subject:"Re\: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question"


Le 19/07/2011 03:21, Uwe Stöhr a écrit :

This doesn't help, because in some cases you need the feature that LyX
does not add nothing, no par break and also no newline but to continue
with the code right after the command.


Looks like a very badly coded macro, then. It might be easier to fix the 
problem there.



Richard is right that InsetLayout
is designed for this, but this is only usable if InsetLayout supports
also arguments. It is not yet clear to me why this is not supported. I'm
not familiar with the layout code but I assumed that it should not be
very hard to implement. Would at least be a very valuable feature for
LyX 2.1.


Yes, it should be done eventually, and it is not very difficult. 
However, I think it would be better to factor in the two cases, rather 
then duplicating code (with subtly different bugs :)


JMarc

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question


Am 19.07.2011 10:15, schrieb Jean-Marc Lasgouttes:


This doesn't help, because in some cases you need the feature that LyX
does not add nothing, no par break and also no newline but to continue
with the code right after the command.


Looks like a very badly coded macro, then.


No, these cases occur often. They are also not badly coded but standard and valid LaTeX that 
commands affect the paragraph they are in.


As said, we already support such LaTeX commands via InsetLayout, but we need to add for InsetLayout 
also the support of arguments.



Richard is right that InsetLayout
is designed for this, but this is only usable if InsetLayout supports
also arguments. It is not yet clear to me why this is not supported. I'm
not familiar with the layout code but I assumed that it should not be
very hard to implement. Would at least be a very valuable feature for
LyX 2.1.


Yes, it should be done eventually, and it is not very difficult. However, I 
think it would be better
to factor in the two cases, rather then duplicating code (with subtly different 
bugs :)


Will you do this or is this something for Richard? Should I open an enhancement 
bug report?

regards Uwe

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question


Le 19/07/2011 13:47, Uwe Stöhr a écrit :

No, these cases occur often. They are also not badly coded but
standard and valid LaTeX that commands affect the paragraph they are in.


What typical examples do you have in mind?

JMarc

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question


Le 19/07/2011 13:47, Uwe Stöhr a écrit :

Yes, it should be done eventually, and it is not very difficult.
However, I think it would be better
to factor in the two cases, rather then duplicating code (with subtly
different bugs :)


Will you do this or is this something for Richard? Should I open an
enhancement bug report?


I do not think I will have time to do it, unfortunately.

JMarc

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question


Am 19.07.2011 14:23, schrieb Jean-Marc Lasgouttes:


Le 19/07/2011 13:47, Uwe Stöhr a écrit :

No, these cases occur often. They are also not badly coded but
standard and valid LaTeX that commands affect the paragraph they are in.


What typical examples do you have in mind?


Pictures in paragraphs (e.g. via picins, picinpar), wrapped floats, initials, email commands, 
address formatting commands, various scientific paper titling commands, ...


regards Uwe

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question


Le 19/07/2011 14:28, Uwe Stöhr a écrit :

Pictures in paragraphs (e.g. via picins, picinpar), wrapped floats,
initials, email commands, address formatting commands, various
scientific paper titling commands, ...


Most of these are indeed part of a paragraph an thus should be handled 
by custom insets. There is no point to change normal layouts for them.


JMarc

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question


Am 19.07.2011 14:38, schrieb Jean-Marc Lasgouttes:


Most of these are indeed part of a paragraph an thus should be handled by 
custom insets. There is no
point to change normal layouts for them.


Yes, we already agree here. The only pint is that InsetLayout (a.k.a. flex inset) does not yet 
support arguments, but we need this for many cases. For example many paper titling commands support 
optional arguments (for second authors, reviewers, editors), and some of our templates/example files 
look currently a bit ugly in LyX with some TeX code because of the missing argument support.


regards Uwe

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question

On 07/19/2011 08:25 AM, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
 Le 19/07/2011 13:47, Uwe Stöhr a écrit :
 Yes, it should be done eventually, and it is not very difficult.
 However, I think it would be better
 to factor in the two cases, rather then duplicating code (with subtly
 different bugs :)

 Will you do this or is this something for Richard? Should I open an
 enhancement bug report?

 I do not think I will have time to do it, unfortunately.

