Re: Easing the editing/correction of LyX documents

[Kenward Vaughan]

On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 09:00:22PM +0100, Peter Bowyer wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am one of  the people who cannot finds editing documents hard on 
> screen - I end up printing a copy and then working through it with a 
> pen, making changes and restructuring, and then typing the changes up.
> 
> I didn't find this a problem when using Word because what was 
> on-screen looked like the paper copy, so I didn't have to think hard 
> about which parts matched up.  However with LyX this has become much 
> more difficult, because the printed copy and the editable copy don't 
> look similar.
> 
> Now I know that people have been writing documents this way for much 
> longer than word processors have been around, (think of raw TeX) 
> which suggests it's a problem with my approach.  Do you have any tips 
> or suggestions for making the editing process smoother?
> 
> Thanks,
> Peter

I'm not sure what it is specifically that you want to transfer from the
"look" (when you speak of matching up parts), but my own approach
involves using gv and the built-in shortcuts for that viewer.  

I set gv's preferences to include "watch file" (updates about every
second).  In LyX I type ctrl-T to open a view in gv, then every time I
finish editing something I know affects the look, I type ctrl-shft-T,
and the view is updated.

Since I use fluxbox as a window manager, I tab the two apps together,
so no more real estate is lost.  Passing my mouse over the tabs shifts
between LyX and gv.  One could use another desktop for gv, if desired.

Of course, if you're in Windows, you'll have to deal with whatever
limitations are there...  ;-)

Printing specific pages is simple with gv.

Trying to match text is not an issue for me, since gv is always synced
with LyX this way (I see, then I edit directly).  If needed, I'd guess
that you could leave the find box open next to the window...

HTH,


Kenward
-- 
In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be 
_teachers_ and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, 
because passing civilization along from one generation to the next 
ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone 
could have. - Lee Iacocca

OT: Tool to convert from LaTeX to SVG

[Paul Smith]

Dear All

Is there some tool to convert from LaTex equations to SVG? I have
tried pstoedit, but it does not apparently work here.

Thanks in advance,

Paul

Reverse DVI search (Was: Easing the editing/correction of LyX..)

[christian . ridderstrom]

On Mon, 19 Jun 2006, Peter Bowyer wrote:


Hi,

I am one of the people who cannot finds editing documents hard on screen 
- I end up printing a copy and then working through it with a pen, 
making changes and restructuring, and then typing the changes up.


Me too... I've always wondered if a tablet computer would help here.


Now I know that people have been writing documents this way for much 
longer than word processors have been around, (think of raw TeX) which 
suggests it's a problem with my approach.  Do you have any tips or 
suggestions for making the editing process smoother?


Have you tried the "reverse search", or "inverse search" or something like 
that? I think there may now be a way to click inside a DVI and get LyX to 
position the cursor at the corresponding position in the document.


Someone else should now if this is available now (and what it is actually 
called...)


/Christian

PS It seems availabale on Mac, look for "reverse DVI search" on this page
http://wiki.lyx.org/LyX/LyXOnMac

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

Re: Instant Preview working in LyX 1.4.1?

[Stefano Grioni]

Rudi Gaelzer wrote:
Funny!  I swear it wasn't working.  I could wait a whole day and nothing...  
Then, I started lyx from the console in debug mode (with lyx -dbg any, as 
suggested) and Instant preview worked.  Then, I quitted and started from the 
kde menu (lyx-qt) and voila! Here I have math preview in lyx 1.4.1.  


Any idea on this funny behaviour?

Thanks for all suggestions.

On Monday 19 June 2006 12:58, Paul A. Rubin wrote:
  

Rudi Gaelzer wrote:


Is there some way to check out on some error messages that might come up
when lyx tries to execute the instant preview?
  

lyx -dbg any (and brace yourself for the flood of messages).

/Paul


Hi,
Hopefully I didn't have the same chance ...
Trying lyx -dbg mathed i got plenty of dbg lines as soon as I used a 
keyboard shortcut to get a Math symbol.

Here is what most of them were like :

font msa not available and I can't fake it
faking cong
read symbol 'arg  inset: lyxblacktext  draw: 97  extra: func'
symbol abuse for ker

I've got like 100 of each ... don't know what they mean or how to fix them.
And finally I got
Mutex destroy failure: Device or resource busy
As soon as I quited lyx.

thanks for your help

Re: Confused about Lyx's goals -- isn't this supposed to increase productivity?

[Ingo Klöcker]

On Monday 19 June 2006 15:21, Jeremy Wells wrote:
> I suppose what I'm hoping for is someone to say 1) "no, you're wrong,
> because..."; 2) "wait x number of years and we'll be there"; or 3)
> "if you don't like coding, use a different tool."

From my experience from writing my thesis which LyX I'd say 1). When 
writing the thesis I first had to create a new layout file because I 
wanted to use the KOMA-script book class with the ntheorem package and 
the enumerate package. (Yes, I promised to upload this layout file to 
the wiki. I haven't forgotten.) Creating this layout file from the 
existing layout files took maybe half a day. Of course, for people who 
are not into programming it might have taken a bit longer, but using 
the documentation about layout files which is included in LyX and using 
an existing layout file to derive your layout file from it shouldn't be 
that difficult.

Anyway, after I had created this layout file I wrote my thesis purely 
concentrating on the contents. This took several months. Then, at the 
end, I've spent maybe a week to make my thesis look like I wanted it to 
look. Adding an index for all the mathematical symbols appearing in my 
thesis required the usage of some ERT. But I did this at the end and 
didn't worry about that while producing the contents.

So, in my case LyX clearly increased my productivity because I only had 
to do worry about other things than the actual contents for a 
relatively small amount of time.

Regards,
Ingo


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Re: Easing the editing/correction of LyX documents

[Richard Heck]

When I'm doing close editing, I "View DVI" and switch back and forth
between the DVI viewer and LyX. LyX now has a feature that allows you
the DVI viewer effectively to inform LyX what you want to edit, and LyX
will then go there automatically. I've not used that yet, however, as I
can always just search for a relevant phrase, and that works for me.

