Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Matej == Matej Cepl [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Matej Rich Shepard wrote:
 As long as it does not require KDE to run it's OK with me. I agree
 that

Matej You can use whichever KDE application in whatever environment
Matej if you have installed kdelibs.

I am not sure what is the current status of KDE on OSX and Windows,
but I do not think this would be considered a welcome addition in
these environments.

What we would like is something that plays well with the native
environment, be it KDE, gnome (we have a brand new gtk+ port in 1.4.x
that may or may not be ready in time), windows or OSX. I know we are
still a bit far from this.

Matej That's the question -- are we really talking about
Matej typesetting/publication system or authoring system? Or to say
Matej it more bluntly -- do we want PageMaker/FrameMaker (LaTeX
Matej based) 

We are never going to have that, since TeX is not suited to this use.

 A lot of us don't use KDE ... or Gnome, either.

Matej How big lot is this log? Does anybody know a proportion of
Matej Linux users of LyX per DE they use (KDE, Gnome, WM, something
Matej else?).

See above.

Matej Yes, but every application should have clear goal what it wants
Matej to accomplish (Do one thing and do it well.). IMHO, LyX was
Matej supposed to be first-class authoring environment for
Matej scientific/scholarly writing. What about that?

Well, I think that's still what the main goal is.

JMarc

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Matej == Matej Cepl [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Matej Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
 Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'll try to answer to some of
 your concerns.

Matej Thanks, Jean-Marc, for answering. I was really getting worried
Matej that my report about LyX's death were not that exaggerated
Matej (BTW, it is so over-quoted citation, that I was not able to
Matej google its canonical form :-), when no-one replied to my
Matej message for some time, but it was probably caused by the
Matej external factors (i.e., New Year :-).

As far as I am concerned, I answer immediately when the answer is
obvious. If I feel others will be more qualified to answer, I wait a
bit until this mailing list does its magic. If I feel qualified to
answer but it deserve some thought, I keep it for later (and
unfortunately tend to forget about it :(). You fell in this last
category... 

Matej Would you share some thoughts when 1.4.0 will go out? At least
Matej some really haphazard (but hopefully at least somehow educated)
Matej guess would be helpful.

I do not know really. Let's say a few month. It really depends on
whether some of the coders can find some time to work on it (sad,
isn't it?).

 Also, we have a growing interest for the native OSX and Windows
 versions, and I hope this is going to help attract other people to
 help.

Matej Just contrary to what Steve writes, I would think that if
Matej dropping anything then I would let XForms go and made LyX into
Matej a first-class KDE citizen.

I guess xforms will be eventually dropped, but definitely not in
1.4.x. Anyway, it is not the existence of the xforms port that slows
the development of LyX 1.4.x. Most of the problems are in the kernel
(which is now nice enough to be understandable, but still has too many
bugs). 

Matej The impulse for writing the original email (or making otherwise
Matej trivial message into this kind of long novel) was my first
Matej slightly more deep looking into OpenOffice.org. I have found
Matej two things: a) that it sucks in many more ways than I could
Matej imagine, b) it is absolutely unbelievable how easily I could
Matej change things with a little effort -- when I found myself
Matej fixing Docbook export filters (it is just a piece of XSLT after
Matej all; some 40 lines of XSLT templates gave me an export of
Matej Bibliography to docbook) and adding key shortcut support for
Matej inline styles (36 lines of StarBasic), I've got really sick
Matej from LyX that it cannot do things like that.

Adding key shortcuts to anything is doable. And we have a
command-sequence function that allows for _very_ rudimentary macros.

But the support is indeed very weak.

 char-transpose has been available since 1.2.0, I think. Of course,
 this does not mean the problem is not real.

Matej Sorry, then I've made a wrong example, but the point is still
Matej valid, IMHO.

Yes.

Matej When times when I hoped that bugs are going to be fixed, I
Matej filed some bugs about them -- 253, 

http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=253
Superfluous protecting {}

We could remove the code that adds {} before `, since it is really a
hack. I know what the ``real'' solution is, but it would be too
intrusive for my taste (at this point in development). I can try to
think of a less annoying hack.

Matej 254 (I really hate this), 

http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=254
Additional information in status bar -- biggest overfull/underfull  no. of 
pages

Number of pages should not be too difficult to add. For
overfull/underfull warnings, we need to be able to handle 'warnings'
besides errors, so that we can place them in the document where they
belong. A bit more difficult.

Matej 676, 

http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=676
LyX finds mathed start when looking for '$'

This is ``fixed'' in 1.4.0cvs because LyX does not search in mathed
anymore. 

Matej 421 (I don't care that much), 

http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=421
Export to ASCII does not export bibliography and references

It seems to be fixed now, but Jose' knows better than I do.

Matej 454 (but that is probably too big to resolved anytime soon).

Yes, this is something people have in mind, but we are not ready for
it yet.

Matej Now I would add these ones:

Matej annotations support: Guys, sneak somewhere to some Windows
Matej computer and take a look at M$-Word 2003+ and what it can do
Matej with revision marks, comments, etc. I have a tendency to write
Matej _a lot_ of comments into document I write and I want to be able
Matej to print them, but not always (when giving a draft to my
Matej supervisor for example). 

LyX 1.4.0 will have support for branches, which should fulfill this
need. There is also expanded support for notes and comments.

Matej - full-size KDE-ization, because of clipboard which sucks,
Matej missing session recovery, and other stuff, 

Session recovery seems to be something that is done at Qt level
anyway. Clipboard also, I do not think that KDEization will be a magic
bullet for 

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Juergen Spitzmueller]

Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
 Matej - documents revisions (hopefully, it is coming in 1.4.*), but
 Matej how is it going to work with RCS/CVS?

We already have document revision with RCS (the Version control feature). I 
am not sure how this can be combined with the new change tracking feature.

 The word is that change tracking is completely broken by the 1.4.0cvs
 changes and that we may have to diable it. I hope we will be able to
 do something about it...

I don't think that completely broken still holds. The assert with change 
tracking has been fixed recently, and AFAICS change tracking works quite well 
now (there are still some minor bugs and annoyances, but I think we really 
can release 1.4 with change tracking). Of course some more testing is needed.

Or do I have missed something?

Jürgen

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Juergen == Juergen Spitzmueller [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Juergen Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
Matej - documents revisions (hopefully, it is coming in 1.4.*), but
Matej how is it going to work with RCS/CVS?

Juergen We already have document revision with RCS (the Version
Juergen control feature). I am not sure how this can be combined
Juergen with the new change tracking feature.

Make a diff between two version and accept/reject some parts.

 The word is that change tracking is completely broken by the
 1.4.0cvs changes and that we may have to diable it. I hope we will
 be able to do something about it...

Juergen I don't think that completely broken still holds. The
Juergen assert with change tracking has been fixed recently, and
Juergen AFAICS change tracking works quite well now (there are still
Juergen some minor bugs and annoyances, but I think we really can
Juergen release 1.4 with change tracking). Of course some more
Juergen testing is needed.

I just repeat what John Levon said a few months ago. He seemd to thing
that there was a lot of work to do on it (maybe for undo).

JMarc

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Juergen Spitzmueller]

Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
 I just repeat what John Levon said a few months ago. He seemd to thing
 that there was a lot of work to do on it (maybe for undo).

A few months ago, change tracking was unusable because of the assert.
I haven't found any showstopper yet (except the change tracking bugs in 
bugzilla, which are also present in the 1.3-patch). That doesn't mean much, 
but at least things look better than I'd expected.

Jürgen

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Angus Leeming]

Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
 Matej Is there such list available somewhere -- I would be interested
 Matej even if it is vaporware for some time.

Lars keeps a reasonably up to date list of things he would like here:

http://www.devel.lyx.org/roadmap.php3
http://www.devel.lyx.org/tasks.php3

I don't think that there's really much difference in vapourware status 
between the two pages.

 From the top of my head...
 
 Things that should happen in 1.3.6:

[ snip ... ]

 Things that will be in 1.4.0:

[ snip ... ]

 Things that will not be in 1.4.0, but probably in 1.5.0:

[ snip ... ]

and of course the major point is this: Open Source software is *your 
software.

A good way to improve it is to make suggestions. 

A better way to improve it is to provide some code or start a discusion. 
It doesn't really matter whether you consider yourself a good coder, a 
mediocre coder or a totally clueless coder. Much of the preliminary 
development of, say, support for a scripting language will be a 
discussion of how to proceed. Feel free to start it on the lyx-devel 
mailing list.

As you have noted, this is a project with only a few active developers and 
fresh blood would undoubtedly lead to renewed vigour. All(?) of the 
existing developers are in their mid thirties and LyX is not their primary 
commitment.

So, if anyone out there is interested in improving LyX, then I'd encourage 
you to be brave and join in.

-- 
Angus

Re: No Search Replace in 1.3.5?

[Charles de Miramon]

Rich Shepard wrote:

 
However, when I press ctrl-f I see a dialog box that has two text entry
 widgets (for search string and replace string) and four buttons: Find
 next, Replace, Replace all and Close. I've used it extensively.
 Works fine.
 

I was not talking of ctrl-f but of a powerfull searchreplace where you can
search foo in emphasize style or in language Spanish, or in a footnote.

It is feature that has been asked for several years by several people. I
dont want to appear to be whining and complaining. If the LyX developpers
have not added this feature it is, I believe, because it is not easy to do
in the actual framework.

In KWord (which is not, I agree a perfect or even really functional
Wordprocessor) we have this feature. Not because, KWord has a big
development team (it is indeed less numerous than the LyX team) but because
we use the Qtextdocument class which gives us the possibility for regexp
expressions. Implementing the feature becomes much more easy, designing the
right regexp, building a usable GUI, and pluging it into the QT API
http://doc.trolltech.com/4.0/qtextdocument.html

Another example of the advantages of basing you application on a rich
framework. I've followed a conference of Lars Knoll, the Trolltech (and
KDE) developer responsible for QTextdocument. In the next version of Qt,
QTextDocument will be fully unicode. He gaves us example how fiendishly
complicated it is to create a interface to enter Unicode text, deleting,
selecting with a mouse for language like Chinese, India, etc. It is a 2
man/year job. In KWord we get all that for free.

If LyX was a KDE application, it could used the KScript class that add a
generic scripting engine for an application, reuse the plugin interface
developed for other applications, etc.

KDE or QT should not be viewed from an user point of view (I like or dislike
KDE/Gnome/Gtk ; it is too heavy, bloated, etc.) but as a successfull
development model. By building a common, rich framework that goes much
further than a set of widgets you mutualize the coding work and make it
possible for application developers to concentrate on their core business
(burning cd, listening to music, interfacing with LateX).

Cheers,
Charles 
-- 
http://www.kde-france.org

Re: No Search Replace in 1.3.5?

[Angus Leeming]

Charles de Miramon wrote:

 Rich Shepard wrote:
 
  
However, when I press ctrl-f I see a dialog box that has two text
entry
 widgets (for search string and replace string) and four buttons: Find
 next, Replace, Replace all and Close. I've used it extensively.
 Works fine.
 
 
 I was not talking of ctrl-f but of a powerfull searchreplace where you
 can search foo in emphasize style or in language Spanish, or in a
 footnote.
 
 It is feature that has been asked for several years by several people. I
 dont want to appear to be whining and complaining. If the LyX developpers
 have not added this feature it is, I believe, because it is not easy to
 do in the actual framework.
 
 In KWord (which is not, I agree a perfect or even really functional
 Wordprocessor) we have this feature. Not because, KWord has a big
 development team (it is indeed less numerous than the LyX team) but
 because we use the Qtextdocument class which gives us the possibility for
 regexp expressions. Implementing the feature becomes much more easy,
 designing the right regexp, building a usable GUI, and pluging it into
 the QT API http://doc.trolltech.com/4.0/qtextdocument.html
 
 Another example of the advantages of basing you application on a rich
 framework. I've followed a conference of Lars Knoll, the Trolltech (and
 KDE) developer responsible for QTextdocument. In the next version of Qt,
 QTextDocument will be fully unicode. He gaves us example how fiendishly
 complicated it is to create a interface to enter Unicode text, deleting,
 selecting with a mouse for language like Chinese, India, etc. It is a 2
 man/year job. In KWord we get all that for free.
 
 If LyX was a KDE application, it could used the KScript class that add a
 generic scripting engine for an application, reuse the plugin interface
 developed for other applications, etc.
 