I'm still hoping to do some major reworking of how arguments are
handled, i.e., get rid of that inset. It should be easy to include this
for InsetLayout.

Richard

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question


Am 19.07.2011 15:08, schrieb Richard Heck:


I'm still hoping to do some major reworking of how arguments are
handled, i.e., get rid of that inset.


What do you have in mind instead? I have now a lot of experience with it and find the current 
implementation acceptable, except of these 2 things:


- the menu entry must read optional Argument, not short title (this is misleading and this 
appears often at the users list that people are confused, a short title is only ONE occurrence of 
optional arguments
- If there is a mandatory argument, the inset should appear directly when using the style and it 
must not be allowed to delete this inset; this inset should have the label req (for required) and 
not opt.


Should I store thesesuggestions in an enhancement request?

regards Uwe

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question

On 07/19/2011 09:58 AM, Uwe Stöhr wrote:
 Am 19.07.2011 15:08, schrieb Richard Heck:

 I'm still hoping to do some major reworking of how arguments are
 handled, i.e., get rid of that inset.

 What do you have in mind instead? I have now a lot of experience with
 it and find the current implementation acceptable, except of these 2
 things:

 - the menu entry must read optional Argument, not short title (this
 is misleading and this appears often at the users list that people are
 confused, a short title is only ONE occurrence of optional arguments

It's much less clear how you can label different insets differently.
E.g., if there is one required argument and one optional one. Now what?

 - If there is a mandatory argument, the inset should appear directly
 when using the style and it must not be allowed to delete this inset;
 this inset should have the label req (for required) and not opt.

This is bigger the problem. It's like with Bibitems, which are a mess.
You have to make sure no one deletes it, or moves it, or tries to type
in front of it. It's just not an inset.

The idea is to let arguments be typed into some sort of dialog, e.g., in
a new Arguments pane of the paragraph settings dialog. This is easy,
except for the fact that we want people to be able to type LyX, not
LaTeX, which means using the sort of embedded buffer that's used in the
advanced FR dialog. That will take more work.

Richard

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question

2011-07-19 Thread Jürgen Spitzmüller

Richard Heck wrote:
  - the menu entry must read optional Argument, not short title (this
  is misleading and this appears often at the users list that people are
  confused, a short title is only ONE occurrence of optional arguments
 
 It's much less clear how you can label different insets differently.
 E.g., if there is one required argument and one optional one. Now what?

And that's why it should not be labelled optional or required argument, 
but it should be semantically precise. Short title is (for the case the 
inset was initially developed). Longest label is as well. LyX should tell 
the user what this argument does, not just that it is an optional argument. 
This is possible with some extended argument definition in the layout file. 
Instead of

OptionalArgs 2

do something like

Argument
Type   optional
   Order  1
   Label  Short title in TOC
EndArgument

Argument
Type   optional
   Order  2
   Label  Short title in header
EndArgument

  - If there is a mandatory argument, the inset should appear directly
  when using the style and it must not be allowed to delete this inset;
  this inset should have the label req (for required) and not opt.
 
 This is bigger the problem. It's like with Bibitems, which are a mess.
 You have to make sure no one deletes it, or moves it, or tries to type
 in front of it. It's just not an inset.

Yes, this is not possible in a sane way with a collapsable inset.

 The idea is to let arguments be typed into some sort of dialog, e.g., in
 a new Arguments pane of the paragraph settings dialog. 

Also consider that we already have this. Longest label in the paragraph 
dialog is just another implementation of a specific (required) argument. We 
just need to extend this concept.

 This is easy,
 except for the fact that we want people to be able to type LyX, not
 LaTeX, which means using the sort of embedded buffer that's used in the
 advanced FR dialog. That will take more work.

Yes, but it's possible.

Jürgen

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question

Am 19.07.2011 16:38, schrieb Richard Heck:

- the menu entry must read optional Argument, not short title (this
is misleading and this appears often at the users list that people are
confused, a short title is only ONE occurrence of optional arguments

It's much less clear how you can label different insets differently.
E.g., if there is one required argument and one optional one. Now what?