Peter Bowyer wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am one of the people who cannot finds editing documents hard on
> screen - I end up printing a copy and then working through it with a
> pen, making changes and restructuring, and then typing the changes up.
>
> I didn't find this a problem when using Word because what was
> on-screen looked like the paper copy, so I didn't have to think hard
> about which parts matched up. However with LyX this has become much
> more difficult, because the printed copy and the editable copy don't
> look similar.
>
> Now I know that people have been writing documents this way for much
> longer than word processors have been around, (think of raw TeX) which
> suggests it's a problem with my approach. Do you have any tips or
> suggestions for making the editing process smoother?
>
> Thanks,
> Peter

Re: Easing the editing/correction of LyX documents

[Rich Shepard]

On Mon, 19 Jun 2006, A. Scottedward Hodel wrote:


I've come to LyX from the opposite end of many of the people writing: I
started with LaTeX, ideal for writing mathematical papers/bibliographies,
and now find LyX a wonderful way to simiplify document formatting and
preparation. I only use WYSIWYG editors for quick-hack items that things
like MS Word can do more easily than LyX. (That's an increasingly rare
event for me.)


  This reminds me of my first couple of days with LyX. I have a friend who
still does all his writing in plain TeX (and, yes, I've told him he's a
masochist, but he's been using it for 20+ years). Anyway, as soon as I
finished the LyX tutorial I sent him an e-mail raving about the ease of
document creation. He sent me a challenge.

  He had spent two weeks formatting a resume for his daughter, who was
graduating from high school and needed something for her college
applications. I was sent the .pdf output and asked how long it would take to
do the same think with LyX. Using the tutorial, Users Guide, and Reference
Manual, I recreated the resume with LyX and sent it to him the next morning
-- with the .lyx file.

  My friend was suitably impressed (and so was I, to be candid), but he still
writes in plain TeX. :-) Can't teach that old dog new tricks.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |The Environmental Permitting
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.(TM)|Accelerator
 Voice: 503-667-4517  Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Easing the editing/correction of LyX documents

[Peter Bowyer]

At 21:11 19/06/2006, John Coppens wrote:

Shouldn't be too difficult - if you want to read the same-as-printed
document, why don't you use the View options? View|PDF or View|postscript
or whatever equivalent to the command you use to print...


Because these don't' help me find the text I need to edit in an editable form.

I've been using the find tool and that's working OK, I'm just curious 
to see how other people do it.  I'm not saying LyX should be like a 
Word Processor, just that they make the editing easier and there must 
be a way round this.  But then I'm not an emacs/vim user, so I don't 
approach this problem as they would.


Peter

Re: Confused about Lyx's goals -- isn't this supposed to increase productivity?

[Ingo Klöcker]

On Monday 19 June 2006 18:05, Rich Shepard wrote:
>I was very pleased to learn that when Springer-Verlag asked to
> publish my book, they provided their own class (svmono) for
> monographs, and they have a TeXpert on staff in New York because they
> prefer to get documents submitted camera ready. Well, when the
> TeXpert looked at the first few chapters for consistency with their
> standards, he asked me to replace all instances of \textellipsis with
> \ldots. Huh? What's that? So, I pulled down my copy of TLC2, and
> discovered that there are multiple typographic standards for the
> specing of an ellipsis (...) in text, including the spacing of
> following punctuation. Well, my eyes quickly glazed over with all
> that minutiae, so I shrugged, loaded the .lyx file into emacs, did a
> global search and replace, and was done.

A simple
  \renewcommand{\textellipsis}{\ldots}
in ERT in LyX should have been sufficient. Just a tip for the future.

Regards,
Ingo


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Re: Easing the editing/correction of LyX documents

[Rich Shepard]

On Mon, 19 Jun 2006, Peter Bowyer wrote:


Do you have any tips or suggestions for making the editing process
smoother?


Peter,

  I can offer what I developed as a workable solution for me over several
decades. I wear two hats, but not at the same time.

  I wear my writing hat and put out a stream of text. I'll stop and consider
sentences and words, but basically my first draft is getting the ideas down.
This is after developing the ToC, of course.

  A couple of days later (if I have the time), I take off my writer's hat and
put on my editor's hat. I find all the sentences that are much too long
(that's the way I speak and write), and make two- to three-sentences of them.
I look at a sentence and ask myself what I'm trying to express here, and
would it be clear to someone who did not know as much as I about the subject?

  Also, I tend to do a lot of this review in xdvi (or whatever the latest
flavor is). I can increase the magnification so I don't need reading glasses,
and it lets me see it as a printed page. I can also see overfull horizontal
lines and missing pieces (such as in the headers or incorrect page
numbering). Or, I'll produce the pdf output and do the critical editing reading
in xpdf. Both are easier to follow than the screen-wide LyX window that I
use.

  When I'm sufficiently satisfied, I ask others to review what I've written,
and I do a final read-through on a printed copy. I, too, can see things on
the printed page that I miss on the screen. But, looking at the dvi or pdf
output on screen is almost as good. Actually, it's probably just as good. :-)

HTH,

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |The Environmental Permitting
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.(TM)|Accelerator
 Voice: 503-667-4517  Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Easing the editing/correction of LyX documents

[Steve Litt]

On Monday 19 June 2006 04:00 pm, Peter Bowyer wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am one of  the people who cannot finds editing documents hard on
> screen - I end up printing a copy and then working through it with a
> pen, making changes and restructuring, and then typing the changes up.
>
> I didn't find this a problem when using Word because what was
> on-screen looked like the paper copy, so I didn't have to think hard
> about which parts matched up.  However with LyX this has become much
> more difficult, because the printed copy and the editable copy don't
> look similar.
>
> Now I know that people have been writing documents this way for much
> longer than word processors have been around, (think of raw TeX)
> which suggests it's a problem with my approach.  Do you have any tips
> or suggestions for making the editing process smoother?

I like the way you're doing it right now. Wordperfect, Word and LyX, I've 
always printed a chapter, sat down in a quiet corner or layed down in bed, 
and marked it up with a red pen. When I'm done, I go back into the "source 
document" and make the changes, same as you do now. If I can't find something 
because of different pagenation and the like, I use search, and that's fast.

I'll tell you why I'm so enthusiastic about printing a chapter and marking it 
up with red pen. Reading paper gives you a different viewpoint than sitting 
in front of a terminal. You input the content in front of a terminal, and my 
thought is that if I were to edit in that same way, I'd miss the mistakes I 
made in the first place. By marking up a paper copy, I edit from a different 
viewpoint and nail the mistakes I made the first time.

By the way, if you're anything like me, you'll need to print and mark up each 
chapter 2 or 3 times before you get what you consider satisfactory.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Author: 
   * Universal Troubleshooting Process courseware
   * Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist
   * Manager's Guide to Technical Troubleshooting
   * Twenty Eight Tales of Troubleshooting
   * Rapid Learning: Secret Weapon of the Successful Technologist

http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore
http://www.troubleshooters.com/utp/tcourses.htm

Re: Easing the editing/correction of LyX documents

[A. Scottedward Hodel]

This ties in closely with the ongoing discussion of the goals of LyX.