 KDE or QT should not be viewed from an user point of view (I like or
 dislike KDE/Gnome/Gtk ; it is too heavy, bloated, etc.) but as a
 successfull development model. By building a common, rich framework that
 goes much further than a set of widgets you mutualize the coding work and
 make it possible for application developers to concentrate on their core
 business (burning cd, listening to music, interfacing with LateX).

Hi, Charles. I don't think that any of the LyX developers will disagree 
with you when you say that external libraries can provide us with powerful 
functionality for minimal cost. However, our own experience has informed 
the approach we have persued.

The original code base had GUI code intimately entwined with core 
code. It doesn't really matter whether this GUI code is XForms, Qt or 
GTK, because the primary point is that the result was an unmaintainable 
mess. Good software is modular. It means that I, a developer, don't have 
to understand *everything* in the code base to make a change. LyX has 
become more and more modular over the years.

It has also used more and more external libraries. It's just that the 
libraries we have chosen to use are primarily those of Boost rather than 
of Qt or of KDE or of GTK. LyX 1.4.x is 30% smaller than LyX 1.3.x, both 
in terms of executable size and in terms of code that must be maintained 
by the LyX developers. Nonetheless, it contains more features than LyX 
1.3.x. We could not have reached such a position without using external 
libraries heavily.

So, to return to the examples you cite. All of this functionality can be 
added to LyX. For example, see the Qt version of the CJK-LyX port if you 
want to see how easy it was to add Far Eastern language support to LyX. 
They did so by leveraging the power of the Qt library. If there were more 
LyX developers with more time, then this port could easily be merged back 
into the official LyX sources. But there aren't, so it hasn't.

I repeat Lars' statement, that we are not interested in the lowest common 
denominator. If one toolkit provides functionality that another toolkit 
doesn't, then it is still perfectly acceptable to leverage that 
functionality. It's just that we'll require the core code to be 
insulated from the details. Modular code is good code.

I also repeat my other reply to this thread: this is *your* software. If 
you want it to improve, then the best way forward is to contribute.

 Cheers,
 Charles

-- 
Angus

Re: No Search Replace in 1.3.5?

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Charles == Charles de Miramon [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Charles Rich Shepard wrote:
 However, when I press ctrl-f I see a dialog box that has two text
 entry widgets (for search string and replace string) and four
 buttons: Find next, Replace, Replace all and Close. I've
 used it extensively. Works fine.
 

Charles I was not talking of ctrl-f but of a powerfull searchreplace
Charles where you can search foo in emphasize style or in language
Charles Spanish, or in a footnote.

Charles It is feature that has been asked for several years by
Charles several people. I dont want to appear to be whining and
Charles complaining. If the LyX developpers have not added this
Charles feature it is, I believe, because it is not easy to do in the
Charles actual framework.

Actually, in 1.3.x and before, if was the mere existence of the find
function which was a difficult task :) The reason was that we had no
easy way to scan through a document, as strange as it may seem.

Now that the find function is in a better shape, adding searching for
fonts would be trivial at the data level. Of course the UI requires
more work. Searching for a regexp (on the contents of the file, not
the file format) would not be too difficult either.

Searching for text in a footnote or whatever is more work, but this is
mainly because the semantics of such search would be weird.

Charles Another example of the advantages of basing you application
Charles on a rich framework. I've followed a conference of Lars
Charles Knoll, the Trolltech (and KDE) developer responsible for
Charles QTextdocument. In the next version of Qt, QTextDocument will
Charles be fully unicode. He gaves us example how fiendishly
Charles complicated it is to create a interface to enter Unicode
Charles text, deleting, selecting with a mouse for language like
Charles Chinese, India, etc. It is a 2 man/year job. In KWord we get
Charles all that for free.

I do not know much about that, I have to admit.

Charles If LyX was a KDE application, it could used the KScript class
Charles that add a generic scripting engine for an application, reuse
Charles the plugin interface developed for other applications, etc.

What does it do beyond what other script embedding libraries do?

Charles KDE or QT should not be viewed from an user point of view (I
Charles like or dislike KDE/Gnome/Gtk ; it is too heavy, bloated,
Charles etc.) but as a successfull development model. By building a
Charles common, rich framework that goes much further than a set of
Charles widgets you mutualize the coding work 

We are all for using external libraries (boost, aspell, aiksaurus...).
But they do not _have_ to be from KDE, especially if this forces us to
go the whole way.

Charles and make it possible for application developers to
Charles concentrate on their core business (burning cd, listening to
Charles music, interfacing with LateX).

Well, our core business in LyX is not interfacing with LaTeX.
Otherwise we would just build a magic LaTeX-interface-plugin for KWord
:)

JMarc

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Charles == Charles de Miramon [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Charles Part of KDE has been ported to OSX and some are working on a
Charles Windows Port but it has not brought us any new developpers.
Charles Maybe some new users. But the classical people ready to help
Charles with an Open Source project (IT students, Hobbyist
Charles programmers, Scientist) are using Linux or one of the
Charles different BSD. Mac or Windows users are free riders.

I think Mac OS X has changed part of this equation.

Charles The Emacs-style interface is showing its age and rather weird
Charles for Windows transfuges used to MsWord. 

Emacs-style in which sense?

Charles LyX integrates quite badly with the rest of my desktop and
Charles cuttingpasting is still primitive. 

Cutting and pasting is very bad indeed.

Charles For, post 1.4.0, I think that the main goal should be to move
Charles LyX towards a plugin based application. It would lower the
Charles barrier level to scratch ones itches and map to the LateX
Charles model with its zillion extra packages. If some people have
Charles energy, it would be fun to see how hard it would be to
Charles recreate a LyX editor using the KoText library.

I am not sure how a plugin based application would solve the LaTeX
support model, actually.

JMarc

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Steve == Steve Litt [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Steve 1. No character styles (I understand this is coming in a later
Steve version). 

Yes, but in a basic form (no character style editor)

Steve 2. Paragraph styles (environments) are soo hard to
Steve construct. I understand this is more a function of LaTeX than
Steve LyX, but it's really too bad LyX doesn't give us some utilities
Steve to input font, margins, spacing, displacement and the like, and
Steve spit out code for a LyX environment, to be pasted in a .layout
Steve file. 

Yes.

Steve 3. Although I haven't perceived a lack of developer involvement
Steve or imminent death, I've wondered why so much developer effort
Steve has been diverted (my perception) to a QT front end, which in
Steve my opinion is cosmetic.

I think it is a little bit more than cosmetic, since the xforms GUI is
very crude. Even doing menus is a pain.

Steve Also, why divert developer effort to OSX and Windows, when
Steve those OS's have perfectly good book writing software already.
Steve First of all, wouldn't LyX already work with (BSD based) OSX?
Steve As far as Windows users, if they really want LyX, they can grab
Steve an old machine, slam Knoppix on it, and be running LyX tonight.
Steve I'd prioritize creating an even better 'NIX LyX over making a
Steve Windows version.

It happens that, now that we have LyX/Qt, the windows and OSX port are
really not difficult. And the people who did it are the people who
want it...

Steve I might as well also state my pet plusses about LyX:

:)

JMarc

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Bo == Bo Peng [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Bo 3. latex conversion: critical to the usability of lyx. I was
Bo frustrated when I can not import a lyx-exported latex file that
Bo has been slightly modified by my advisor. I am glad that it will
Bo get better in 1.4.

Currently, with tex2lyx we are able to do an almost perfect LyXtexLyX
roundtrip. Doing texLyXtex would be even better, but not possible in
all generality.

Bo 5. feature request: A short cut editing tool like what in KDE
Bo configuration? The ability to define shortcuts is the most useful
Bo feature of lyx to me, but not all users know \bindkey.

Yes, this would be very useful and not too difficult.

Bo 6. auto-configure (windows). I never used lyx-win but my friend
Bo installed lyx on windows and got frustrated since he could not do
Bo anything. I checked his installation and found that he needed to
Bo set pathes to all tools. (acrobad reader, xdvi, gv etc)

I think this is going to improve with the official lyx/win support. We
are going to have more developers with access to windows, I think.

Bo 7. latex syntax error: I know it is very difficult to achieve but
Bo I still hope: for whatever user can input through GUI, there
Bo should be no latex error. (I am referring to ams math stuff being
Bo used in non-ams article.)

What ams stuff do you have in mind? I am going to commit a patch for
\underrightarrow and friends, BTW.

Bo 8. file format: I also sometimes modify lyx file directly using
Bo perl but lyx format is not very easy to handle. I would prefer a
Bo XML like format.

This is in the works, but not for 1.4.0.

Bo 10. I recently encounter a small problem: if I modify file
Bo structure, I will sometimes have to remove table of content and
Bo reinsert it to make lyx compile. (I can submit a bug if this is
Bo not known).

An example would be nice. We know there are problems with this code,
but they are difficult to identify.

Bo 11. auto-completion, auto-correction: not-so-useful features but
Bo some people may like them. (I hate word when it change my i to I).

I tend to hate it too...

Bo 12. I do not know if this is possible. When I edit slides with
Bo lyx, I have to update pdf file a million times to see the output
Bo layout. Is it possible to preview a single page or at least tell
Bo me if my texts/figure exceed one page?

In 1.4.0, it will be possible to go back and forth between an xdvi
window and the corresponding LyX editing region. 

Knowing whether there is an overflow should be possible, but needs
some work, as I explained elsewhere.

Bo Finally, I would like to thank Lyx developers for their wonderful
Bo work. I was once tempted to help but my thesis is taking all my
Bo time. Currently, converting word people to lyx is all I can do for
Bo lyx.

You are welcome. Converting people is already nice.

JMarc

Re: LyX is not running with QT interface!

[chr]

On Mon, 3 Jan 2005, Yousef Raffah wrote:

 Thanks a lot guys. I guess it is an issue with the package I'm using
 or it is something with my machine.

Maybe you should send a question to the person who made the gentoo 
package? (sounds like a bug in it)

/Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44   http://www.md.kth.se/~chr

Re: Book without parts

[chr]

On Sun, 2 Jan 2005, Rich Shepard wrote:

 On Sun, 2 Jan 2005, Steve Litt wrote:
 
  I'm contemplating writing a book with 17 chapters and no parts. In other
  words, the highest level of the book is the chapter. I'd like to use the
  book document class because this is a book (expected to run around 150
  pages), and because I have a lot of experience with the book class.
 
  Any ideas?
 
 Steve,
 
With regard to what? AFAIK there's no requirement for a book to have
 parts.

I agree with Rich, although I did use parts in my thesis I can't remember 
anything that actually forced me to use parts. Sounds like it's just a 
matter of *not* inserting a Parts environment :-)

/C

-- 
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44   http://www.md.kth.se/~chr

Re: A simple question on reference citation

[chr]

On Mon, 3 Jan 2005, Wang Xiangqi wrote:

 How to change the style like [2,3,4,5,6] to [2-6] in reference ciatation?

I believe this is answered in the wiki FAQ, if you cant find it get back 
to the list. Start at http://wiki.lyx.org

/Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44   http://www.md.kth.se/~chr

LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 released

[Ruurd Reitsma]

Finally, I came around to compiling a fresh LyX for Win32. It can be found
at the usual spot:

http://www.home.zonnet.nl/rareitsma/lyx/

The Qt version is now 3.2.1 Non-Commercial. Please note that:

* The spell checking stuff has changed.
* There are some visual improvements due to the new Qt version.
* No new functionality has been added.
* Localized menus are broken for now.

Work to merge my modifications into the LyX code are underway, so more
functionality can be expected for 1.3.6/1.4

Ruurd

Re: A simple question on reference citation

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 chr == chr  [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

chr On Mon, 3 Jan 2005, Wang Xiangqi wrote:
 How to change the style like [2,3,4,5,6] to [2-6] in reference
 ciatation?

chr I believe this is answered in the wiki FAQ, if you cant find it
chr get back to the list. Start at http://wiki.lyx.org

I would add 
  \usepackage{cite}
in the LaTeX preamble.

JMarc

[off-topic] Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[chr]

The New Years spirit must be strong!