This is my second suggestion. To sum it up here in better words:

- When a style has a mandatory argument and th user use it, its argument appears automatically. This
inset can but must not be collapsible. The important thing is that is appears automatically and that
the user cannot delete it. As there is no choice to use it or not, we don't need a menu entry or not.

When a style has 2 or more mandatory arguments, the defined number of mandatory
insets appears.

- the optional argument can sty as it is, only its menu entry in the Insert
menu must be changed.

So assuming we have a command

\blahblub[alignment]{number of line}{width}

we define the style for it as follows in the layout file (in pseudo code):

Style
LatexNameblahblub
Labelstring BlaBlah:
RequiredArgs 2
OptionalArgs 1
DefaultReqValue1 1
DefaultReqValue2 1cm
DefaultOptValue1

When the style is used in a document you get this:

BlaBlah: |1||1cm|

where | | represents a required argument inset.

It is important that we can define a default value or mandatory arguments because some commands
don't like when there is no content in them. We therefore make a proposal to prevent that the user
forgets to insert something there. But the user can delete the default content when he like to keep
it empty for some reason.

I hope this is now clearer to understand what I have in mind.

The idea is to let arguments be typed into some sort of dialog, e.g., in
a new Arguments pane of the paragraph settings dialog.

This won't work because one must be able to insert all stuff to arguments. For example it must be
possible to use an equation, a figure or whatever as argument. There are commend who require this
(for example the package picinpar provides commands whost mandatory arguments are tables or figures).
Therefore the current implementation of the optional argument is already perfect (and one use TeX
Code with them too). So we only need a second inset for mandatory arguments with the same
possibilities in inserting stuff to it, but with the additional features I described above.

regards Uwe

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question

On 07/19/2011 12:54 PM, Uwe Stöhr wrote:
 Am 19.07.2011 16:38, schrieb Richard Heck:

 - the menu entry must read optional Argument, not short title (this
 is misleading and this appears often at the users list that people are
 confused, a short title is only ONE occurrence of optional arguments

 It's much less clear how you can label different insets differently.
 E.g., if there is one required argument and one optional one. Now what?

 This is my second suggestion. To sum it up here in better words:

 - When a style has a mandatory argument and th user use it, its
 argument appears automatically. This inset can but must not be
 collapsible. The important thing is that is appears automatically and
 that the user cannot delete it. As there is no choice to use it or
 not, we don't need a menu entry or not.
 When a style has 2 or more mandatory arguments, the defined number of
 mandatory insets appears.

I understand the idea, but it would make the Bibitem mess look neat.

 - the optional argument can sty as it is, only its menu entry in the
 Insert menu must be changed.

There can be more than one optional argument. Think about beamer.

 The idea is to let arguments be typed into some sort of dialog, e.g., in
 a new Arguments pane of the paragraph settings dialog.

 This won't work because one must be able to insert all stuff to
 arguments. For example it must be possible to use an equation, a
 figure or whatever as argument. There are commend who require this
 (for example the package picinpar provides commands whost mandatory
 arguments are tables or figures).

This is why you use an embedded Buffer, like with FR.

 Therefore the current implementation of the optional argument is
 already perfect (and one use TeX Code with them too). So we only need
 a second inset for mandatory arguments with the same possibilities in
 inserting stuff to it, but with the additional features I described
 above.

As I said, I understand what you want, but it is not practical to do it
with insets.

Here's another idea I had, though I don't know how hard it would be to
implement. The idea would be to have fake insets. They would get drawn
like insets, but they would actually be attached to the paragraph and
wouldn't correspond to characters. You might think of them as existing
in the paragraph's margin.

Richard

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question

Am 19.07.2011 19:33, schrieb Richard Heck:

I understand the idea, but it would make the Bibitem mess look neat.

What do you mean?

- the optional argument can sty as it is, only its menu entry in the
Insert menu must be changed.

There can be more than one optional argument. Think about beamer.

Sure and it is no problem of allowing to insert more then one optional argument to a style. We
already have the infrastructure. What is missing is the layout code that allows to define more than
one optional argument. I would implement this the same way as in my example for 2 mandatory arguments.

The idea is to let arguments be typed into some sort of dialog, e.g., in
a new Arguments pane of the paragraph settings dialog.