The LyX editor itself is to put in the content/hierarchical  
organization of a document.  When I need to preview the actual  
document, I use that option in LyX (cmd-T on a macintosh, View- 
>update->pdf on the menu) which lets me see the current .pdf file  
output.


I've come to LyX from the opposite end of many of the people writing:  
I started with LaTeX, ideal for writing mathematical papers/ 
bibliographies, and now find LyX a wonderful way to simiplify  
document formatting and preparation.  I only use WYSIWYG editors for  
quick-hack items that things like MS Word can do more easily than  
LyX.  (That's an increasingly rare event for me.)


LaTeX's document formatting reminds me of what Henry Ford said long  
ago about the Model T car: "You can have it in any color you like, as  
long as it's black."  LaTeX and, by consequence, LyX, do what the do  
very well, but their purpose and use is quite different from  WYSIWYG  
document preparation.


Yours,

A S Hodel

On Jun 19, 2006, at 3:00 PM, Peter Bowyer wrote:


Hi,

I am one of  the people who cannot finds editing documents hard on  
screen - I end up printing a copy and then working through it with  
a pen, making changes and restructuring, and then typing the  
changes up.


I didn't find this a problem when using Word because what was on- 
screen looked like the paper copy, so I didn't have to think hard  
about which parts matched up.  However with LyX this has become  
much more difficult, because the printed copy and the editable copy  
don't look similar.


Now I know that people have been writing documents this way for  
much longer than word processors have been around, (think of raw  
TeX) which suggests it's a problem with my approach.  Do you have  
any tips or suggestions for making the editing process smoother?


Thanks,
Peter

Re: Easing the editing/correction of LyX documents

[John Coppens]

On Mon, 19 Jun 2006 21:00:22 +0100
Peter Bowyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


> Now I know that people have been writing documents this way for much 
> longer than word processors have been around, (think of raw TeX) 
> which suggests it's a problem with my approach.  Do you have any tips 
> or suggestions for making the editing process smoother?

Hi Peter...

Shouldn't be too difficult - if you want to read the same-as-printed
document, why don't you use the View options? View|PDF or View|postscript
or whatever equivalent to the command you use to print...

Of course, this is an extra step as compared to a WYSIWYG editor, but
then LyX doesn't allow you to make as many errors either ;-)

John

Easing the editing/correction of LyX documents

[Peter Bowyer]

Hi,

I am one of  the people who cannot finds editing documents hard on 
screen - I end up printing a copy and then working through it with a 
pen, making changes and restructuring, and then typing the changes up.


I didn't find this a problem when using Word because what was 
on-screen looked like the paper copy, so I didn't have to think hard 
about which parts matched up.  However with LyX this has become much 
more difficult, because the printed copy and the editable copy don't 
look similar.


Now I know that people have been writing documents this way for much 
longer than word processors have been around, (think of raw TeX) 
which suggests it's a problem with my approach.  Do you have any tips 
or suggestions for making the editing process smoother?


Thanks,
Peter

Re: Confused about Lyx's goals -- isn't this supposed to increase productivity?

[Andre Poenitz]

On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 09:21:44AM -0400, Jeremy Wells wrote:
> I suppose what I'm hoping for is someone to say 1) "no, you're wrong, 
> because..."; 2) "wait x number of years and we'll be there"; or 3) "if you 
> don't like coding, use a different tool."

It's not 1).

Could be 2) for sufficiently large x.

3) might be a reasonable short-term solution if your thesis is due next
week.

> This whole thing is extremely frustrating as I can see the huge promise 
> that the LaTeX/Lyx system can offer, but it's awfully rough beneath the 
> surface.

The problem is (as usual), limited development resources, and (rather
unusual) the ability to split these limited resources into four(!)
different frontends without doing a single one right (and recently also
into three(!) different build systems). A lot of energy goes into areas
related to re-inventing wheels and making development harder.

It's sometimes easy to get frustrated even by watching from a distance,
let alone from using it.

Andre'

Re: Copyrights of material contributed to the wiki (Was: Layout..)

[Andre Poenitz]

On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 10:29:00AM +0200, Georg Baum wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
> > Do we choose BSD or GPL for the default? Out of habit I'd lean towards
> > GPL, and also because that is what I'd expect if I never bothered to read
> > the Copyrights page.
> 
> I'd say GPL. I did not follow this thread too closely, but as I understand
> it layout files can only be licensed under GPL: They require LyX, and LyX
> is GPL.

It's a pretty strong interpretation of the GPL as far as I am concerned.

Andre'

Re: Instant Preview working in LyX 1.4.1?

[Rudi Gaelzer]

Funny!  I swear it wasn't working.  I could wait a whole day and nothing...  
Then, I started lyx from the console in debug mode (with lyx -dbg any, as 
suggested) and Instant preview worked.  Then, I quitted and started from the 
kde menu (lyx-qt) and voila! Here I have math preview in lyx 1.4.1.  

Any idea on this funny behaviour?

Thanks for all suggestions.

On Monday 19 June 2006 12:58, Paul A. Rubin wrote:
> Rudi Gaelzer wrote:
> > Is there some way to check out on some error messages that might come up
> > when lyx tries to execute the instant preview?
>
> lyx -dbg any (and brace yourself for the flood of messages).
>
> /Paul

Appearences

[Rich Shepard]

  We've had a lot of discussion recently about layouts, page design, fine tuning
appearances, bibliographies, and so on. This makes me ask: how many of you
with needs beyond the standard own and have read Mittlebach & Goossen's "The
LaTeX Companion, 2nd edition?" How many have searched CTAN for a suitable
package?

  TLC2, for example, devotes Chapter 3 to "Basic Formatting Tools", including
phrases and paragraphs; footnotes, endnotes, and marginals; list structures;
and lines and columns. Chapter 4 is "The Layout of the Page," Chapter 12 is
"Managing Citations," Chapter 13 is "Bibliography Generation," and Appendix A
is "A LaTeX Overview for Preamble, Package, and Class Writers." That's a lot
of information for those who want to roll their own.

