information will get lost on the way. > > So, like Pavel already notes, if you collaborate intensely with LaTeX users, > using a LaTeX editor is probably much more adequate. > > Jürgen What would also already be very helpful would be the ability to export not the entire document, but only the part which is currently selected (we usually have one .tex file per chapter/section). At the moment I am doing this by copy-pasting from the source view to a text editor. But exporting individual parts, say sections/tables/etc..., might be very useful not only for me. And it should not be so difficult to implement, right? I am thinking about a checkbox in the export dialog à la "export selection only". Yann
feature request: edit tex files
Hi everybody. I do not know where to post a feature request, so I send it to this list -- hope that's ok. I use LyX every day at work (doing my PhD), and I am really really happy with it! There is one thing I am missing though, since I collaborate a lot with people that I cannot convince to use LyX: It would be awesome, if I could edit .tex files directly with LyX, instead of going through an import-export cycle every time. First of all, import/export changes the preamble, which might be strange to the guy who wrote it. And second, we usually work with svn, and there is no safe way of merging the export with other people's commit. At the moment, I do svn up, then I import, then I edit, then I export somewhere else, then I copy the tex-body only and paste it to the original document, and finally I do an svn up/commit to merge with other changes. To repeat this many times a day can become quite tedious... So in short: Please add a feature to edit .tex files directly. If possible, even files that only contain a section (without preamble whatsoever) to be included elsewhere. Thanks a lot and keep up the good work, Yann PS.: If this is not the place to post feature requests, please point me to where I should have put it.
Re: feature request: edit tex files
On 1. Nov 2010, at 12:51, Richard Heck wrote: On 11/01/2010 05:38 AM, Yann Disser wrote: Hi everybody. I do not know where to post a feature request, so I send it to this list -- hope that's ok. I use LyX every day at work (doing my PhD), and I am really really happy with it! There is one thing I am missing though, since I collaborate a lot with people that I cannot convince to use LyX: It would be awesome, if I could edit .tex files directly with LyX, instead of going through an import-export cycle every time. This is a very old request, and there is a bug in trac about it. If you search the list, you'll find lots of discussion of it, at various times. It is very non-trivial. Richard Thanks for your reply. I am sorry for duplicating a feature request, I did not take the time to look through existing ones... I hope that eventually somebody will implement it, though I can imagine it being non-trivial. Yann
Re: feature request: edit tex files
On 1. Nov 2010, at 13:19, Richard Heck wrote: On 11/01/2010 07:56 AM, Yann Disser wrote: Thanks for your reply. I am sorry for duplicating a feature request, I did not take the time to look through existing ones... Not a problem. I just meant it wasn't something we'd overlooked. I hope that eventually somebody will implement it, though I can imagine it being non-trivial. Well, we'd love to implement it. But the problem isn't that no-one has time. It's that it is very hard, and our TeX import routine doesn't even produce the same file format that LyX currently reads. It's a mess. Richard I wish I had time to help you with that (sounds like fun ;-) )... Perhaps sometime in the future. Yann
Re: feature request: edit tex files
On 1. Nov 2010, at 14:42, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote: Yann Disser wrote: I wish I had time to help you with that (sounds like fun ;-) )... Perhaps sometime in the future. Don't count on it. We have many reasons for not using the tex file format natively. For instance, LyX is storing some information for which no tex syntax exists (and which does not make sense for tex files). Also, LyX does not only output tex, but also DocBook and XHTML, for instance. So tex is just one output format, albeit the most frequently used (and the best working). It's more likely that LyX will change to some XML-kind of format eventually. Of course, we will try to improve the lyx-tex import and export chain as much as possible. Jürgen Your arguments make sense. However, I think many people must have my problem. Perhaps it would be sufficient to provide a way to keep the .lyx file and the .tex file in sync. Whenever one of the two would get changed, lyx would automatically import/export. This approach would then work for all file formats for which there is an import and an export handler. It would make my life dramatically easier when trying to collaborate via svn/git/... Of course, the approach has limitations, like what to do, if both files get modified at the same time. Also it does not deal with the preamble problem. But I think, even ignoring these things (by asking the user which file to take over), the feature would be incredibly helpful. What do you think? Yann
Re: feature request: edit tex files
On 1. Nov 2010, at 14:09, Pavel Sanda wrote: Yann Disser wrote: Your arguments make sense. However, I think many people must have my problem. Perhaps it would be sufficient to provide a way to keep the .lyx file and the .tex file in sync. Whenever one of the two would get changed, lyx would automatically import/export. This approach would then work for all file formats for which there is an import and an export handler. It would make my life dramatically easier when trying to collaborate via svn/git/... you are right that many people complain about this. but the basic problem is that lyx is not good tool for your task. if you need to cooperate with .tex-only people the last thing is to use lyx for it. change tracking this way must be nightmare indeed. pavel Well, as I said, with automatic sync I do not think it would be so much of a nightmare anymore. And, for me at least, editing formula-heavy .tex is also not very enjoyable. Yann
feature request: edit tex files
Hi everybody. I do not know where to post a feature request, so I send it to this list -- hope that's ok. I use LyX every day at work (doing my PhD), and I am really really happy with it! There is one thing I am missing though, since I collaborate a lot with people that I cannot convince to use LyX: It would be awesome, if I could edit .tex files directly with LyX, instead of going through an import-export cycle every time. First of all, import/export changes the preamble, which might be strange to the guy who wrote it. And second, we usually work with svn, and there is no safe way of merging the export with other people's commit. At the moment, I do "svn up", then I import, then I edit, then I export somewhere else, then I copy the tex-body only and paste it to the original document, and finally I do an "svn up/commit" to merge with other changes. To repeat this many times a day can become quite tedious... So in short: Please add a feature to edit .tex files directly. If possible, even files that only contain a section (without preamble whatsoever) to be included elsewhere. Thanks a lot and keep up the good work, Yann PS.: If this is not the place to post feature requests, please point me to where I should have put it.