This is why you use an embedded Buffer, like with FR.

But why not usig what we already have as optional argument inset. It allwas to insert there
everything the LyX way. And it is more intuitive than a dialog. Moreover a dialog would be a
restriction you don't see at one sight the different arguments and we need arguments for everything,
styles as well as InsetLayouts and LaTeX commands can be used for so many things we can not even
imagine.

Therefore the current implementation of the optional argument is
already perfect (and one use TeX Code with them too). So we only need
a second inset for mandatory arguments with the same possibilities in
inserting stuff to it, but with the additional features I described
above.

As I said, I understand what you want, but it is not practical to do it
with insets.

Why not?

Here's another idea I had, though I don't know how hard it would be to
implement. The idea would be to have fake insets. They would get drawn
like insets, but they would actually be attached to the paragraph and
wouldn't correspond to characters.

It seems we are talking about different things. I want to have an implementation where I can define
styles for every sort of LaTeX commands with several optional and mandatory arguments. And no matter
if the LaTeX command represents a paragraph or not.

I do not need a special hack to attach something to a paragraph. This was a special issue I stumbled
over and why I started this thread. I think we already came yet to the conclusion that we only need
the same features for InsetLayouts as for styles. In the case which I started the discussion, the
problem would already be solved, if InsetLayout supports arguments like styles already do.

So my last two posts were about how to further improve the argument support.

regards Uwe

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question

On 07/19/2011 01:49 PM, Uwe Stöhr wrote:
 Am 19.07.2011 19:33, schrieb Richard Heck:

 I understand the idea, but it would make the Bibitem mess look neat.

 What do you mean?

The InsetBibitem code is a complete disaster. There are all kinds of
bugs associated with it, because we are trying to use an inset to do
something an inset shouldn't really be doing. You have all the same
problems: Don't delete it; keep it at the beginning; etc, etc. There's
all kinds of fragile, special purpose code to deal with this issue.
Trying to manage more than one of these things would be a nightmare, and
we don't even do it correctly for the optional argument inset we have.
Are you aware that these insets can appear anywhere in a paragraph? You
can even paste them into paragraphs that don't allow them, and you can
paste in extra ones, if you wish. Of course, they won't do anything then
but clutter your screen. To deal with this problem, you'd need the same
sort of bug-ridden code we have with InsetBibitem.

Even independent of the issues you're raising, the optional argument
inset should go.

 - the optional argument can sty as it is, only its menu entry in the
 Insert menu must be changed.

 There can be more than one optional argument. Think about beamer.

 Sure and it is no problem of allowing to insert more then one optional
 argument to a style. We already have the infrastructure. What is
 missing is the layout code that allows to define more than one
 optional argument. I would implement this the same way as in my
 example for 2 mandatory arguments.

You can define as many optional arguments as you want now. Of course,
they're all called Short Title, which we agree is a problem.

 The idea is to let arguments be typed into some sort of dialog,
 e.g., in
 a new Arguments pane of the paragraph settings dialog.

 This won't work because one must be able to insert all stuff to
 arguments. For example it must be possible to use an equation, a
 figure or whatever as argument. There are commend who require this
 (for example the package picinpar provides commands whost mandatory
 arguments are tables or figures).

 This is why you use an embedded Buffer, like with FR.

 But why not usig what we already have as optional argument inset. It
 allwas to insert there everything the LyX way. And it is more
 intuitive than a dialog. Moreover a dialog would be a restriction you
 don't see at one sight the different arguments and we need arguments
 for everything, styles as well as InsetLayouts and LaTeX commands can
 be used for so many things we can not even imagine.

A dialog keeps everything in one place, and could even allow the use,
say, of our length combo when the argument expects a length, and who
knows what else. The problem of the arguments not being visible is one
that can be addressed.

 Therefore the current implementation of the optional argument is
 already perfect (and one use TeX Code with them too). So we only need
 a second inset for mandatory arguments with the same possibilities in
 inserting stuff to it, but with the additional features I described
 above.

 As I said, I understand what you want, but it is not practical to do it
 with insets.

 Why not?

See above.

 Here's another idea I had, though I don't know how hard it would be to
 implement. The idea would be to have fake insets. They would get drawn
 like insets, but they would actually be attached to the paragraph and
 wouldn't correspond to characters.