  The Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN; http://www.ctan.org/) is
another resource that can save us from re-inventing the wheel.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |The Environmental Permitting
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.(TM)|Accelerator
 Voice: 503-667-4517  Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Layout copyright; was: Re: Sharing layout files

[Andre Poenitz]

On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 01:57:26PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Friday 16 June 2006 11:50 am, you wrote:
> > The real first question is whether a layout file can be covered by
> > copyright to begin with.
> >
> > As I pointed out before, one good example is fonts. While their names
> > can be copyrighted, the actual outline and metric files cannot be.
> 
> I didn't know that.

I don't know that either.

All I know is that there is no universal copyright law - even if some
entities on a certain side of that big pond sometimes have interesting
ideas about the size of the universe and the applicability of _their_
laws (or the (non-)applicability of any laws for that matter).

Andre'

Re: Confused about Lyx's goals -- isn't this supposed to increase productivity?

[Rich Shepard]

On Mon, 19 Jun 2006, Martin A. Hansen wrote:


so i would like to add to your post some questions about considering
alternatives to latex as layout engine. would it be possible (and feasible)
to integrate tex commands with lyx circumnavigating latex? what other
alternatives are there? xhtml and css may generate hi-end typographic
output, yes? (i guess that is why google bought writely ...).


  It's all there already; called DocBook. Go for it.

  If you think LaTeX has a steep learning curve, wait until you write your
own DTD in XSLT or DSSSL (or whatever they are).


- finally a constructive suggestion. how about a bibliographic tool within
lyx to replace makebst with some WYSIWYG ?


  Because LyX/LaTeX is _not_ WISIWYG. If that's what you want, then use a
word processor that has that model for its core.

  Why do so many folks want to change the tool rather than themselves? If you
want custom page layouts (and covers), try Scribus. If you want to post web
pages on a server, use DocBook. For those of us who are more concerned with
content than with formatting, LyX/LaTeX is the ultimate writing tool, and it
does not need more in the menus or other interfaces.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |The Environmental Permitting
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.(TM)|Accelerator
 Voice: 503-667-4517  Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Confused about Lyx's goals -- isn't this supposed to increase productivity?

[Rich Shepard]

On Mon, 19 Jun 2006, Richard Heck wrote:


I have found LyX to deliver precisely what it purports to offer: I
concentrate more on my writing and less on formatting. It seems crazy in
retrospect, but when I was using a traditional word processor
(WordPerfect, in my case), I'd spend a ridiculously long time worrying
about hyphenation, line length, and the like, and that despite the fact
that it didn't make a bit of difference, since I was probably going to
re-write the paragraph I was so worried about the next day. (I've spoken
to other people and have found this to be a common experience.)


Richard,

  When I worked for others in the corporate world, I found that the PHBs were
the worst on this. They'd obsess about format ("why can't you put the org
chart block on the other side?") than the content. This is probably still the
case, as seen in Dilbert each day.


Journals do of course have their own styles, but I've never once had a
journal send a paper back to me insisting that I put the references in
form A or form B, and the journals that are really insistent all produce
their own BibTeX styles, anyway.


  I was very pleased to learn that when Springer-Verlag asked to publish my
book, they provided their own class (svmono) for monographs, and they have a
TeXpert on staff in New York because they prefer to get documents submitted
camera ready. Well, when the TeXpert looked at the first few chapters for
consistency with their standards, he asked me to replace all instances of
\textellipsis with \ldots. Huh? What's that? So, I pulled down my copy of
TLC2, and discovered that there are multiple typographic standards for the
specing of an ellipsis (...) in text, including the spacing of following
punctuation. Well, my eyes quickly glazed over with all that minutiae, so I
shrugged, loaded the .lyx file into emacs, did a global search and replace,
and was done.

  I still don't care about the differences between \textellipsis and \ldots.
:-)

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |The Environmental Permitting
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.(TM)|Accelerator
 Voice: 503-667-4517  Fax: 503-667-8863

BSD license, among many others: was: Re: Copyrights of material contributed to the wiki (Was: Layout..)

[David Neeley]

Steve, you are correct that the layout file is *not* required to be GPL.

The BSD license is at http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php

NOTE that it is MUCH shorter (and thus more likely to be read!) than
the GPL. Plus, with the GPL, we have the consideration as to *which*
GPL? There is a new one that is somewhat controversial, as you may
know.

Another excellent one is the MIT license:
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php

David



On 6/19/06, Steve Litt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is the relationship between LyX and
layouts is program vs. data, and in general you can use non-gpl or even
non-free data as input to a GPL program, so I don't (and I'm not a lawyer ;-)
think it's legally required to have the layout file be GPL.

SteveT

Re: Instant Preview working in LyX 1.4.1?

[Paul A. Rubin]

Rudi Gaelzer wrote:


Is there some way to check out on some error messages that might come up when 
lyx tries to execute the instant preview?




lyx -dbg any (and brace yourself for the flood of messages).

/Paul

Re: Confused about Lyx's goals -- isn't this supposed to increase productivity?

[Stephen Harris]

Richard Heck wrote:

Speaking just for myself...and, yes, I'm an academic, a philosopher
(with mathematical interests)...

I have found LyX to deliver precisely what it purports to offer: I
concentrate more on my writing and less on formatting. It seems crazy in
retrospect, but when I was using a traditional word processor
(WordPerfect, in my case), I'd spend a ridiculously long time worrying
about hyphenation, line length, and the like, and that despite the fact
that it didn't make a bit of difference, since I was probably going to
re-write the paragraph I was so worried about the next day. (I've spoken
to other people and have found this to be a common experience.) I'd
worry about formatting section headings, where page breaks occurred,
etc, etc. Now I don't. I just write and let LaTeX do all the work
formatting my document. (And, of course, when I'm writing logic, well,
you can't beat LaTeX when it comes to typesetting formulae.) So most of
the time, there is no ERT in my LyX documents at all, and the preamble
contains nothing more than what's needed to get fancyhdr to do its thing.