Thanks to everyone for not starting a flame war and having such a
pleasant, well mannered and constructive conversation in this thread.  
(For people who haven't followed the thread, I'm *not* being ironic here)

Happy New Year and my sincerest regards

Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44   http://www.md.kth.se/~chr

Re: Book without parts

[Steve Litt]

On Tuesday 04 January 2005 08:39 am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 On Sun, 2 Jan 2005, Rich Shepard wrote:
  On Sun, 2 Jan 2005, Steve Litt wrote:
   I'm contemplating writing a book with 17 chapters and no parts. In
   other words, the highest level of the book is the chapter. I'd like to
   use the book document class because this is a book (expected to run
   around 150 pages), and because I have a lot of experience with the book
   class.
  
   Any ideas?
 
  Steve,
 
 With regard to what? AFAIK there's no requirement for a book to have
  parts.

 I agree with Rich, although I did use parts in my thesis I can't remember
 anything that actually forced me to use parts. Sounds like it's just a
 matter of *not* inserting a Parts environment :-)

 /C

In that case, my one remainig problem is tweaking my VimOutliner to LyX 
program such that level 1 maps to chapter instead of Part. Or maybe better, 
have the level to environment mapping be a text data file so any document 
class could be accommodated.

I'll be modifying my program today. I had to change it to accommodate the 
outliner's body text anyway.

SteveT

 
Steve Litt
Founder and acting president: GoLUG
http://www.golug.org

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Charles de Miramon]

Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:


 Charles The Emacs-style interface is showing its age and rather weird
 Charles for Windows transfuges used to MsWord.
 
 Emacs-style in which sense?
 

For example the shortcuts with the quite obsolete concept of 'Meta'. I think
that LyX should show the shortcuts in the same Windowish way that Gnome or
KDE. Who is using a Sun keyboard anyway ?

For easing the learning curve for MsWord users, a Tool menu entry with
spellchecking, etc. would be be handy.


 
 I am not sure how a plugin based application would solve the LaTeX
 support model, actually.

If I could write my 300 hundreds line Python script to add a GUI for the
Frenchb babel macros that I use every day, maybe I would motivate myself to
read the big Python book I bought and never read Other would do it for
their pet LateX packages and Herbert Voss would create a gigantic pstricks
plugin :-).

Having a plugin interface is just a way to attract a different kind of
coders, people that are ready to spend a week-end on a small project but
are incapable of delving into thousands of C++ code. 

Plugins also make sense with the LateX model. If I'm using natbib, I won't
be using jurabib and vice-versa. Loading the natbib or jurabib plugin
create a more usable application than having a widget with a jurabib tab,
natbib tab, etc... 

Because, I'm never tired of making publicity for KDE, we have the new
KNewstuff library which is a framework to add a button to your application
that will connect to a server which host the plugins, new classes, etc...
and have the possibility to download them in a userfriendly way. 
 
Cheers,
Charles
-- 
http://www.kde-france.org

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Rich Shepard]

On Tue, 4 Jan 2005, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
Things that should happen in 1.3.6:
  ...
Things that will be in 1.4.0:
  ...
  I'd like to state again my request for a way to close all open figure,
table and footnotes that are opened by the spell checker. It's a great
feature that they are checked, but it would be very tidy to be able to close
them all again without having to move through the entire document one screen
at a time.
Thanks,
Rich
--
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
http://www.appl-ecosys.com   Voice: 503-667-4517   Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Juergen Spitzmueller]

Rich Shepard wrote:
 I'd like to state again my request for a way to close all open figure,
 table and footnotes that are opened by the spell checker. It's a great
 feature that they are checked, but it would be very tidy to be able to
 close them all again without having to move through the entire document one
 screen at a time.

1.4 has an lfun which does exactly this (you can open, close or toggle all 
footnotes and others via the minibuffer).

Jürgen

Re: No Search Replace in 1.3.5?

[Charles de Miramon]

Angus Leeming wrote:

 
 It has also used more and more external libraries. It's just that the
 libraries we have chosen to use are primarily those of Boost rather than
 of Qt or of KDE or of GTK. LyX 1.4.x is 30% smaller than LyX 1.3.x, both
 in terms of executable size and in terms of code that must be maintained
 by the LyX developers. Nonetheless, it contains more features than LyX
 1.3.x. We could not have reached such a position without using external
 libraries heavily.

I'm going way  outside my competence, but the difference between Boost and
Qt/KDE is that Boost seems to me that Boost is a classical library : more
algorithms, more data structures but very little concerning the interface
between the users and the application. Qt/KDE is totally different. It is
bricks to build graphical content-oriented application. You won't find
there Phd grade algorithms but a generic way to deal with a configuration
file (create your configuration file in XML and a code generator will
create all the code for managing your configuration options), save/load
your file with subversion, cvs, or in a webdav repository... I think that
for this aspect, we shine and have the best OpenSource offer.  

 
 
 I also repeat my other reply to this thread: this is *your* software. If
 you want it to improve, then the best way forward is to contribute.
 

I'm also in my mid-thirties... bad time : raising a family, publish or
perish, managing research projects... I would love instead to take a C++
course and code a bit.

Cheers,
Charles
-- 
http://www.kde-france.org

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Angus Leeming]

Charles de Miramon wrote:
 For example the shortcuts with the quite obsolete concept of 'Meta'. I
 think that LyX should show the shortcuts in the same Windowish way that
 Gnome or KDE. Who is using a Sun keyboard anyway ?

key bindings are all configurable. See $PREFIX/share/lyx/bind. Personally, 
as an emacs fan, I use emacs.bind. I guess you should be using cua.bind. 
Or adapt to suit. Copy the best fit bind file to your $HOME/.lyx/bind 
directory and edit to suit.

 For easing the learning curve for MsWord users, a Tool menu entry with
 spellchecking, etc. would be be handy.

Like this (attached screen shot) you mean? Again, menus are configurable. 
See $PREFIX/share/lyx/ui/default.ui. The screen shot shows the default 
menus for LyX 1.4.x which are radically different to those of 1.3.x. LyX 
1.4.x will ship with a 'classic.ui' for those more comfortable with what 
they have now.

 I am not sure how a plugin based application would solve the LaTeX
 support model, actually.
 
 If I could write my 300 hundreds line Python script to add a GUI for the
 Frenchb babel macros that I use every day, maybe I would motivate myself
 to read the big Python book I bought and never read Other would do it
 for their pet LateX packages and Herbert Voss would create a gigantic
 pstricks plugin :-).

Yes, as Matej has said already, LyX is lacking good scripting support.

But nonetheless, a plugin needs to interact with the existing kernel. Our 
notion of 'plugin' is an 'inset'. Just as you describe, you need to know 
next to nothing about the rest of the code base to create a new inset.

LyX doesn't use KDE to implement the *core* of the program, but that 
doesn't mean it isn't easy to add functionality to it. Please come and 
join in ;-)

-- 
Angusattachment: menus.png

New otl 2 lyx script

[Steve Litt]

Hi all,

Today I'm remaking my otl (tab indented outline) to lyx script. This is 
necessary because the old one was written before the existence of body text. 
As long as I'm doing it, I'll make the relationship between level and 
paragraph style configurable with a text config file.

Anyone have any suggestions/requests?

SteveT

Steve Litt
Author: 
   * Universal Troubleshooting Process courseware
   * Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist
   * Rapid Learning: Secret Weapon of the Successful Technologist
Webmaster
   * Troubleshooters.Com
   * http://www.troubleshooters.com

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Charles de Miramon]

Angus Leeming wrote:

 Charles de Miramon wrote:
 For example the shortcuts with the quite obsolete concept of 'Meta'. I
 think that LyX should show the shortcuts in the same Windowish way that
 Gnome or KDE. Who is using a Sun keyboard anyway ?
 
 key bindings are all configurable. See $PREFIX/share/lyx/bind. Personally,
 as an emacs fan, I use emacs.bind. I guess you should be using cua.bind.
 Or adapt to suit. Copy the best fit bind file to your $HOME/.lyx/bind
 directory and edit to suit.

I was talking of the way how shortcuts appear in the menu. Today it is C-n
and I think it should be changed to Ctrl+N like Gnome/KDE/Windows
applications.

 Like this (attached screen shot) you mean? Again, menus are configurable.
 See $PREFIX/share/lyx/ui/default.ui. The screen shot shows the default
 menus for LyX 1.4.x which are radically different to those of 1.3.x. LyX
 1.4.x will ship with a 'classic.ui' for those more comfortable with what
 they have now.
 

Great. I think that Reconfigure and Preferences should be in a Configuration
Menu and not in the Tools Menu.

A nice usability enhancement for LyX 1.4 would be that when you create a new
document, you get a wizard to choose the class of the document where we
could put some explanations about the different classes. I think that here
the Word-style Format-Document doesn't go well with the LateX paradigm
where it is important to make the right choice at the start.

For KWord we have this widget (see attached file 30 kb) when you start the
application (some people like it, other hate it).

Cheers,
Charles

http://www.kde-france.orgattachment: regesta2.png

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jose' Matos]

On Monday 03 January 2005 23:33, Bo Peng wrote:
 8. file format: I also sometimes modify lyx file directly using perl
 but lyx format is not very easy to handle. I would prefer a XML like
 format.

  The file format has changed a bit between 1.3 and 1.4, we had more than 15 
changes in the file format, all documented, and supported by lyx2lyx. This 
allowed us to clean the file format and it easier now to have tools to 
create lyx files.

  As stated elsewhere in this thread the file format will be XML, easier it 
is impossible. ;-)
-- 
José Abílio

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jose' Matos]

On Tuesday 04 January 2005 10:58, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
 Matej 421 (I don't care that much),

 http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=421
 Export to ASCII does not export bibliography and references

 It seems to be fixed now, but Jose' knows better than I do.

  It is fixed now.

-- 
José Abílio

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jose' Matos]

On Tuesday 04 January 2005 10:58, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
 Matej - Docbook bibliography support (after being spoiled by LyX's
 Matej support of BibTeX, I just cannot live without Insert/Citation
 Matej Reference working)

  There is a feature request in bugzilla for this, I didn't had enough to 
look to it yet. If you have any suggestion please be don't hesitate and 
tell us... :-)

-- 
José Abílio

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Rich Shepard]

On Tue, 4 Jan 2005, Juergen Spitzmueller wrote:
1.4 has an lfun which does exactly this (you can open, close or toggle all
footnotes and others via the minibuffer).
Jürgen,
  I _thought_ this was the case. I look forward to using it.
Many thanks,
Rich
--
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
http://www.appl-ecosys.com   Voice: 503-667-4517   Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Juergen Spitzmueller]

Charles de Miramon wrote:
 I was talking of the way how shortcuts appear in the menu. Today it is C-n
 and I think it should be changed to Ctrl+N like Gnome/KDE/Windows
 applications.

This has been changed in 1.4 (shortcuts are even translatable).

Jürgen

Re: LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 released

[Rob S]

Ruurd;
Many, many thanks - just downloaded it and now about to have a play!
Over the next few days I'll amend the Wiki page to reflect the update. 
It already looks as if much of the wiki page can be thinned out.

Regards
Rob S
Ruurd Reitsma wrote:
Finally, I came around to compiling a fresh LyX for Win32. It can be found
at the usual spot:
http://www.home.zonnet.nl/rareitsma/lyx/
The Qt version is now 3.2.1 Non-Commercial. Please note that:
* The spell checking stuff has changed.
* There are some visual improvements due to the new Qt version.
* No new functionality has been added.
* Localized menus are broken for now.
Work to merge my modifications into the LyX code are underway, so more
functionality can be expected for 1.3.6/1.4
Ruurd
--
R D Saunders
Hydraulic Research Group
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Southampton
UK

Re: Adding A Leterhead to a Report

[Charles de Miramon]

Rich Shepard wrote:

I want to use LyX for reports that should go out under my letterhead. I
 have the logo and address/phone information set up in an OpenOffice.org
 Writer page and exported as a .pdf file. I can also recreate it in The
 GIMP (if I can access the proper typeface).
 
What I would like to do is have just the graphic/text portion of the
 letterhead as a .eps file and insert that -- not in a float -- so it's at
 the top of the first page of a report.
 
I'm not sure how to generate the .eps file or if my proposed approach
will
 work. What suggestions do folks have for doing this? Is there a HOWTO
 somewhere that I should read?
 
 TIA,
 
 Rich
 

Use the KOMA-Script report class and the titlehead style for the paragraph
you want on top of the title page.

KOMA-Script is very powerfull...