 It seems we are talking about different things. I want to have an
 implementation where I can define styles for every sort of LaTeX
 commands with several optional and mandatory arguments. And no matter
 if the LaTeX command represents a paragraph or not.

Yes, of course. The same sort of thing can be done with other insets.

Richard

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question


Le 19/07/2011 03:21, Uwe Stöhr a écrit :

This doesn't help, because in some cases you need the feature that LyX
does not add nothing, no par break and also no newline but to continue
with the code right after the command.


Looks like a very badly coded macro, then. It might be easier to fix the 
problem there.



Richard is right that InsetLayout
is designed for this, but this is only usable if InsetLayout supports
also arguments. It is not yet clear to me why this is not supported. I'm
not familiar with the layout code but I assumed that it should not be
very hard to implement. Would at least be a very valuable feature for
LyX 2.1.


Yes, it should be done eventually, and it is not very difficult. 
However, I think it would be better to factor in the two cases, rather 
then duplicating code (with subtly different bugs :)


JMarc

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question


Am 19.07.2011 10:15, schrieb Jean-Marc Lasgouttes:


This doesn't help, because in some cases you need the feature that LyX
does not add nothing, no par break and also no newline but to continue
with the code right after the command.


Looks like a very badly coded macro, then.


No, these cases occur often. They are also not "badly coded" but standard and valid LaTeX that 
commands affect the paragraph they are in.


As said, we already support such LaTeX commands via InsetLayout, but we need to add for InsetLayout 
also the support of arguments.



Richard is right that InsetLayout
is designed for this, but this is only usable if InsetLayout supports
also arguments. It is not yet clear to me why this is not supported. I'm
not familiar with the layout code but I assumed that it should not be
very hard to implement. Would at least be a very valuable feature for
LyX 2.1.


Yes, it should be done eventually, and it is not very difficult. However, I 
think it would be better
to factor in the two cases, rather then duplicating code (with subtly different 
bugs :)


Will you do this or is this something for Richard? Should I open an enhancement 
bug report?

regards Uwe

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question


Le 19/07/2011 13:47, Uwe Stöhr a écrit :

No, these cases occur often. They are also not "badly coded" but
standard and valid LaTeX that commands affect the paragraph they are in.


What typical examples do you have in mind?

JMarc

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question


Le 19/07/2011 13:47, Uwe Stöhr a écrit :

Yes, it should be done eventually, and it is not very difficult.
However, I think it would be better
to factor in the two cases, rather then duplicating code (with subtly
different bugs :)


Will you do this or is this something for Richard? Should I open an
enhancement bug report?


I do not think I will have time to do it, unfortunately.

JMarc

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question


Am 19.07.2011 14:23, schrieb Jean-Marc Lasgouttes:


Le 19/07/2011 13:47, Uwe Stöhr a écrit :

No, these cases occur often. They are also not "badly coded" but
standard and valid LaTeX that commands affect the paragraph they are in.


What typical examples do you have in mind?


Pictures in paragraphs (e.g. via picins, picinpar), wrapped floats, initials, email commands, 
address formatting commands, various scientific paper titling commands, ...


regards Uwe

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question


Le 19/07/2011 14:28, Uwe Stöhr a écrit :

Pictures in paragraphs (e.g. via picins, picinpar), wrapped floats,
initials, email commands, address formatting commands, various
scientific paper titling commands, ...


Most of these are indeed part of a paragraph an thus should be handled 
by custom insets. There is no point to change normal layouts for them.


JMarc

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question


Am 19.07.2011 14:38, schrieb Jean-Marc Lasgouttes:


Most of these are indeed part of a paragraph an thus should be handled by 
custom insets. There is no
point to change normal layouts for them.