Could the formatting be tweaked? Sure. If you /want/ to worry about that
kind of thing with LyX or LaTeX, you're free to do so, and I've done
some of that tweaking myself from time to time: That's when you have to
delve into LaTeX. But precisely because LyX isn't WYSIWYG, formatting
issues don't stare you in the face while you're trying to write, and so
you are free to ignore them. (I find that I can write almost as freely
in LyX as I can when I'm just writing longhand.) Indeed, I find that one
of the first things people have to do, when they first come to LyX, is
simply to /stop worrying/ /about formatting/ and learn to focus on
content. It's a common complaint among college teachers that students
seem to spend more time worrying about the appearance of their papers
than they do their content, and, in that same vein, I often find myself
wanting to ask people who post formatting questions to this list how
much it really matters whether the gap about section headings is this
big or only that big and, for that matter, whether they really think
they know more about typesetting than the people who produced the styles
they're using. That's not to say there aren't legitimate issues that
arise, and if you're self-publishing books, like Steve Litt, for
example, or trying to get your thesis into the appropriate format, then
you're going to have more such issues to handle. But a lot of these have
been encountered by other people, and a lot of them have been solved by
people who posted the resulting LaTeX packages on CTAN. And for the most
common issues, very comprehensive packages (like titlesec, say) have
been written to expose the internals in a comprehensible way. I strongly
suspect, however, that some very large percentage of the time, people
just need to /chill on the formatting/.

The core to LyX's advantage, one inherited from LaTeX, is thus that form
is separated from content. As you may know, that's kind of a mantra
these days. In this respect, LaTeX incorporates a primitive version of
the kind of /semantic/ markup that's supposed to power the "semantic
web". Because the markup is semantic, it's a relatively trivial matter
to convert a LaTeX document to a spoken format for the blind or to
reformat the document when it gets rejected by journal A and needs to be
resubmitted to journal B. Yes, of course you can do a more semantic
markup with Word or OO, but how many people actually do? Creating and
debugging styles in traditional sorts of word processors is every bit as
labor-intensive as doing it in LaTeX, and because traditional programs
make spot-formatting so easy to do, people don't put in the effort to
create or even to learn how to use styles. They just format
line-by-line. LyX and LaTeX purposely discourage that kind of behavior,
and that is a Good Thing. But to understand what a good thing it is, you
have to unlearn some bad habits.

It's true that bibliography formatting is a sore spot. If you can get
away with using standard styles like apalike, then it's simple, but
obviously not everyone can, and natbib, in particular, has some
wonderful features that could be easier to use. (That said, LyX 1.4.x is
a /big/ jump forward, and thanks to the developers for that.) Jurabib is
even more flexible, and it would indeed be nice to see a GUI to
configure it, as it can be pretty confusing, but I strongly suspect we
will see that. But here again, I think a mental adjustment is in order.
Journals do of course have their own styles, but I've never once had a
journal send a paper back to me insisting that I put the references in
form A or form B, and the journals that are really insistent all produce
their own BibTeX styles, anyway. So for most people, natbib is going to
be more than sufficient. What's true, however, is that most of the focus
so far has been on scientific writing, and there are some issues
connected with writing 

Re: Confused about Lyx's goals -- isn't this supposed to increase productivity?

[Rich Shepard]

On Mon, 19 Jun 2006, David Neeley wrote:


I am a firm believer in creating styles and using them rather than
overriding particular pieces of a document--to the fullest possible extent.
That makes upkeep of that document over time a much more consistent effort
with much less effort involved. It also makes repurposing the document for
other formats simpler as well.


David,

  If you cannot easily adjust an existing style (including Memoir and KOMA),
but it's important for you to have something custom-built for your needs or
those of your company, why not hire one of the LyX developers to create it for
you to your specifications?

  It may not be the case that the majority of users need -- even want -- to
create new styles. I'm not a graphic artist or page layout expert, so I'm
grateful that those who have those skills have designed layouts and typefaces
that are elegant and communicate easily and well. And I just use them, happy
that I don't have to concern myself with these details.

  We take our vehicles to a professional mechanic when we don't have the
skills or time to learn how to do it ourselves, Our economies are filled with
specialists, and we have the option of investing the time and effort learning
how to something complex ourselves or hiring those who already know how to do
it. Open source applications (such as LyX) are created, maintained, and
improved by volunteers, in their spare time. It's not unreasonable to hire
them for custom work.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |The Environmental Permitting
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.(TM)|Accelerator
 Voice: 503-667-4517  Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Inserting a tab indented outline into a lyx document

[Paul A. Rubin]

Steve Litt wrote:



That works perfectly, and I could make a LyX environment to eliminate the ERT. 
As it turned out, I just used the itemize environment for this particular 
application, but your example showed me how to directly translate my tab 
indented outline into LyX with a simple Ruby script.




You might also have a look at the algorithmicx LaTeX package, which I 
think allows you to customize some of the commands.


/Paul

Re: Confused about Lyx's goals -- isn't this supposed to increase productivity?

[Martin A. Hansen]

hello jeremy


i agree with you on your observations.

i find lyx a very nice editor for formatting documents, however, i also have
this feeling that most of my time is spend on the steep learning slopes of
latex (which is because all the lyx things are fast and easy!).

in my humble oppinion, latex is complicated - perhaps too complicated and
clearly the time robber for all of us?!?

so i would like to add to your post some questions about considering
alternatives to latex as layout engine. would it be possible (and feasible)
to integrate tex commands with lyx circumnavigating latex? what other
alternatives are there? xhtml and css may generate hi-end typographic
output, yes? (i guess that is why google bought writely ...).


- finally a constructive suggestion. how about a bibliographic tool within
lyx to replace makebst with some WYSIWYG ?

sincerely,


martin

On 6/19/06, Jeremy Wells <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


For some time I have been evaluating Lyx as an academic word processor,
but find it wanting in a few critical areas.

For instance, the stated goal of Lyx is to spend more time writing, but
less time on formatting. Based on my experience,
however, and from posts to this list, a great deal of time is spent
inserting LaTeX tags into documents. In fact, my
assessment is that more time is spent making Lyx work properly than is
spent in dealing with a traditional
word-processing environment, be it MS Word or OpenOffice. Moreover, a
significant time investment is required to
research the format of the tag and where to insert it, and then to debug
the results. How does this save time?

Is the eventual goal of Lyx to "GUIfy" more of the LaTeX backend to avoid
having to delve into adding tags? Or will this
tool remain relatively marginalized, only used by those willing to
undertake the significant time overhead needed to
actually do productive work?

Judging from the number of posts to this lists, citations and
bibliographies are a major issue. There is no easy to use
method (e.g., a GUI) that can define the options for natbib, jurabib, or
any number of bibliography styles. Most
importantly, customizing these styles again requires one to write more
code, yet again, instead of engaging in the
writing process.

I suppose what I'm hoping for is someone to say 1) "no, you're wrong,
because..."; 2) "wait x number of years and we'll
be there"; or 3) "if you don't like coding, use a different tool."

This whole thing is extremely frustrating as I can see the huge promise
that the LaTeX/Lyx system can offer, but it's
awfully rough beneath the surface.