Re: feature request: edit tex files
On 1. Nov 2010, at 12:51, Richard Heck wrote: > On 11/01/2010 05:38 AM, Yann Disser wrote: >> Hi everybody. >> >> I do not know where to post a feature request, so I send it to this list -- >> hope that's ok. >> >> I use LyX every day at work (doing my PhD), and I am really really happy >> with it! >> >> There is one thing I am missing though, since I collaborate a lot with >> people that I cannot convince to use LyX: It would be awesome, if I could >> edit .tex files directly with LyX, instead of going through an import-export >> cycle every time. >> >> > This is a very old request, and there is a bug in trac about it. If you > search the list, you'll find lots of discussion of it, at various times. It > is very non-trivial. > > Richard Thanks for your reply. I am sorry for duplicating a feature request, I did not take the time to look through existing ones... I hope that eventually somebody will implement it, though I can imagine it being non-trivial. Yann
Re: feature request: edit tex files
On 1. Nov 2010, at 13:19, Richard Heck wrote: > On 11/01/2010 07:56 AM, Yann Disser wrote: >> >> Thanks for your reply. I am sorry for duplicating a feature request, I did >> not take the time to look through existing ones... >> > Not a problem. I just meant it wasn't something we'd overlooked. > >> I hope that eventually somebody will implement it, though I can imagine it >> being non-trivial. >> > Well, we'd love to implement it. But the problem isn't that no-one has time. > It's that it is very hard, and our TeX import routine doesn't even produce > the same file format that LyX currently reads. It's a mess. > > Richard > I wish I had time to help you with that (sounds like fun ;-) )... Perhaps sometime in the future. Yann
Re: feature request: edit tex files
On 1. Nov 2010, at 14:42, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote: > Yann Disser wrote: >> I wish I had time to help you with that (sounds like fun ;-) )... Perhaps >> sometime in the future. > > Don't count on it. We have many reasons for not using the tex file format > natively. For instance, LyX is storing some information for which no tex > syntax exists (and which does not make sense for tex files). Also, LyX does > not only output tex, but also DocBook and XHTML, for instance. So tex is just > one output format, albeit the most frequently used (and the best working). > > It's more likely that LyX will change to some XML-kind of format eventually. > Of course, we will try to improve the lyx<->tex import and export chain as > much as possible. > > Jürgen Your arguments make sense. However, I think many people must have my problem. Perhaps it would be sufficient to provide a way to keep the .lyx file and the .tex file in sync. Whenever one of the two would get changed, lyx would automatically import/export. This approach would then work for all file formats for which there is an import and an export handler. It would make my life dramatically easier when trying to collaborate via svn/git/... Of course, the approach has limitations, like what to do, if both files get modified at the same time. Also it does not deal with the preamble problem. But I think, even ignoring these things (by asking the user which file to take over), the feature would be incredibly helpful. What do you think? Yann
Re: feature request: edit tex files
On 1. Nov 2010, at 14:09, Pavel Sanda wrote: > Yann Disser wrote: >> Your arguments make sense. However, I think many people must have my >> problem. Perhaps it would be sufficient to provide a way to keep the .lyx >> file and the .tex file in sync. Whenever one of the two would get changed, >> lyx would automatically import/export. This approach would then work for all >> file formats for which there is an import and an export handler. It would >> make my life dramatically easier when trying to collaborate via svn/git/... > > you are right that many people complain about this. but the basic problem is > that lyx is not good tool for your task. if you need to cooperate with > .tex-only people the last thing is to use lyx for it. change tracking this way > must be nightmare indeed. > > pavel Well, as I said, with automatic sync I do not think it would be so much of a nightmare anymore. And, for me at least, editing formula-heavy .tex is also not very enjoyable. Yann
cross referencing sections
Hi everyone, I hope this is the right place to send feature requests. I have been using LyX for years and am very happy with it! It would be nice if you considered implementing the possibility of cross-referencing to sections etc without the need of inserting ugly labels - the use of labels should in my opinion be reduced to an absolute minimum. My works are often full of labels for cross-referencing to other parts of themselves (and equations and figures and tables etc). This makes the text less readable. Thanks, Yann
cross referencing sections
Hi everyone, I hope this is the right place to send feature requests. I have been using LyX for years and am very happy with it! It would be nice if you considered implementing the possibility of cross-referencing to sections etc without the need of inserting ugly labels - the use of labels should in my opinion be reduced to an absolute minimum. My works are often full of labels for cross-referencing to other parts of themselves (and equations and figures and tables etc). This makes the text less readable. Thanks, Yann