Yes, we already agree here. The only pint is that InsetLayout (a.k.a. flex inset) does not yet 
support arguments, but we need this for many cases. For example many paper titling commands support 
optional arguments (for second authors, reviewers, editors), and some of our templates/example files 
look currently a bit ugly in LyX with some TeX code because of the missing argument support.


regards Uwe

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question

On 07/19/2011 08:25 AM, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
> Le 19/07/2011 13:47, Uwe Stöhr a écrit :
>>> Yes, it should be done eventually, and it is not very difficult.
>>> However, I think it would be better
>>> to factor in the two cases, rather then duplicating code (with subtly
>>> different bugs :)
>>
>> Will you do this or is this something for Richard? Should I open an
>> enhancement bug report?
>
> I do not think I will have time to do it, unfortunately.
>
I'm still hoping to do some major reworking of how arguments are
handled, i.e., get rid of that inset. It should be easy to include this
for InsetLayout.

Richard

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question


Am 19.07.2011 15:08, schrieb Richard Heck:


I'm still hoping to do some major reworking of how arguments are
handled, i.e., get rid of that inset.


What do you have in mind instead? I have now a lot of experience with it and find the current 
implementation acceptable, except of these 2 things:


- the menu entry must read "optional Argument, not "short title" (this is misleading and this 
appears often at the users list that people are confused, a short title is only ONE occurrence of 
optional arguments
- If there is a mandatory argument, the inset should appear directly when using the style and it 
must not be allowed to delete this inset; this inset should have the label "req" (for required) and 
not "opt".


Should I store thesesuggestions in an enhancement request?

regards Uwe

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question

On 07/19/2011 09:58 AM, Uwe Stöhr wrote:
> Am 19.07.2011 15:08, schrieb Richard Heck:
>
>> I'm still hoping to do some major reworking of how arguments are
>> handled, i.e., get rid of that inset.
>
> What do you have in mind instead? I have now a lot of experience with
> it and find the current implementation acceptable, except of these 2
> things:
>
> - the menu entry must read "optional Argument, not "short title" (this
> is misleading and this appears often at the users list that people are
> confused, a short title is only ONE occurrence of optional arguments
>
It's much less clear how you can label different insets differently.
E.g., if there is one required argument and one optional one. Now what?

> - If there is a mandatory argument, the inset should appear directly
> when using the style and it must not be allowed to delete this inset;
> this inset should have the label "req" (for required) and not "opt".
>
This is bigger the problem. It's like with Bibitems, which are a mess.
You have to make sure no one deletes it, or moves it, or tries to type
in front of it. It's just not an inset.

The idea is to let arguments be typed into some sort of dialog, e.g., in
a new Arguments pane of the paragraph settings dialog. This is easy,
except for the fact that we want people to be able to type LyX, not
LaTeX, which means using the sort of embedded buffer that's used in the
advanced F dialog. That will take more work.

Richard

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question

2011-07-19 Thread Jürgen Spitzmüller

Richard Heck wrote:
> > - the menu entry must read "optional Argument, not "short title" (this
> > is misleading and this appears often at the users list that people are
> > confused, a short title is only ONE occurrence of optional arguments
> 
> It's much less clear how you can label different insets differently.
> E.g., if there is one required argument and one optional one. Now what?

And that's why it should not be labelled "optional" or "required argument", 
but it should be semantically precise. "Short title" is (for the case the 
inset was initially developed). "Longest label" is as well. LyX should tell 
the user what this argument does, not just that it is an optional argument. 
This is possible with some extended argument definition in the layout file. 
Instead of

OptionalArgs 2

do something like

Argument
Type   optional
   Order  1
   Label  "Short title in TOC"
EndArgument

Argument
Type   optional
   Order  2
   Label  "Short title in header"
EndArgument

> > - If there is a mandatory argument, the inset should appear directly
> > when using the style and it must not be allowed to delete this inset;
> > this inset should have the label "req" (for required) and not "opt".
> 
> This is bigger the problem. It's like with Bibitems, which are a mess.
> You have to make sure no one deletes it, or moves it, or tries to type
> in front of it. It's just not an inset.

Yes, this is not possible in a sane way with a collapsable inset.

> The idea is to let arguments be typed into some sort of dialog, e.g., in
> a new Arguments pane of the paragraph settings dialog. 

Also consider that we already have this. "Longest label" in the paragraph 
dialog is just another implementation of a specific (required) argument. We 
just need to extend this concept.

> This is easy,
> except for the fact that we want people to be able to type LyX, not
> LaTeX, which means using the sort of embedded buffer that's used in the
> advanced F dialog. That will take more work.