-Jeremy

Re: Confused about Lyx's goals -- isn't this supposed to increase productivity?

[Eric Nystrom]

Jeremy,

I'm a humanities user as well (history) so I understand your frustration
however, I'll take an approach most similar to your #1 -- "you're wrong":
Lyx requires a little more investment in document structures, formatting,
and so on, which is the point of most of the discussion on the list.
However, once you get it set up correctly, you can leave it alone and
everything works well, almost all of the time.  I'm currently writing my
diss (with jurabib and Jabref) and if I compile my document now, of course
the bibliographic citations in the footnotes aren't exactly how I want
them.  I know that at some point I'll take a couple of hours, spread over a
couple of days, to RTFMs, search the list archives and wiki, and even ask a
question or two on the relevant list.  I'll get the answers I need, then
make a couple changes, and everything will work right.  As long as I stay in
my field, I'll probably never need to ask those questions again.  Over the
long run, this is a great investment of my time.  (This is, of course, a
recapitulation in micro of the overall philosophy of LyX - concentrate on
the writing, which computers do not do well, and leave the typesetting and
formatting to the machine.)

The other thing is that many of us use LyX because we think it's a superior
solution for our needs, of course, but also because we like the helpful
community here.  It's a place where people communicate with respect toward
each other, and contribute when it's possible to do so.  The willingness to
pitch in and make things work -- either for yourself or for everyone else as
well -- is a key part of this community.  Not all of us, including me, have
the time or inclination to learn how to code, but I deeply appreciate those
who do.  So -- how can people like us help?  Wide-ranging criticism is not
the best answer.  Detailed requests -- "i can make it do X by placing this
ERT in each footnote, but could we perhaps have a button or macro to handle
that automatically?" are more helpful to the developers. When we figure out
how to solve a problem that vexes us, we can post our solution to the list
or the wiki, to make it part of the public record.  (I'm quite grateful to
the multiple participants in the "Convert to Word" discussions of a while
ago, for example.)  We humanists have particular expertise with
documentation - perhaps creating, revising, or tweaking the docs may be of
help.  In short, please appreciate this community both for what it is and
what it is not; and if you are looking to contribute, there are many ways of
doing so.

Best regards,

-Eric

On 6/19/06, Juergen Spitzmueller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


Jeremy Wells wrote:
> I suppose what I'm hoping for is someone to say 1) "no, you're wrong,
> because..."; 2) "wait x number of years and we'll be there"; or 3) "if
you
> don't like coding, use a different tool."

No:
4) Sit down, learn coding and implement the features you are missing. Or
at
least: 5) write down your enhancement wishes clearly and try to convince
some
kind soul to implement it for you.

This is an open source project, not a company where you can complain to.

Jürgen

Re: Confused about Lyx's goals -- isn't this supposed to increase productivity?

[David Neeley]

Jeremy et al.:

I am a relatively new LyX user, too. Among the documents I did in the
first days of using it was a 12-page, footnoted report. It was far
simpler than using a "word processor" be it OOo, Word, WordPerfect,
WordPro, KWord, AbiWord, or various others with which I am quite
familiar.

(I should add, I suppose, that I have worked as a corporate writer for
a very long time now, including several stints as a technical writer).

In my view, so long as what you are doing fits within the most common
uses, LyX is easy to use and the output is unmatched. However, I do
wish there were an easier environment in which to create new layout
files. Especially for those new to LyX/LaTeX, this is perhaps the
largest single stumbling block.

I am a firm believer in creating styles and using them rather than
overriding particular pieces of a document--to the fullest possible
extent. That makes upkeep of that document over time a much more
consistent effort with much less effort involved. It also makes
repurposing the document for other formats simpler as well.

It may be "easy" for those experienced in using LaTeX commands to
alter a given style file--but when the alteration is something that is
to be used repetitively, it is far superior IMHO to create a new style
to handle the variation...but that is something that is now quite
difficult.

David

Re: Confused about Lyx's goals -- isn't this supposed to increase productivity?

[Steve Litt]

On Monday 19 June 2006 09:21 am, Jeremy Wells wrote:
> For some time I have been evaluating Lyx as an academic word processor, but
> find it wanting in a few critical areas.
>
> For instance, the stated goal of Lyx is to spend more time writing, but
> less time on formatting. Based on my experience, however, and from posts to
> this list, a great deal of time is spent inserting LaTeX tags into
> documents. In fact, my assessment is that more time is spent making Lyx
> work properly than is spent in dealing with a traditional word-processing
> environment, be it MS Word or OpenOffice. Moreover, a significant time
> investment is required to research the format of the tag and where to
> insert it, and then to debug the results. How does this save time?

Hi Jeremy,

I feel your pain. I'd dump LyX in a minute if it didn't produce such darned 
good, perfectly typeset output, and if it weren't so easy to slam out content 
with LyX.

Note I said it was easy to *slam out content*, not to make or modify 
environments (paragraph styles). In my estimation, creating a new style is 
between 5 and 50 times harder with LyX than it would be with Wordperfect or 
MS Word, and between 2 and 20 times harder than with Openoffice. It's 
frustrating.

What I recommend you do is this... As you write and discover that you need a 
new environment (paragraph style), go into your layout file and make the 
environment, but just make it bare bones so you can use it in the document. 
Then, on occasion, take off your content authoring hat and put on your 
LyX/LaTeX expert hat, and make all your new bare bones paragraph styles 
exactly what you want. That's what I tend to do. Fully coding each 
environment as it comes up makes you forget the stream of thought of your 
content.

As a rule, I don't see LyX as a timesaver when compared to wordprocessors. I 
see it simply as something that produces more pleasing and more professional 
output.

>
> Is the eventual goal of Lyx to "GUIfy" more of the LaTeX backend to avoid
> having to delve into adding tags? 

I think LyX has already GUIfied LaTeX, and in doing so made the actual 
authoring of content (as opposed to creating or modifying styles) very fast.

> Or will this tool remain relatively 
> marginalized, only used by those willing to undertake the significant time
> overhead needed to actually do productive work?

That's a loaded question. Consider the author whose boss or company hands him 
a fully functional LyX layout file, telling him only to use the styles 
contained therein. Such an author will find LyX trivially easy, and will brag 
to the heavens about how quick, easy and high quality LyX is. The same is 
true for the author who is satisfied with his document class's default 
styles, and I've known many such people.