Cheers,
Charles
-- 
http://www.kde-france.org

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Juergen == Juergen Spitzmueller [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Juergen Rich Shepard wrote:
 I'd like to state again my request for a way to close all open
 figure, table and footnotes that are opened by the spell checker.
 It's a great feature that they are checked, but it would be very
 tidy to be able to close them all again without having to move
 through the entire document one screen at a time.

Juergen 1.4 has an lfun which does exactly this (you can open, close
Juergen or toggle all footnotes and others via the minibuffer).

More importantly, the spellchecker does not open footnotes anymore,
except when it finds errors inside them.

JMarc

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Jose' == Jose' Matos [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Jose' On Tuesday 04 January 2005 10:58, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
Matej 421 (I don't care that much),
  http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=421 Export to ASCII does
 not export bibliography and references
 
 It seems to be fixed now, but Jose' knows better than I do.

Jose'   It is fixed now.

So, why isn't marked as fixedintrunk?

JMarc

Re: Adding A Leterhead to a Report

[Rich Shepard]

On Tue, 4 Jan 2005, Charles de Miramon wrote:
Use the KOMA-Script report class and the titlehead style for the paragraph
you want on top of the title page.
KOMA-Script is very powerfull...
  Thank you, Charles.
Rich
--
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
http://www.appl-ecosys.com   Voice: 503-667-4517   Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jose' Matos]

On Tuesday 04 January 2005 17:13, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:

 Jose'   It is fixed now.

 So, why isn't marked as fixedintrunk?

  Because the bibliographic support is broken (for insertions) and I would 
like to close it when this is working.

  Consider it some kind of hidden dependency. :-)
 JMarc

-- 
José Abílio

LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 - install error

[Kent Kostuk]

I am having some difficulties getting LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 to start. 
When I attempt to execute lyx.exe I get a dialog box with the following 
text:

LyX wasn't able to find any layout description!
Check the contents of the file textclass.lst
Sorry, has to exit :-(
A reinstall did not make this problem go away.  What do I need to check 
for to get this working?

Kent Kostuk

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Steve Litt]

On Tuesday 04 January 2005 10:16 am, Angus Leeming wrote:
 Charles de Miramon wrote:
  For example the shortcuts with the quite obsolete concept of 'Meta'. I
  think that LyX should show the shortcuts in the same Windowish way that
  Gnome or KDE. Who is using a Sun keyboard anyway ?

 key bindings are all configurable. See $PREFIX/share/lyx/bind. Personally,
 as an emacs fan, I use emacs.bind. I guess you should be using cua.bind.
 Or adapt to suit. Copy the best fit bind file to your $HOME/.lyx/bind
 directory and edit to suit.

  For easing the learning curve for MsWord users, a Tool menu entry with
  spellchecking, etc. would be be handy.

 Like this (attached screen shot) you mean? Again, menus are configurable.
 See $PREFIX/share/lyx/ui/default.ui. The screen shot shows the default
 menus for LyX 1.4.x which are radically different to those of 1.3.x. LyX
 1.4.x will ship with a 'classic.ui' for those more comfortable with what
 they have now.

  I am not sure how a plugin based application would solve the LaTeX
  support model, actually.
 
  If I could write my 300 hundreds line Python script to add a GUI for the
  Frenchb babel macros that I use every day, maybe I would motivate myself
  to read the big Python book I bought and never read Other would do it
  for their pet LateX packages and Herbert Voss would create a gigantic
  pstricks plugin :-).

 Yes, as Matej has said already, LyX is lacking good scripting support.

 But nonetheless, a plugin needs to interact with the existing kernel. Our
 notion of 'plugin' is an 'inset'. Just as you describe, you need to know
 next to nothing about the rest of the code base to create a new inset.

 LyX doesn't use KDE to implement the *core* of the program, but that
 doesn't mean it isn't easy to add functionality to it. Please come and
 join in ;-)

I hope LyX *NEVER* depends on KDE in any way. My personal experience tells me 
that KDE is unstable, to the point where I use very few KDE apps. I use Kmail 
right now, but am looking for a replacement. Kmail crashes on me regularly.

I've used LyX since 2001, and it's been rock solid stable. I really appreciate 
that, and hope it isn't contaminated with DCOPisms and all the other KDE 
fluffNbunch.

SteveT


-- 
Steve Litt
Author: 
   * Universal Troubleshooting Process courseware
   * Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist
   * Rapid Learning: Secret Weapon of the Successful Technologist
Webmaster
   * Troubleshooters.Com
   * http://www.troubleshooters.com

(Legal Disclaimer) Follow these suggestions at your own risk.

Re: LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 - install error

[Uwe Stöhr]

Kent Kostuk wrote:
I am having some difficulties getting LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 to start. When 
I attempt to execute lyx.exe I get a dialog box with the following text:

LyX wasn't able to find any layout description!
Check the contents of the file textclass.lst
Seems that LyX can't find your MikTeX.
What do I need to check for to get this working?
First you should check if MikTeX is working:
- try to open the program yap
- try to compile the attached file with pdflatex
  Open a console and type:
pdflatex test
- check if MikTeX is in the path which you'll find in the system
  variable settings
regards Uwe
\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

Hello

\end{document}

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[John Levon]

On Tue, Jan 04, 2005 at 12:17:12PM +0100, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:

 I just repeat what John Levon said a few months ago. He seemd to thing
 that there was a lot of work to do on it (maybe for undo).

At the time there was a lot of brokenness around tables, insets, undo
etc. This may indeed have changed a lot since, if Juergen thinks it's
relatively usable again now

regards
john

Re: LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 - install error

[Kent Kostuk]

I was instructed to try opening yap:  that worked.
I was then instructed to compile the attached file from a console:  that 
worked.

I then checked if miktex was in my path.  I see c:\texmf\miktex\bin in 
my path.

Anyone have another suggestion?
Kent

Re: No Search Replace in 1.3.5?

[John Levon]

On Tue, Jan 04, 2005 at 01:00:50PM +0100, Charles de Miramon wrote:

 http://doc.trolltech.com/4.0/qtextdocument.html

I just had a quick look at this. Unfortunately it's unsuitable. It is
designed as a simple hand over the keys to the car and bring back my
shopping interface. What we need is components that help us build our
own interface, not some black box that we can query for stuff.

Wherever it makes sense we do use the Qt library for UI, as much as
possible. Unfortunately the Qt library is very much our way or no way
at all in large part... in particular truly separated MVC seems very
hard to do if we use these black box components.

regards
john

Re: LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 - install error

[Uwe Stöhr]

Kent Kostuk wrote:
I was instructed to try opening yap:  that worked.
I was then instructed to compile the attached file from a console:  that 
worked.

I then checked if miktex was in my path.  I see c:\texmf\miktex\bin in 
my path.

Anyone have another suggestion?
OK if that works, assure that the installation folder of LyX and all 
subfolders have write permissions for everybody.
If this is not the case, you have to reconfigure LyX again after 
adjusting the permissions.

At last you can run LyX by the console command
lyx -dbg 3
to have an extra debug window. Now call Edit - Reconfigure and look 
what happens in the debug window.

regards Uwe

Re: LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 - install error

[Kent Kostuk]

I get the same error if I try to run lyx from the console command (I had 
tried this previously and just to make sure, I tried again).

It appears that the subfolders are write enabled for everyone.
Any other suggestions?
Kent

OK if that works, assure that the installation folder of LyX and all 
subfolders have write permissions for everybody.
If this is not the case, you have to reconfigure LyX again after 
adjusting the permissions.

At last you can run LyX by the console command
lyx -dbg 3
to have an extra debug window. Now call Edit - Reconfigure and look 
what happens in the debug window.

regards Uwe

Re: LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 released

[Uwe Sthr]

Finally, I came around to compiling a fresh LyX for Win32.
Ruurd,
many many thanks for this new version. It works very well.
After testing the version, I updated the wiki site about LyXWin's setup
http://wiki.lyx.org/pmwiki.php/LyX/WindowsSetup
and have the following annotations:
- It is still not possible to process a LyX file by doubleclicking on it 
in Windows file explorer. LyX opens and one can make changes, but the 
export fails.
This comes due to the wrong folder separator:

Opening a file within LyXWin gives e.g. C:/lyx/test.lyx which is correct.
Opening the file by double clicking gives C:\lyx\test.lyx
- The menu Help - LaTeX Configuration fails as in LyXWin 1.3.3
- Unlike LyXWin 1.3.3 the lyx.exe doesn't contain the LyX icon (the 
creature called Lydia). OK, this not really relevant for LyX's 
functionality but helped to differ LyX files in the file explorer.
(Could you put a lyx.ico on your site?)

- The blue boxes in the math insets are too small and the cursor too 
big, see the two attached screenshots.

thanks and regards Uwe
inline: scrshot1.pnginline: scrshot2.png

Re: LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 - install error

[Uwe Stöhr]

Kent Kostuk wrote:
I get the same error if I try to run lyx from the console command (I had 
tried this previously and just to make sure, I tried again).
Could you send us the text of the console window while reconfiguring LyX.
regards Uwe

Hi at all

[Alberto]

Hi at all, 
as i subscribed this mailing list some years ago. I'm posting now my first 
mail, principally for two reasons. As first i'm italian and i don't speek 
very well english; as second i'm obliged to use lyx for my thesis...and i 
need help! :)

I tried to use lyx some years ago, when i installed it, and now. I have mainly 
these problems:

1) i selected the book style, is that correct for my thesis? i'm not sure of 
what a style involves. Probably is easier to answer to this question seeing 
the other problems. (I hope...)

2) i'm not able to obtain a common way to see the page numbers; sometimes the 
page number is on the top-right corner of the page, sometimes on the bottom 
(the first page of each chapter, and in the index pages). Can i decide where 
the page number must be printed?

3) i'm writing my thesis with some other people, but i'm not able to put their 
names on the authour field. i would like something like this:

cippo lippo [EMAIL PROTECTED]
lappo frappo [EMAIL PROTECTED]

(on the middle of the screen) but if i put all these lines into the author 
field i obtain a line that is printed on a single line but it is too long so 
it is cutted at the end of the screen.
But if i create more author fields i see only the last field (in the above 
example i see only: lappo frappo [EMAIL PROTECTED])

4) I need the bibliografy!!! :) but i'm not able to do it works. :(
As i see i could able to put into my thesis a biblio composed of some books 
(of which i must say to lyx the path to reach them), but i has not that 
books! I only knows their names. How can i put into my bibliografy the name 
of the books that i know, but that i don't own on my hard disk?

5) I not able to obtain a good layout with lyx of the comments to my images. 
Usually i see the image centered (as i want) but the comments that i obtain 
with wrapped box area is not just below the image, but it is between the text 
after the image. So i tried to put an hfill element after the wrapped area, 
but it does not work :(
I use the wrapped area so i can put at the end of my thesis a figure list too. 

Some other people told me to use OpenOffice, but i beleve in lyx! ...am i 
wrong? 

If you need everythingmy document, some other details, anything, ask! I 
will answer as soon as possible. 
Some advices will be appreciated...
Thanks in advance
Alberto

Re: Hi at all

[Rich Shepard]

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005, Alberto wrote:
1) i selected the book style, is that correct for my thesis? i'm not
sure of what a style involves. Probably is easier to answer to this
question seeing the other problems. (I hope...)
Alberto,
  Does your university have either A) a defined thesis format or B) LaTeX
class for that format?
2) i'm not able to obtain a common way to see the page numbers; sometimes
the page number is on the top-right corner of the page, sometimes on the
bottom (the first page of each chapter, and in the index pages). Can i
decide where the page number must be printed?
  Yes. The fancyhdr package lets you control what information is seen.
3) i'm writing my thesis with some other people, but i'm not able to put their
names on the authour field. i would like something like this:
   Pass.
4) I need the bibliografy!!! :) but i'm not able to do it works. :(
As i see i could able to put into my thesis a biblio composed of some books
(of which i must say to lyx the path to reach them), but i has not that
books! I only knows their names. How can i put into my bibliografy the name
of the books that i know, but that i don't own on my hard disk?
  Look for the bibtex documentation on your system.
5) I not able to obtain a good layout with lyx of the comments to my
images. Usually i see the image centered (as i want) but the comments that
i obtain with wrapped box area is not just below the image, but it is
between the text after the image. So i tried to put an hfill element after
the wrapped area, but it does not work :( I use the wrapped area so i
can put at the end of my thesis a figure list too.
  Use a figure float for your figures. This lets the software determine the
best placement. You can center the figure by using
Layout-Paragraph-Center. In most books, the figure caption is placed
beneath the figure and the table caption is placed on top of the table.
Some other people told me to use OpenOffice, but i beleve in lyx! ...am i
wrong?
  No. At least, that's what most of us think. However, if your university
has format requirements that would take a lot of effort to enable in LyX
then perhaps OO.o would be quicker for you.
Rich
--
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
http://www.appl-ecosys.com   Voice: 503-667-4517   Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Hi at all

[Uwe Stöhr]

Alberto wrote:
3) i'm writing my thesis with some other people, but i'm not able to put their 
names on the authour field. i would like something like this:

cippo lippo [EMAIL PROTECTED]
lappo frappo [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Use only one author paragraph and separate the names by a forced line 
break (shortcut C-Enter).

regards Uwe

Re: LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 released - a nasty bug

[Uwe Sthr]

many many thanks for this new version. It works very well.
except of the mentioned bug:
 - The blue boxes in the math insets are too small and the cursor too
 big, see the two attached screenshots.
Due to the too small and too high boxes, all math insets looks ugly - 
underlines and fraction lines strikes out characters; boxes, accents, 
sub/supersripts etc. are too high.
I attached some screenshots.
The files scrshot7 shows the difference between LyXWin 1.3.3 and 
LyXWin 1.3.5.