Yes, but it's possible.

Jürgen

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question

Am 19.07.2011 16:38, schrieb Richard Heck:

- the menu entry must read "optional Argument, not "short title" (this
is misleading and this appears often at the users list that people are
confused, a short title is only ONE occurrence of optional arguments

It's much less clear how you can label different insets differently.
E.g., if there is one required argument and one optional one. Now what?

This is my second suggestion. To sum it up here in better words:

When a style has 2 or more mandatory arguments, the defined number of mandatory
insets appears.

- the optional argument can sty as it is, only its menu entry in the Insert
menu must be changed.

So assuming we have a command

\blahblub[alignment]{number of line}{width}

we define the style for it as follows in the layout file (in pseudo code):

Style
LatexNameblahblub
Labelstring "BlaBlah: "
RequiredArgs 2
OptionalArgs 1
DefaultReqValue1 "1"
DefaultReqValue2 "1cm"
DefaultOptValue1 ""

When the style is used in a document you get this:

BlaBlah: |1||1cm|

where "| |" represents a required argument inset.

I hope this is now clearer to understand what I have in mind.

The idea is to let arguments be typed into some sort of dialog, e.g., in
a new Arguments pane of the paragraph settings dialog.

regards Uwe

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question

On 07/19/2011 12:54 PM, Uwe Stöhr wrote:
> Am 19.07.2011 16:38, schrieb Richard Heck:
>
>>> - the menu entry must read "optional Argument, not "short title" (this
>>> is misleading and this appears often at the users list that people are
>>> confused, a short title is only ONE occurrence of optional arguments
>>>
>> It's much less clear how you can label different insets differently.
>> E.g., if there is one required argument and one optional one. Now what?
>
> This is my second suggestion. To sum it up here in better words:
>
> - When a style has a mandatory argument and th user use it, its
> argument appears automatically. This inset can but must not be
> collapsible. The important thing is that is appears automatically and
> that the user cannot delete it. As there is no choice to use it or
> not, we don't need a menu entry or not.
> When a style has 2 or more mandatory arguments, the defined number of
> mandatory insets appears.
>
I understand the idea, but it would make the Bibitem mess look neat.

> - the optional argument can sty as it is, only its menu entry in the
> Insert menu must be changed.
>
There can be more than one optional argument. Think about beamer.

>> The idea is to let arguments be typed into some sort of dialog, e.g., in
>> a new Arguments pane of the paragraph settings dialog.
>
> This won't work because one must be able to insert all stuff to
> arguments. For example it must be possible to use an equation, a
> figure or whatever as argument. There are commend who require this
> (for example the package picinpar provides commands whost mandatory
> arguments are tables or figures).
>
This is why you use an embedded Buffer, like with F

> Therefore the current implementation of the optional argument is
> already perfect (and one use TeX Code with them too). So we only need
> a second inset for mandatory arguments with the same possibilities in
> inserting stuff to it, but with the additional features I described
> above.
>
As I said, I understand what you want, but it is not practical to do it
with insets.

Here's another idea I had, though I don't know how hard it would be to
implement. The idea would be to have "fake" insets. They would get drawn
like insets, but they would actually be attached to the paragraph and
wouldn't correspond to characters. You might think of them as existing
in the paragraph's margin.

Richard

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question

Am 19.07.2011 19:33, schrieb Richard Heck:

I understand the idea, but it would make the Bibitem mess look neat.

What do you mean?

- the optional argument can sty as it is, only its menu entry in the
Insert menu must be changed.

There can be more than one optional argument. Think about beamer.

The idea is to let arguments be typed into some sort of dialog, e.g., in
a new Arguments pane of the paragraph settings dialog.

This is why you use an embedded Buffer, like with F

As I said, I understand what you want, but it is not practical to do it
with insets.

Why not?

Here's another idea I had, though I don't know how hard it would be to
implement. The idea would be to have "fake" insets. They would get drawn
like insets, but they would actually be attached to the paragraph and
wouldn't correspond to characters.

So my last two posts were about how to further improve the argument support.

regards Uwe

Re: Missing features in Flex insets and style definition question