It's only people like you and me (and many others on this list) who need their 
documents to look different from the document class defaults, or who need 
additional envrionments, who would consider LyX difficult.

>
> Judging from the number of posts to this lists, citations and
> bibliographies are a major issue. There is no easy to use method (e.g., a
> GUI) that can define the options for natbib, jurabib, or any number of
> bibliography styles. Most importantly, customizing these styles again
> requires one to write more code, yet again, instead of engaging in the
> writing process.
>
> I suppose what I'm hoping for is someone to say 1) "no, you're wrong,
> because..."; 2) "wait x number of years and we'll be there"; or 3) "if you
> don't like coding, use a different tool."

You're not wrong, but as I mention, LyX isn't as hard as you think either.

In my opinion, the day LyX finds a way to reread a document's layout files 
without closing and reopening the document or requiring the user to request 
Edit->Reconfigure, LyX environment and layout creation/modification will 
become MUCH easier, as modify/compile/test cycles go from 1 minute and almost 
10 mouse clicks to as little as one keypress of Ctrl+T, which compiles to 
postscript, and if you're in debug mode or coding mode or whatever they call 
the mode that would eliminate Edit->Configure and restarting the session.

>
> This whole thing is extremely frustrating as I can see the huge promise
> that the LaTeX/Lyx system can offer, but it's awfully rough beneath the
> surface.

LaTeX is powerful and produces beautiful output, but that comes at the price 
of ease. LaTeX isn't easy. I had to buy a book and become familiar with LaTeX 
before LyX stopped being painful. When I write letters, or documents less 
than 20 pages, I use Openoffice. But I author and sell books, and the output 
of LyX is so good that in my opinion my books can't be discerned from those 
of a major publisher if it weren't for my self-designed covers and my staple 
binding method.

Like I say, I feel your pain. All I can tell you is that right now I'm 
authoring my third LyX created book. You might find some of my LyX writings 
helpful, beca

Re: Confused about Lyx's goals -- isn't this supposed to increase productivity?

[Abdelrazak Younes]

Jeremy Wells wrote:


I suppose what I'm hoping for is someone to say 1) "no, you're wrong, 
because..."; 2) "wait x number of years and we'll be there"; or 3) "if 
you don't like coding, use a different tool."


1) You're wrong somewhat...

People in this list are really advanced user. I've been using LyX for 
more than ten years and didn't need to do any tweaking. Try it, the 
default looking of the generated documents is very fine already (above 
anything that Word or OpenOffice can produce, especially if you use math.)


As for citation you can just use the included citation support, no need 
to use natbib or jurabib for simple citation. Actually this simple 
citation support is already much more advanced and useful than MS Word 
reference feature.


Abdel.

Re: Confused about Lyx's goals -- isn't this supposed to increase productivity?

[Richard Heck]

Speaking just for myself...and, yes, I'm an academic, a philosopher
(with mathematical interests)...

I have found LyX to deliver precisely what it purports to offer: I
concentrate more on my writing and less on formatting. It seems crazy in
retrospect, but when I was using a traditional word processor
(WordPerfect, in my case), I'd spend a ridiculously long time worrying
about hyphenation, line length, and the like, and that despite the fact
that it didn't make a bit of difference, since I was probably going to
re-write the paragraph I was so worried about the next day. (I've spoken
to other people and have found this to be a common experience.) I'd
worry about formatting section headings, where page breaks occurred,
etc, etc. Now I don't. I just write and let LaTeX do all the work
formatting my document. (And, of course, when I'm writing logic, well,
you can't beat LaTeX when it comes to typesetting formulae.) So most of
the time, there is no ERT in my LyX documents at all, and the preamble
contains nothing more than what's needed to get fancyhdr to do its thing.

Could the formatting be tweaked? Sure. If you /want/ to worry about that
kind of thing with LyX or LaTeX, you're free to do so, and I've done
some of that tweaking myself from time to time: That's when you have to
delve into LaTeX. But precisely because LyX isn't WYSIWYG, formatting
issues don't stare you in the face while you're trying to write, and so
you are free to ignore them. (I find that I can write almost as freely
in LyX as I can when I'm just writing longhand.) Indeed, I find that one
of the first things people have to do, when they first come to LyX, is
simply to /stop worrying/ /about formatting/ and learn to focus on
content. It's a common complaint among college teachers that students
seem to spend more time worrying about the appearance of their papers
than they do their content, and, in that same vein, I often find myself
wanting to ask people who post formatting questions to this list how
much it really matters whether the gap about section headings is this
big or only that big and, for that matter, whether they really think
they know more about typesetting than the people who produced the styles
they're using. That's not to say there aren't legitimate issues that
arise, and if you're self-publishing books, like Steve Litt, for
example, or trying to get your thesis into the appropriate format, then
you're going to have more such issues to handle. But a lot of these have
been encountered by other people, and a lot of them have been solved by
people who posted the resulting LaTeX packages on CTAN. And for the most
common issues, very comprehensive packages (like titlesec, say) have
been written to expose the internals in a comprehensible way. I strongly
suspect, however, that some very large percentage of the time, people
just need to /chill on the formatting/.

The core to LyX's advantage, one inherited from LaTeX, is thus that form
is separated from content. As you may know, that's kind of a mantra
these days. In this respect, LaTeX incorporates a primitive version of
the kind of /semantic/ markup that's supposed to power the "semantic
web". Because the markup is semantic, it's a relatively trivial matter
to convert a LaTeX document to a spoken format for the blind or to
reformat the document when it gets rejected by journal A and needs to be
resubmitted to journal B. Yes, of course you can do a more semantic
markup with Word or OO, but how many people actually do? Creating and
debugging styles in traditional sorts of word processors is every bit as
labor-intensive as doing it in LaTeX, and because traditional programs
make spot-formatting so easy to do, people don't put in the effort to
create or even to learn how to use styles. They just format
line-by-line. LyX and LaTeX purposely discourage that kind of behavior,
and that is a Good Thing. But to understand what a good thing it is, you
have to unlearn some bad habits.

It's true that bibliography formatting is a sore spot. If you can get
away with using standard styles like apalike, then it's simple, but
obviously not everyone can, and natbib, in particular, has some
wonderful features that could be easier to use. (That said, LyX 1.4.x is
a /big/ jump forward, and thanks to the developers for that.) Jurabib is
even more flexible, and it would indeed be nice to see a GUI to
configure it, as it can be pretty confusing, but I strongly suspect we
will see that. But here again, I think a mental adjustment is in order.
Journals do of course have their own styles, but I've never once had a
journal send a paper back to me insisting that I put the references in
form A or form B, and the journals that are really insistent all produce
their own BibTeX styles, anyway. So for most people, natbib is going to
be more than sufficient. What's true, however, is that most of the focus
so far has been on scientific writing, and there are some issues
connected with writing in the humanities tha

Re: Instant Preview working in LyX 1.4.1?