I hope this is easy to fix, because it is very annoying.
regards Uwe
inline: scrshot5.pnginline: scrshot7.pnginline: scrshot6.pnginline: scrshot7-1.3.3.png

Block alignment inside tables

[Paul Smith]

Dear All

I have downloaded a LyX file with an example which contains a table.
The horizontal alignment in this table is named block. If I create a
table in a different document, I do not get the alignment named block
in the list of possible alignments. How can I get the block alignment?
Well, I could always copy the first table and have the block
alignment, but this would not be the natural solution. (I am using LyX
1.3.5 on Linux.)

Thanks in advance,

Paul

Available: New outline to LyX converter

[Steve Litt]

Hi all,

I just finished, and somewhat tested, the new Outline to LyX conversion 
script. It has 2 advantages over the old one (which I can't even find 
anymore):

1. It converts body text (preceded by colon space)
2. It facilitates outline level to LyX environment mapping in a data file.

I didn't tarball it, but instead placed it in a table on a web page. Search 
for otl2lyx on this web page:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/projects/vimoutliner/index.htm

That page also gives an example mapping file, and also points you to the 
Node.pm tool, which is needed for otl2lyx.pl. Don't forget to change the -I 
parameter in the top line in order to reflect the location of the Node.pm 
file.

I'm interested in any and all feedback.

Thanks

SteveT

Steve Litt
Author: 
   * Universal Troubleshooting Process courseware
   * Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist
   * Rapid Learning: Secret Weapon of the Successful Technologist
Webmaster
   * Troubleshooters.Com
   * http://www.troubleshooters.com

Re: Block alignment inside tables

[Paul Medwell]

Paul Smith wrote:
Dear All
I have downloaded a LyX file with an example which contains a table.
The horizontal alignment in this table is named block. If I create a
table in a different document, I do not get the alignment named block
in the list of possible alignments. How can I get the block alignment?
Well, I could always copy the first table and have the block
alignment, but this would not be the natural solution. (I am using LyX
1.3.5 on Linux.)
Thanks in advance,
Paul

Don't ask me why...but if you specify a column width then you'll get the 
block option for the horizontal alignment.

Lata,
Paul

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Matej == Matej Cepl [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Matej Rich Shepard wrote:
 As long as it does not require KDE to run it's OK with me. I agree
 that

Matej You can use whichever KDE application in whatever environment
Matej if you have installed kdelibs.

I am not sure what is the current status of KDE on OSX and Windows,
but I do not think this would be considered a welcome addition in
these environments.

What we would like is something that plays well with the native
environment, be it KDE, gnome (we have a brand new gtk+ port in 1.4.x
that may or may not be ready in time), windows or OSX. I know we are
still a bit far from this.

Matej That's the question -- are we really talking about
Matej typesetting/publication system or authoring system? Or to say
Matej it more bluntly -- do we want PageMaker/FrameMaker (LaTeX
Matej based) 

We are never going to have that, since TeX is not suited to this use.

 A lot of us don't use KDE ... or Gnome, either.

Matej How big lot is this log? Does anybody know a proportion of
Matej Linux users of LyX per DE they use (KDE, Gnome, WM, something
Matej else?).

See above.

Matej Yes, but every application should have clear goal what it wants
Matej to accomplish (Do one thing and do it well.). IMHO, LyX was
Matej supposed to be first-class authoring environment for
Matej scientific/scholarly writing. What about that?

Well, I think that's still what the main goal is.

JMarc

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Matej == Matej Cepl [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Matej Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
 Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'll try to answer to some of
 your concerns.

Matej Thanks, Jean-Marc, for answering. I was really getting worried
Matej that my report about LyX's death were not that exaggerated
Matej (BTW, it is so over-quoted citation, that I was not able to
Matej google its canonical form :-), when no-one replied to my
Matej message for some time, but it was probably caused by the
Matej external factors (i.e., New Year :-).

As far as I am concerned, I answer immediately when the answer is
obvious. If I feel others will be more qualified to answer, I wait a
bit until this mailing list does its magic. If I feel qualified to
answer but it deserve some thought, I keep it for later (and
unfortunately tend to forget about it :(). You fell in this last
category... 

Matej Would you share some thoughts when 1.4.0 will go out? At least
Matej some really haphazard (but hopefully at least somehow educated)
Matej guess would be helpful.

I do not know really. Let's say a few month. It really depends on
whether some of the coders can find some time to work on it (sad,
isn't it?).

 Also, we have a growing interest for the native OSX and Windows
 versions, and I hope this is going to help attract other people to
 help.

Matej Just contrary to what Steve writes, I would think that if
Matej dropping anything then I would let XForms go and made LyX into
Matej a first-class KDE citizen.

I guess xforms will be eventually dropped, but definitely not in
1.4.x. Anyway, it is not the existence of the xforms port that slows
the development of LyX 1.4.x. Most of the problems are in the kernel
(which is now nice enough to be understandable, but still has too many
bugs). 

Matej The impulse for writing the original email (or making otherwise
Matej trivial message into this kind of long novel) was my first
Matej slightly more deep looking into OpenOffice.org. I have found
Matej two things: a) that it sucks in many more ways than I could
Matej imagine, b) it is absolutely unbelievable how easily I could
Matej change things with a little effort -- when I found myself
Matej fixing Docbook export filters (it is just a piece of XSLT after
Matej all; some 40 lines of XSLT templates gave me an export of
Matej Bibliography to docbook) and adding key shortcut support for
Matej inline styles (36 lines of StarBasic), I've got really sick
Matej from LyX that it cannot do things like that.

Adding key shortcuts to anything is doable. And we have a
command-sequence function that allows for _very_ rudimentary macros.

But the support is indeed very weak.

 char-transpose has been available since 1.2.0, I think. Of course,
 this does not mean the problem is not real.

Matej Sorry, then I've made a wrong example, but the point is still
Matej valid, IMHO.

Yes.

Matej When times when I hoped that bugs are going to be fixed, I
Matej filed some bugs about them -- 253, 

http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=253
Superfluous protecting {}

We could remove the code that adds {} before `, since it is really a
hack. I know what the ``real'' solution is, but it would be too
intrusive for my taste (at this point in development). I can try to
think of a less annoying hack.

Matej 254 (I really hate this), 

http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=254
Additional information in status bar -- biggest overfull/underfull  no. of 
pages

Number of pages should not be too difficult to add. For
overfull/underfull warnings, we need to be able to handle 'warnings'
besides errors, so that we can place them in the document where they
belong. A bit more difficult.

Matej 676, 

http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=676
LyX finds mathed start when looking for '$'

This is ``fixed'' in 1.4.0cvs because LyX does not search in mathed
anymore. 

Matej 421 (I don't care that much), 

http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=421
Export to ASCII does not export bibliography and references

It seems to be fixed now, but Jose' knows better than I do.

Matej 454 (but that is probably too big to resolved anytime soon).

Yes, this is something people have in mind, but we are not ready for
it yet.

Matej Now I would add these ones:

Matej annotations support: Guys, sneak somewhere to some Windows
Matej computer and take a look at M$-Word 2003+ and what it can do
Matej with revision marks, comments, etc. I have a tendency to write
Matej _a lot_ of comments into document I write and I want to be able
Matej to print them, but not always (when giving a draft to my
Matej supervisor for example). 

LyX 1.4.0 will have support for branches, which should fulfill this
need. There is also expanded support for notes and comments.

Matej - full-size KDE-ization, because of clipboard which sucks,
Matej missing session recovery, and other stuff, 

Session recovery seems to be something that is done at Qt level
anyway. Clipboard also, I do not think that KDEization will be a magic
bullet for 

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Juergen Spitzmueller]

Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
 Matej - documents revisions (hopefully, it is coming in 1.4.*), but
 Matej how is it going to work with RCS/CVS?

We already have document revision with RCS (the Version control feature). I 
am not sure how this can be combined with the new change tracking feature.

 The word is that change tracking is completely broken by the 1.4.0cvs
 changes and that we may have to diable it. I hope we will be able to
 do something about it...

I don't think that completely broken still holds. The assert with change 
tracking has been fixed recently, and AFAICS change tracking works quite well 
now (there are still some minor bugs and annoyances, but I think we really 
can release 1.4 with change tracking). Of course some more testing is needed.

Or do I have missed something?

Jürgen

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Juergen == Juergen Spitzmueller [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Juergen Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
Matej - documents revisions (hopefully, it is coming in 1.4.*), but
Matej how is it going to work with RCS/CVS?

Juergen We already have document revision with RCS (the Version
Juergen control feature). I am not sure how this can be combined
Juergen with the new change tracking feature.

Make a diff between two version and accept/reject some parts.

 The word is that change tracking is completely broken by the
 1.4.0cvs changes and that we may have to diable it. I hope we will
 be able to do something about it...

Juergen I don't think that completely broken still holds. The
Juergen assert with change tracking has been fixed recently, and
Juergen AFAICS change tracking works quite well now (there are still
Juergen some minor bugs and annoyances, but I think we really can
Juergen release 1.4 with change tracking). Of course some more
Juergen testing is needed.

I just repeat what John Levon said a few months ago. He seemd to thing
that there was a lot of work to do on it (maybe for undo).

JMarc

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Juergen Spitzmueller]

Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
 I just repeat what John Levon said a few months ago. He seemd to thing
 that there was a lot of work to do on it (maybe for undo).

A few months ago, change tracking was unusable because of the assert.
I haven't found any showstopper yet (except the change tracking bugs in 
bugzilla, which are also present in the 1.3-patch). That doesn't mean much, 
but at least things look better than I'd expected.

Jürgen

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Angus Leeming]

Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
 Matej Is there such list available somewhere -- I would be interested
 Matej even if it is vaporware for some time.

Lars keeps a reasonably up to date list of things he would like here:

http://www.devel.lyx.org/roadmap.php3
http://www.devel.lyx.org/tasks.php3

I don't think that there's really much difference in vapourware status 
between the two pages.

 From the top of my head...
 
 Things that should happen in 1.3.6:

[ snip ... ]

 Things that will be in 1.4.0:

[ snip ... ]

 Things that will not be in 1.4.0, but probably in 1.5.0:

[ snip ... ]

and of course the major point is this: Open Source software is *your 
software.

A good way to improve it is to make suggestions. 

A better way to improve it is to provide some code or start a discusion. 
It doesn't really matter whether you consider yourself a good coder, a 
mediocre coder or a totally clueless coder. Much of the preliminary 
development of, say, support for a scripting language will be a 
discussion of how to proceed. Feel free to start it on the lyx-devel 
mailing list.

As you have noted, this is a project with only a few active developers and 
fresh blood would undoubtedly lead to renewed vigour. All(?) of the 
existing developers are in their mid thirties and LyX is not their primary 
commitment.

So, if anyone out there is interested in improving LyX, then I'd encourage 
you to be brave and join in.

-- 
Angus

Re: No Search Replace in 1.3.5?

[Charles de Miramon]

Rich Shepard wrote:

 
However, when I press ctrl-f I see a dialog box that has two text entry
 widgets (for search string and replace string) and four buttons: Find
 next, Replace, Replace all and Close. I've used it extensively.
 Works fine.
 

I was not talking of ctrl-f but of a powerfull searchreplace where you can
search foo in emphasize style or in language Spanish, or in a footnote.

It is feature that has been asked for several years by several people. I
dont want to appear to be whining and complaining. If the LyX developpers
have not added this feature it is, I believe, because it is not easy to do
in the actual framework.

In KWord (which is not, I agree a perfect or even really functional
Wordprocessor) we have this feature. Not because, KWord has a big
development team (it is indeed less numerous than the LyX team) but because
we use the Qtextdocument class which gives us the possibility for regexp
expressions. Implementing the feature becomes much more easy, designing the
right regexp, building a usable GUI, and pluging it into the QT API
http://doc.trolltech.com/4.0/qtextdocument.html

Another example of the advantages of basing you application on a rich
framework. I've followed a conference of Lars Knoll, the Trolltech (and
KDE) developer responsible for QTextdocument. In the next version of Qt,
QTextDocument will be fully unicode. He gaves us example how fiendishly
complicated it is to create a interface to enter Unicode text, deleting,
selecting with a mouse for language like Chinese, India, etc. It is a 2
man/year job. In KWord we get all that for free.

If LyX was a KDE application, it could used the KScript class that add a
generic scripting engine for an application, reuse the plugin interface
developed for other applications, etc.

KDE or QT should not be viewed from an user point of view (I like or dislike
KDE/Gnome/Gtk ; it is too heavy, bloated, etc.) but as a successfull
development model. By building a common, rich framework that goes much
further than a set of widgets you mutualize the coding work and make it
possible for application developers to concentrate on their core business
(burning cd, listening to music, interfacing with LateX).

Cheers,
Charles 
-- 
http://www.kde-france.org

Re: No Search Replace in 1.3.5?

[Angus Leeming]

Charles de Miramon wrote:

 Rich Shepard wrote:
 
  
However, when I press ctrl-f I see a dialog box that has two text
entry
 widgets (for search string and replace string) and four buttons: Find
 next, Replace, Replace all and Close. I've used it extensively.
 Works fine.
 
 
 I was not talking of ctrl-f but of a powerfull searchreplace where you
 can search foo in emphasize style or in language Spanish, or in a
 footnote.
 
 It is feature that has been asked for several years by several people. I
 dont want to appear to be whining and complaining. If the LyX developpers
 have not added this feature it is, I believe, because it is not easy to
 do in the actual framework.
 
 In KWord (which is not, I agree a perfect or even really functional
 Wordprocessor) we have this feature. Not because, KWord has a big
 development team (it is indeed less numerous than the LyX team) but
 because we use the Qtextdocument class which gives us the possibility for
 regexp expressions. Implementing the feature becomes much more easy,
 designing the right regexp, building a usable GUI, and pluging it into
 the QT API http://doc.trolltech.com/4.0/qtextdocument.html
 
 Another example of the advantages of basing you application on a rich
 framework. I've followed a conference of Lars Knoll, the Trolltech (and
 KDE) developer responsible for QTextdocument. In the next version of Qt,
 QTextDocument will be fully unicode. He gaves us example how fiendishly
 complicated it is to create a interface to enter Unicode text, deleting,
 selecting with a mouse for language like Chinese, India, etc. It is a 2
 man/year job. In KWord we get all that for free.
 
 If LyX was a KDE application, it could used the KScript class that add a
 generic scripting engine for an application, reuse the plugin interface
 developed for other applications, etc.
 
 KDE or QT should not be viewed from an user point of view (I like or
 dislike KDE/Gnome/Gtk ; it is too heavy, bloated, etc.) but as a
 successfull development model. By building a common, rich framework that
 goes much further than a set of widgets you mutualize the coding work and
 make it possible for application developers to concentrate on their core
 business (burning cd, listening to music, interfacing with LateX).

Hi, Charles. I don't think that any of the LyX developers will disagree 
with you when you say that external libraries can provide us with powerful 
functionality for minimal cost. However, our own experience has informed 
the approach we have persued.

The original code base had GUI code intimately entwined with core 
code. It doesn't really matter whether this GUI code is XForms, Qt or 
GTK, because the primary point is that the result was an unmaintainable 
mess. Good software is modular. It means that I, a developer, don't have 
to understand *everything* in the code base to make a change. LyX has 
become more and more modular over the years.

It has also used more and more external libraries. It's just that the 
libraries we have chosen to use are primarily those of Boost rather than 
of Qt or of KDE or of GTK. LyX 1.4.x is 30% smaller than LyX 1.3.x, both 
in terms of executable size and in terms of code that must be maintained 
by the LyX developers. Nonetheless, it contains more features than LyX 
1.3.x. We could not have reached such a position without using external 
libraries heavily.

So, to return to the examples you cite. All of this functionality can be 
added to LyX. For example, see the Qt version of the CJK-LyX port if you 
want to see how easy it was to add Far Eastern language support to LyX. 
They did so by leveraging the power of the Qt library. If there were more 
LyX developers with more time, then this port could easily be merged back 
into the official LyX sources. But there aren't, so it hasn't.

I repeat Lars' statement, that we are not interested in the lowest common 
denominator. If one toolkit provides functionality that another toolkit 
doesn't, then it is still perfectly acceptable to leverage that 
functionality. It's just that we'll require the core code to be 
insulated from the details. Modular code is good code.

I also repeat my other reply to this thread: this is *your* software. If 
you want it to improve, then the best way forward is to contribute.

 Cheers,
 Charles

-- 
Angus

Re: No Search Replace in 1.3.5?

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Charles == Charles de Miramon [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Charles Rich Shepard wrote:
 However, when I press ctrl-f I see a dialog box that has two text
 entry widgets (for search string and replace string) and four
 buttons: Find next, Replace, Replace all and Close. I've
 used it extensively. Works fine.
 

Charles I was not talking of ctrl-f but of a powerfull searchreplace
Charles where you can search foo in emphasize style or in language
Charles Spanish, or in a footnote.

Charles It is feature that has been asked for several years by
Charles several people. I dont want to appear to be whining and
Charles complaining. If the LyX developpers have not added this
Charles feature it is, I believe, because it is not easy to do in the
Charles actual framework.

Actually, in 1.3.x and before, if was the mere existence of the find
function which was a difficult task :) The reason was that we had no
easy way to scan through a document, as strange as it may seem.

Now that the find function is in a better shape, adding searching for
fonts would be trivial at the data level. Of course the UI requires
more work. Searching for a regexp (on the contents of the file, not
the file format) would not be too difficult either.

Searching for text in a footnote or whatever is more work, but this is
mainly because the semantics of such search would be weird.

Charles Another example of the advantages of basing you application
Charles on a rich framework. I've followed a conference of Lars
Charles Knoll, the Trolltech (and KDE) developer responsible for
Charles QTextdocument. In the next version of Qt, QTextDocument will
Charles be fully unicode. He gaves us example how fiendishly
Charles complicated it is to create a interface to enter Unicode
Charles text, deleting, selecting with a mouse for language like
Charles Chinese, India, etc. It is a 2 man/year job. In KWord we get
Charles all that for free.

I do not know much about that, I have to admit.

Charles If LyX was a KDE application, it could used the KScript class
Charles that add a generic scripting engine for an application, reuse
Charles the plugin interface developed for other applications, etc.

What does it do beyond what other script embedding libraries do?

Charles KDE or QT should not be viewed from an user point of view (I
Charles like or dislike KDE/Gnome/Gtk ; it is too heavy, bloated,
Charles etc.) but as a successfull development model. By building a
Charles common, rich framework that goes much further than a set of
Charles widgets you mutualize the coding work 

We are all for using external libraries (boost, aspell, aiksaurus...).
But they do not _have_ to be from KDE, especially if this forces us to
go the whole way.

Charles and make it possible for application developers to
Charles concentrate on their core business (burning cd, listening to
Charles music, interfacing with LateX).

Well, our core business in LyX is not interfacing with LaTeX.
Otherwise we would just build a magic LaTeX-interface-plugin for KWord
:)

JMarc

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Charles == Charles de Miramon [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Charles Part of KDE has been ported to OSX and some are working on a
Charles Windows Port but it has not brought us any new developpers.
Charles Maybe some new users. But the classical people ready to help
Charles with an Open Source project (IT students, Hobbyist
Charles programmers, Scientist) are using Linux or one of the
Charles different BSD. Mac or Windows users are free riders.

I think Mac OS X has changed part of this equation.

Charles The Emacs-style interface is showing its age and rather weird
Charles for Windows transfuges used to MsWord. 

Emacs-style in which sense?

Charles LyX integrates quite badly with the rest of my desktop and
Charles cuttingpasting is still primitive. 

Cutting and pasting is very bad indeed.

Charles For, post 1.4.0, I think that the main goal should be to move
Charles LyX towards a plugin based application. It would lower the
Charles barrier level to scratch ones itches and map to the LateX
Charles model with its zillion extra packages. If some people have
Charles energy, it would be fun to see how hard it would be to
Charles recreate a LyX editor using the KoText library.

I am not sure how a plugin based application would solve the LaTeX
support model, actually.

JMarc

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Steve == Steve Litt [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Steve 1. No character styles (I understand this is coming in a later
Steve version). 

Yes, but in a basic form (no character style editor)

Steve 2. Paragraph styles (environments) are soo hard to
Steve construct. I understand this is more a function of LaTeX than
Steve LyX, but it's really too bad LyX doesn't give us some utilities
Steve to input font, margins, spacing, displacement and the like, and
Steve spit out code for a LyX environment, to be pasted in a .layout
Steve file. 

Yes.

Steve 3. Although I haven't perceived a lack of developer involvement
Steve or imminent death, I've wondered why so much developer effort
Steve has been diverted (my perception) to a QT front end, which in
Steve my opinion is cosmetic.

I think it is a little bit more than cosmetic, since the xforms GUI is
very crude. Even doing menus is a pain.

Steve Also, why divert developer effort to OSX and Windows, when
Steve those OS's have perfectly good book writing software already.
Steve First of all, wouldn't LyX already work with (BSD based) OSX?
Steve As far as Windows users, if they really want LyX, they can grab
Steve an old machine, slam Knoppix on it, and be running LyX tonight.
Steve I'd prioritize creating an even better 'NIX LyX over making a
Steve Windows version.

It happens that, now that we have LyX/Qt, the windows and OSX port are
really not difficult. And the people who did it are the people who
want it...

Steve I might as well also state my pet plusses about LyX:

:)

JMarc

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Bo == Bo Peng [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Bo 3. latex conversion: critical to the usability of lyx. I was
Bo frustrated when I can not import a lyx-exported latex file that
Bo has been slightly modified by my advisor. I am glad that it will
Bo get better in 1.4.

Currently, with tex2lyx we are able to do an almost perfect LyXtexLyX
roundtrip. Doing texLyXtex would be even better, but not possible in
all generality.

Bo 5. feature request: A short cut editing tool like what in KDE
Bo configuration? The ability to define shortcuts is the most useful
Bo feature of lyx to me, but not all users know \bindkey.

Yes, this would be very useful and not too difficult.

Bo 6. auto-configure (windows). I never used lyx-win but my friend
Bo installed lyx on windows and got frustrated since he could not do
Bo anything. I checked his installation and found that he needed to
Bo set pathes to all tools. (acrobad reader, xdvi, gv etc)

I think this is going to improve with the official lyx/win support. We
are going to have more developers with access to windows, I think.

Bo 7. latex syntax error: I know it is very difficult to achieve but
Bo I still hope: for whatever user can input through GUI, there
Bo should be no latex error. (I am referring to ams math stuff being
Bo used in non-ams article.)

What ams stuff do you have in mind? I am going to commit a patch for
\underrightarrow and friends, BTW.

Bo 8. file format: I also sometimes modify lyx file directly using
Bo perl but lyx format is not very easy to handle. I would prefer a
Bo XML like format.

This is in the works, but not for 1.4.0.

Bo 10. I recently encounter a small problem: if I modify file
Bo structure, I will sometimes have to remove table of content and
Bo reinsert it to make lyx compile. (I can submit a bug if this is
Bo not known).

An example would be nice. We know there are problems with this code,
but they are difficult to identify.

Bo 11. auto-completion, auto-correction: not-so-useful features but
Bo some people may like them. (I hate word when it change my i to I).

I tend to hate it too...

Bo 12. I do not know if this is possible. When I edit slides with
Bo lyx, I have to update pdf file a million times to see the output
Bo layout. Is it possible to preview a single page or at least tell
Bo me if my texts/figure exceed one page?

In 1.4.0, it will be possible to go back and forth between an xdvi
window and the corresponding LyX editing region. 

Knowing whether there is an overflow should be possible, but needs
some work, as I explained elsewhere.

Bo Finally, I would like to thank Lyx developers for their wonderful
Bo work. I was once tempted to help but my thesis is taking all my
Bo time. Currently, converting word people to lyx is all I can do for
Bo lyx.

You are welcome. Converting people is already nice.

JMarc

Re: LyX is not running with QT interface!

[chr]

On Mon, 3 Jan 2005, Yousef Raffah wrote:

 Thanks a lot guys. I guess it is an issue with the package I'm using
 or it is something with my machine.

Maybe you should send a question to the person who made the gentoo 
package? (sounds like a bug in it)

/Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44   http://www.md.kth.se/~chr

Re: Book without parts

[chr]

On Sun, 2 Jan 2005, Rich Shepard wrote:

 On Sun, 2 Jan 2005, Steve Litt wrote:
 
  I'm contemplating writing a book with 17 chapters and no parts. In other
  words, the highest level of the book is the chapter. I'd like to use the
  book document class because this is a book (expected to run around 150
  pages), and because I have a lot of experience with the book class.
 
  Any ideas?
 
 Steve,
 
With regard to what? AFAIK there's no requirement for a book to have
 parts.

I agree with Rich, although I did use parts in my thesis I can't remember 
anything that actually forced me to use parts. Sounds like it's just a 
matter of *not* inserting a Parts environment :-)

/C

-- 
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44   http://www.md.kth.se/~chr

Re: A simple question on reference citation

[chr]

On Mon, 3 Jan 2005, Wang Xiangqi wrote:

 How to change the style like [2,3,4,5,6] to [2-6] in reference ciatation?

I believe this is answered in the wiki FAQ, if you cant find it get back 
to the list. Start at http://wiki.lyx.org

/Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44   http://www.md.kth.se/~chr

LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 released

[Ruurd Reitsma]

Finally, I came around to compiling a fresh LyX for Win32. It can be found
at the usual spot:

http://www.home.zonnet.nl/rareitsma/lyx/

The Qt version is now 3.2.1 Non-Commercial. Please note that:

* The spell checking stuff has changed.
* There are some visual improvements due to the new Qt version.
* No new functionality has been added.
* Localized menus are broken for now.

Work to merge my modifications into the LyX code are underway, so more
functionality can be expected for 1.3.6/1.4

Ruurd

Re: A simple question on reference citation

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 chr == chr  [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

chr On Mon, 3 Jan 2005, Wang Xiangqi wrote:
 How to change the style like [2,3,4,5,6] to [2-6] in reference
 ciatation?

chr I believe this is answered in the wiki FAQ, if you cant find it
chr get back to the list. Start at http://wiki.lyx.org

I would add 
  \usepackage{cite}
in the LaTeX preamble.

JMarc

[off-topic] Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[chr]

The New Years spirit must be strong!

Thanks to everyone for not starting a flame war and having such a
pleasant, well mannered and constructive conversation in this thread.  
(For people who haven't followed the thread, I'm *not* being ironic here)

Happy New Year and my sincerest regards

Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44   http://www.md.kth.se/~chr

Re: Book without parts

[Steve Litt]

On Tuesday 04 January 2005 08:39 am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 On Sun, 2 Jan 2005, Rich Shepard wrote:
  On Sun, 2 Jan 2005, Steve Litt wrote:
   I'm contemplating writing a book with 17 chapters and no parts. In
   other words, the highest level of the book is the chapter. I'd like to
   use the book document class because this is a book (expected to run
   around 150 pages), and because I have a lot of experience with the book
   class.
  
   Any ideas?
 
  Steve,
 
 With regard to what? AFAIK there's no requirement for a book to have
  parts.

 I agree with Rich, although I did use parts in my thesis I can't remember
 anything that actually forced me to use parts. Sounds like it's just a
 matter of *not* inserting a Parts environment :-)

 /C

In that case, my one remainig problem is tweaking my VimOutliner to LyX 
program such that level 1 maps to chapter instead of Part. Or maybe better, 
have the level to environment mapping be a text data file so any document 
class could be accommodated.

I'll be modifying my program today. I had to change it to accommodate the 
outliner's body text anyway.

SteveT

 
Steve Litt
Founder and acting president: GoLUG
http://www.golug.org

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Charles de Miramon]

Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:


 Charles The Emacs-style interface is showing its age and rather weird
 Charles for Windows transfuges used to MsWord.
 
 Emacs-style in which sense?
 

For example the shortcuts with the quite obsolete concept of 'Meta'. I think
that LyX should show the shortcuts in the same Windowish way that Gnome or
KDE. Who is using a Sun keyboard anyway ?

For easing the learning curve for MsWord users, a Tool menu entry with
spellchecking, etc. would be be handy.


 
 I am not sure how a plugin based application would solve the LaTeX
 support model, actually.

If I could write my 300 hundreds line Python script to add a GUI for the
Frenchb babel macros that I use every day, maybe I would motivate myself to
read the big Python book I bought and never read Other would do it for
their pet LateX packages and Herbert Voss would create a gigantic pstricks
plugin :-).

Having a plugin interface is just a way to attract a different kind of
coders, people that are ready to spend a week-end on a small project but
are incapable of delving into thousands of C++ code. 

Plugins also make sense with the LateX model. If I'm using natbib, I won't
be using jurabib and vice-versa. Loading the natbib or jurabib plugin
create a more usable application than having a widget with a jurabib tab,
natbib tab, etc... 

Because, I'm never tired of making publicity for KDE, we have the new
KNewstuff library which is a framework to add a button to your application
that will connect to a server which host the plugins, new classes, etc...
and have the possibility to download them in a userfriendly way. 
 
Cheers,
Charles
-- 
http://www.kde-france.org

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Rich Shepard]

On Tue, 4 Jan 2005, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
Things that should happen in 1.3.6:
  ...
Things that will be in 1.4.0:
  ...
  I'd like to state again my request for a way to close all open figure,
table and footnotes that are opened by the spell checker. It's a great
feature that they are checked, but it would be very tidy to be able to close
them all again without having to move through the entire document one screen
at a time.
Thanks,
Rich
--
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
http://www.appl-ecosys.com   Voice: 503-667-4517   Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Juergen Spitzmueller]

Rich Shepard wrote:
 I'd like to state again my request for a way to close all open figure,
 table and footnotes that are opened by the spell checker. It's a great
 feature that they are checked, but it would be very tidy to be able to
 close them all again without having to move through the entire document one
 screen at a time.

1.4 has an lfun which does exactly this (you can open, close or toggle all 
footnotes and others via the minibuffer).

Jürgen

Re: No Search Replace in 1.3.5?

[Charles de Miramon]

Angus Leeming wrote:

 
 It has also used more and more external libraries. It's just that the
 libraries we have chosen to use are primarily those of Boost rather than
 of Qt or of KDE or of GTK. LyX 1.4.x is 30% smaller than LyX 1.3.x, both
 in terms of executable size and in terms of code that must be maintained
 by the LyX developers. Nonetheless, it contains more features than LyX
 1.3.x. We could not have reached such a position without using external
 libraries heavily.

I'm going way  outside my competence, but the difference between Boost and
Qt/KDE is that Boost seems to me that Boost is a classical library : more
algorithms, more data structures but very little concerning the interface
between the users and the application. Qt/KDE is totally different. It is
bricks to build graphical content-oriented application. You won't find
there Phd grade algorithms but a generic way to deal with a configuration
file (create your configuration file in XML and a code generator will
create all the code for managing your configuration options), save/load
your file with subversion, cvs, or in a webdav repository... I think that
for this aspect, we shine and have the best OpenSource offer.  

 
 
 I also repeat my other reply to this thread: this is *your* software. If
 you want it to improve, then the best way forward is to contribute.
 

I'm also in my mid-thirties... bad time : raising a family, publish or
perish, managing research projects... I would love instead to take a C++
course and code a bit.

Cheers,
Charles
-- 
http://www.kde-france.org

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Angus Leeming]

Charles de Miramon wrote:
 For example the shortcuts with the quite obsolete concept of 'Meta'. I
 think that LyX should show the shortcuts in the same Windowish way that
 Gnome or KDE. Who is using a Sun keyboard anyway ?

key bindings are all configurable. See $PREFIX/share/lyx/bind. Personally, 
as an emacs fan, I use emacs.bind. I guess you should be using cua.bind. 
Or adapt to suit. Copy the best fit bind file to your $HOME/.lyx/bind 
directory and edit to suit.

 For easing the learning curve for MsWord users, a Tool menu entry with
 spellchecking, etc. would be be handy.

Like this (attached screen shot) you mean? Again, menus are configurable. 
See $PREFIX/share/lyx/ui/default.ui. The screen shot shows the default 
menus for LyX 1.4.x which are radically different to those of 1.3.x. LyX 
1.4.x will ship with a 'classic.ui' for those more comfortable with what 
they have now.

 I am not sure how a plugin based application would solve the LaTeX
 support model, actually.
 
 If I could write my 300 hundreds line Python script to add a GUI for the
 Frenchb babel macros that I use every day, maybe I would motivate myself
 to read the big Python book I bought and never read Other would do it
 for their pet LateX packages and Herbert Voss would create a gigantic
 pstricks plugin :-).

Yes, as Matej has said already, LyX is lacking good scripting support.

But nonetheless, a plugin needs to interact with the existing kernel. Our 
notion of 'plugin' is an 'inset'. Just as you describe, you need to know 
next to nothing about the rest of the code base to create a new inset.

LyX doesn't use KDE to implement the *core* of the program, but that 
doesn't mean it isn't easy to add functionality to it. Please come and 
join in ;-)

-- 
Angusattachment: menus.png

New otl 2 lyx script

[Steve Litt]

Hi all,

Today I'm remaking my otl (tab indented outline) to lyx script. This is 
necessary because the old one was written before the existence of body text. 
As long as I'm doing it, I'll make the relationship between level and 
paragraph style configurable with a text config file.

Anyone have any suggestions/requests?

SteveT

Steve Litt
Author: 
   * Universal Troubleshooting Process courseware
   * Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist
   * Rapid Learning: Secret Weapon of the Successful Technologist
Webmaster
   * Troubleshooters.Com
   * http://www.troubleshooters.com

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Charles de Miramon]

Angus Leeming wrote:

 Charles de Miramon wrote:
 For example the shortcuts with the quite obsolete concept of 'Meta'. I
 think that LyX should show the shortcuts in the same Windowish way that
 Gnome or KDE. Who is using a Sun keyboard anyway ?
 
 key bindings are all configurable. See $PREFIX/share/lyx/bind. Personally,
 as an emacs fan, I use emacs.bind. I guess you should be using cua.bind.
 Or adapt to suit. Copy the best fit bind file to your $HOME/.lyx/bind
 directory and edit to suit.

I was talking of the way how shortcuts appear in the menu. Today it is C-n
and I think it should be changed to Ctrl+N like Gnome/KDE/Windows
applications.

 Like this (attached screen shot) you mean? Again, menus are configurable.
 See $PREFIX/share/lyx/ui/default.ui. The screen shot shows the default
 menus for LyX 1.4.x which are radically different to those of 1.3.x. LyX
 1.4.x will ship with a 'classic.ui' for those more comfortable with what
 they have now.
 

Great. I think that Reconfigure and Preferences should be in a Configuration
Menu and not in the Tools Menu.

A nice usability enhancement for LyX 1.4 would be that when you create a new
document, you get a wizard to choose the class of the document where we
could put some explanations about the different classes. I think that here
the Word-style Format-Document doesn't go well with the LateX paradigm
where it is important to make the right choice at the start.

For KWord we have this widget (see attached file 30 kb) when you start the
application (some people like it, other hate it).

Cheers,
Charles

http://www.kde-france.orgattachment: regesta2.png

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jose' Matos]

On Monday 03 January 2005 23:33, Bo Peng wrote:
 8. file format: I also sometimes modify lyx file directly using perl
 but lyx format is not very easy to handle. I would prefer a XML like
 format.

  The file format has changed a bit between 1.3 and 1.4, we had more than 15 
changes in the file format, all documented, and supported by lyx2lyx. This 
allowed us to clean the file format and it easier now to have tools to 
create lyx files.

  As stated elsewhere in this thread the file format will be XML, easier it 
is impossible. ;-)
-- 
José Abílio

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jose' Matos]

On Tuesday 04 January 2005 10:58, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
 Matej 421 (I don't care that much),

 http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=421
 Export to ASCII does not export bibliography and references

 It seems to be fixed now, but Jose' knows better than I do.

  It is fixed now.

-- 
José Abílio

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jose' Matos]

On Tuesday 04 January 2005 10:58, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
 Matej - Docbook bibliography support (after being spoiled by LyX's
 Matej support of BibTeX, I just cannot live without Insert/Citation
 Matej Reference working)

  There is a feature request in bugzilla for this, I didn't had enough to 
look to it yet. If you have any suggestion please be don't hesitate and 
tell us... :-)

-- 
José Abílio

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Rich Shepard]

On Tue, 4 Jan 2005, Juergen Spitzmueller wrote:
1.4 has an lfun which does exactly this (you can open, close or toggle all
footnotes and others via the minibuffer).
Jürgen,
  I _thought_ this was the case. I look forward to using it.
Many thanks,
Rich
--
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
http://www.appl-ecosys.com   Voice: 503-667-4517   Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Juergen Spitzmueller]

Charles de Miramon wrote:
 I was talking of the way how shortcuts appear in the menu. Today it is C-n
 and I think it should be changed to Ctrl+N like Gnome/KDE/Windows
 applications.

This has been changed in 1.4 (shortcuts are even translatable).

Jürgen

Re: LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 released

[Rob S]

Ruurd;
Many, many thanks - just downloaded it and now about to have a play!
Over the next few days I'll amend the Wiki page to reflect the update. 
It already looks as if much of the wiki page can be thinned out.

Regards
Rob S
Ruurd Reitsma wrote:
Finally, I came around to compiling a fresh LyX for Win32. It can be found
at the usual spot:
http://www.home.zonnet.nl/rareitsma/lyx/
The Qt version is now 3.2.1 Non-Commercial. Please note that:
* The spell checking stuff has changed.
* There are some visual improvements due to the new Qt version.
* No new functionality has been added.
* Localized menus are broken for now.
Work to merge my modifications into the LyX code are underway, so more
functionality can be expected for 1.3.6/1.4
Ruurd
--
R D Saunders
Hydraulic Research Group
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Southampton
UK

Re: Adding A Leterhead to a Report

[Charles de Miramon]

Rich Shepard wrote:

I want to use LyX for reports that should go out under my letterhead. I
 have the logo and address/phone information set up in an OpenOffice.org
 Writer page and exported as a .pdf file. I can also recreate it in The
 GIMP (if I can access the proper typeface).
 
What I would like to do is have just the graphic/text portion of the
 letterhead as a .eps file and insert that -- not in a float -- so it's at
 the top of the first page of a report.
 
I'm not sure how to generate the .eps file or if my proposed approach
will
 work. What suggestions do folks have for doing this? Is there a HOWTO
 somewhere that I should read?
 
 TIA,
 
 Rich
 

Use the KOMA-Script report class and the titlehead style for the paragraph
you want on top of the title page.

KOMA-Script is very powerfull...

Cheers,
Charles
-- 
http://www.kde-france.org

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Juergen == Juergen Spitzmueller [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Juergen Rich Shepard wrote:
 I'd like to state again my request for a way to close all open
 figure, table and footnotes that are opened by the spell checker.
 It's a great feature that they are checked, but it would be very
 tidy to be able to close them all again without having to move
 through the entire document one screen at a time.

Juergen 1.4 has an lfun which does exactly this (you can open, close
Juergen or toggle all footnotes and others via the minibuffer).

More importantly, the spellchecker does not open footnotes anymore,
except when it finds errors inside them.

JMarc

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Jose' == Jose' Matos [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Jose' On Tuesday 04 January 2005 10:58, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
Matej 421 (I don't care that much),
  http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=421 Export to ASCII does
 not export bibliography and references
 
 It seems to be fixed now, but Jose' knows better than I do.

Jose'   It is fixed now.

So, why isn't marked as fixedintrunk?

JMarc

Re: Adding A Leterhead to a Report

[Rich Shepard]

On Tue, 4 Jan 2005, Charles de Miramon wrote:
Use the KOMA-Script report class and the titlehead style for the paragraph
you want on top of the title page.
KOMA-Script is very powerfull...
  Thank you, Charles.
Rich
--
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
http://www.appl-ecosys.com   Voice: 503-667-4517   Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Jose' Matos]

On Tuesday 04 January 2005 17:13, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:

 Jose'   It is fixed now.

 So, why isn't marked as fixedintrunk?

  Because the bibliographic support is broken (for insertions) and I would 
like to close it when this is working.

  Consider it some kind of hidden dependency. :-)
 JMarc

-- 
José Abílio

LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 - install error

[Kent Kostuk]

I am having some difficulties getting LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 to start. 
When I attempt to execute lyx.exe I get a dialog box with the following 
text:

LyX wasn't able to find any layout description!
Check the contents of the file textclass.lst
Sorry, has to exit :-(
A reinstall did not make this problem go away.  What do I need to check 
for to get this working?

Kent Kostuk

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[Steve Litt]

On Tuesday 04 January 2005 10:16 am, Angus Leeming wrote:
 Charles de Miramon wrote:
  For example the shortcuts with the quite obsolete concept of 'Meta'. I
  think that LyX should show the shortcuts in the same Windowish way that
  Gnome or KDE. Who is using a Sun keyboard anyway ?

 key bindings are all configurable. See $PREFIX/share/lyx/bind. Personally,
 as an emacs fan, I use emacs.bind. I guess you should be using cua.bind.
 Or adapt to suit. Copy the best fit bind file to your $HOME/.lyx/bind
 directory and edit to suit.

  For easing the learning curve for MsWord users, a Tool menu entry with
  spellchecking, etc. would be be handy.

 Like this (attached screen shot) you mean? Again, menus are configurable.
 See $PREFIX/share/lyx/ui/default.ui. The screen shot shows the default
 menus for LyX 1.4.x which are radically different to those of 1.3.x. LyX
 1.4.x will ship with a 'classic.ui' for those more comfortable with what
 they have now.

  I am not sure how a plugin based application would solve the LaTeX
  support model, actually.
 
  If I could write my 300 hundreds line Python script to add a GUI for the
  Frenchb babel macros that I use every day, maybe I would motivate myself
  to read the big Python book I bought and never read Other would do it
  for their pet LateX packages and Herbert Voss would create a gigantic
  pstricks plugin :-).

 Yes, as Matej has said already, LyX is lacking good scripting support.

 But nonetheless, a plugin needs to interact with the existing kernel. Our
 notion of 'plugin' is an 'inset'. Just as you describe, you need to know
 next to nothing about the rest of the code base to create a new inset.

 LyX doesn't use KDE to implement the *core* of the program, but that
 doesn't mean it isn't easy to add functionality to it. Please come and
 join in ;-)

I hope LyX *NEVER* depends on KDE in any way. My personal experience tells me 
that KDE is unstable, to the point where I use very few KDE apps. I use Kmail 
right now, but am looking for a replacement. Kmail crashes on me regularly.

I've used LyX since 2001, and it's been rock solid stable. I really appreciate 
that, and hope it isn't contaminated with DCOPisms and all the other KDE 
fluffNbunch.

SteveT


-- 
Steve Litt
Author: 
   * Universal Troubleshooting Process courseware
   * Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist
   * Rapid Learning: Secret Weapon of the Successful Technologist
Webmaster
   * Troubleshooters.Com
   * http://www.troubleshooters.com

(Legal Disclaimer) Follow these suggestions at your own risk.

Re: LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 - install error

[Uwe Stöhr]

Kent Kostuk wrote:
I am having some difficulties getting LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 to start. When 
I attempt to execute lyx.exe I get a dialog box with the following text:

LyX wasn't able to find any layout description!
Check the contents of the file textclass.lst
Seems that LyX can't find your MikTeX.
What do I need to check for to get this working?
First you should check if MikTeX is working:
- try to open the program yap
- try to compile the attached file with pdflatex
  Open a console and type:
pdflatex test
- check if MikTeX is in the path which you'll find in the system
  variable settings
regards Uwe
\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

Hello

\end{document}

Re: Comments on structured authoring, LyX, OpenOffice, and life

[John Levon]

On Tue, Jan 04, 2005 at 12:17:12PM +0100, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:

 I just repeat what John Levon said a few months ago. He seemd to thing
 that there was a lot of work to do on it (maybe for undo).

At the time there was a lot of brokenness around tables, insets, undo
etc. This may indeed have changed a lot since, if Juergen thinks it's
relatively usable again now

regards
john

Re: LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 - install error

[Kent Kostuk]

I was instructed to try opening yap:  that worked.
I was then instructed to compile the attached file from a console:  that 
worked.

I then checked if miktex was in my path.  I see c:\texmf\miktex\bin in 
my path.

Anyone have another suggestion?
Kent

Re: No Search Replace in 1.3.5?

[John Levon]

On Tue, Jan 04, 2005 at 01:00:50PM +0100, Charles de Miramon wrote:

 http://doc.trolltech.com/4.0/qtextdocument.html

I just had a quick look at this. Unfortunately it's unsuitable. It is
designed as a simple hand over the keys to the car and bring back my
shopping interface. What we need is components that help us build our
own interface, not some black box that we can query for stuff.

Wherever it makes sense we do use the Qt library for UI, as much as
possible. Unfortunately the Qt library is very much our way or no way
at all in large part... in particular truly separated MVC seems very
hard to do if we use these black box components.

regards
john

Re: LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 - install error

[Uwe Stöhr]

Kent Kostuk wrote:
I was instructed to try opening yap:  that worked.
I was then instructed to compile the attached file from a console:  that 
worked.

I then checked if miktex was in my path.  I see c:\texmf\miktex\bin in 
my path.

Anyone have another suggestion?
OK if that works, assure that the installation folder of LyX and all 
subfolders have write permissions for everybody.
If this is not the case, you have to reconfigure LyX again after 
adjusting the permissions.

At last you can run LyX by the console command
lyx -dbg 3
to have an extra debug window. Now call Edit - Reconfigure and look 
what happens in the debug window.

regards Uwe

Re: LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 - install error

[Kent Kostuk]

I get the same error if I try to run lyx from the console command (I had 
tried this previously and just to make sure, I tried again).

It appears that the subfolders are write enabled for everyone.
Any other suggestions?
Kent

OK if that works, assure that the installation folder of LyX and all 
subfolders have write permissions for everybody.
If this is not the case, you have to reconfigure LyX again after 
adjusting the permissions.

At last you can run LyX by the console command
lyx -dbg 3
to have an extra debug window. Now call Edit - Reconfigure and look 
what happens in the debug window.

regards Uwe

Re: LyX 1.3.5 for Win32 released

[Uwe Sthr]

Finally, I came around to compiling a fresh LyX for Win32.
Ruurd,
many many thanks for this new version. It works very well.
After testing the version, I updated the wiki site about LyXWin's setup
http://wiki.lyx.org/pmwiki.php/LyX/WindowsSetup
and have the following annotations:
- It is still not possible to process a LyX file by doubleclicking on it 
in Windows file explorer. LyX opens and one can make changes, but the 
export fails.
This comes due to the wrong folder separator:

Opening a file within LyXWin gives e.g. C:/lyx/test.lyx which is correct.
Opening the file by double clicking gives C:\lyx\test.lyx
- The menu Help - LaTeX Configuration fails as in LyXWin 1.3.3
- Unlike LyXWin 1.3.3 the lyx.exe doesn't contain the LyX icon (the 
creature called Lydia). OK, this not really relevant for LyX's 
functionality but helped to differ LyX files in the file explorer.
(Could you put a lyx.ico on your site?)

- The blue boxes in the math insets are too small and the cursor too 
big, see the two attached screenshots.

thanks and regards Uwe
inline: scrshot1.pnginline: scrshot2.png