[Rudi Gaelzer]

Hi.  Sorry for the delay on the reply...

I installed both packages that are distributed by the fedora core extras 
repository: lyx 1.4.1 and lyx-qt 1.4.1.  The dependencies are automatically 
handled by yum.  Thus, yes, all dependencies are satisfied.

Is there some way to check out on some error messages that might come up when 
lyx tries to execute the instant preview?

Thanks.

On Monday 12 June 2006 04:26, Jose' Matos wrote:
> On Saturday 10 June 2006 00:34, Rudi Gaelzer wrote:
> > Is Instant Preview working at all in LyX 1.4.1?
>
>   Yes.
>
> > I upgraded from 1.3.7 to 1.4.1 on my Fedora 5 box and mathematical
> > expression are not rendered with Instant Preview.  Then, I removed 1.4.1
> > and installed 1.3.7 back and it worked again...
>
>   How did you install the different components? I am running FC-5 and
> everything works as expected.
> $ rpm -q --requires lyx
> ...
> ghostscript
> htmlview
> lyx-frontend = 1.4.1
> mathml-fonts
> tetex-dvipost
> tetex-dvips
> tetex-fonts
> tetex-fonts
> tetex-latex
> tetex-preview
>
>   I have these packages installed, so it works...
>
> > Rudi Gaelzer

Confused about Lyx's goals -- isn't this supposed to increase productivity?

[Rich Shepard]

On Mon, 19 Jun 2006, Jeremy Wells wrote:

For some time I have been evaluating Lyx as an academic word processor, but 
find it wanting in a few critical areas.


Jeremy,

   Right there you're off on the wrong foot. LyX is a gooey front end to the
LaTeX macro layer on top of the TeX typesetting system. It's not a word
processor, any more than a page layout program (Scribus, for example) is a
word processing program. If you want to process words, and the appearance of
the results are of secondary importance, then use OpenOffice.org by all
means. Of course, there's a high and potentially steep learning curve as soon
as you move beyond the basics with that, too. But, it's all a matter of
perspective.


For instance, the stated goal of Lyx is to spend more time writing, but
less time on formatting. Based on my experience, however, and from posts to
this list, a great deal of time is spent inserting LaTeX tags into
documents. In fact, my assessment is that more time is spent making Lyx
work properly than is spent in dealing with a traditional word-processing
environment, be it MS Word or OpenOffice. Moreover, a significant time
investment is required to research the format of the tag and where to
insert it, and then to debug the results. How does this save time?


   Until you become familiar with LyX through use, don't be too quick to judge
based on those who, for one reason or another, want (or need) to do something
highly non-standard. Work through the tutorial (about a half-hour or so) and
you can be immediately productive. As a matter of course, you and others in
academia may neve need to do much more than is provided by the menus.

   Some folks here are writing theses and dissertations at academic
institutions that do not provide LaTeX layout files for their particular
requirements. People ask for help in structuring their efforts as the
university requires. Others here self publish and do not like the standard
appearances of the documents produced by book, the KOMA-script classes or the
Memoir class. So, they ask for help in writing their own version of LaTeX to
do layout exactly as they want it.

   If you want to see the difference in results, use the word processor of
your choice to type a page from a book, any book. Print that page on your
laser or inkjet printer (use the same text area as in the book), and compare
the two. Word processors treat each line as a separate unit when fully
justifying it; LyX (actually, TeX) treats each paragraph as a unit.
Typesetting is different from adding more space between words on a line. It
involves changing inter-letter spacing, too. And, if you have any
mathematical formulae (in line or on separate lines), you'll readily see the
difference in output.

Is the eventual goal of Lyx to "GUIfy" more of the LaTeX backend to avoid 
having to delve into adding tags?


   No. My preference is to work from the command line and to keep my hands on
the keyboard and not use the trackball except when required. My main text
editor is emacs, I use pine for mail, and always have several virtual
terminals open. I also find OO.o a major PITA to use, so I use it only for
short letters and the like. However, after working at learning LaTeX by
writing in emacs (with the LaTeX major mode), I found LyX significantly more
productive because I did not have to learn all the formatting tags, remember
to close them (or make sure I had the syntax correct), and try to read what I
wrote without the distraction of tags. Try reading someone's html-formatted
e-mail (bad! bad!) in a test-based MUA: it's very difficult to separate the
wheat (if there is any) from the chaff.

   Well, with LyX I can write rapidly and see everything clearly. If I need to
emplasize, or create a different environment (for example, a list), I see it
formatted that way without the distraction of the tags themselves. Do I use a
lot of LaTeX? You betcha' I do. But, that's because sometimes I want to do
something non-standard (e.g., have a report's "Abstrat" actually titled
"Executive Summary" because that's how business reports are done).

   What you see on the mail list are those who need to do more than is
provided by the basic system. Sometimes, too, reading the built in users
guide and reference manual will answer the question without need to post to
the list. But, we have no idication of how many users (hundreds of
thousands?) work happily with LyX and never post a question to the mail list.
It is analagous to asking how many traffic accidents you've not had.

   Now, if you want to make an equitable comparison, subscribe to the OO.o
mail list. That has such a high traffic volume, I used to subscribe to ask a
question, them immediatly unsubscribe after I got the answer. Most of those
posting questions there work in the winduhs environment and want answers
handed to them rather than RTFM or seeking the answer themselves. And, OO.o
is (at least, was) very difficult to find where a particular feature was
hidden in the 

Re: Confused about Lyx's goals -- isn't this supposed to increase productivity?

[Juergen Spitzmueller]

Jeremy Wells wrote:
> I suppose what I'm hoping for is someone to say 1) "no, you're wrong,
> because..."; 2) "wait x number of years and we'll be there"; or 3) "if you
> don't like coding, use a different tool."

No:
4) Sit down, learn coding and implement the features you are missing. Or at 
least: 5) write down your enhancement wishes clearly and try to convince some 
kind soul to implement it for you.

This is an open source project, not a company where you can complain to.

Jürgen

Confused about Lyx's goals -- isn't this supposed to increase productivity?

[Jeremy Wells]

For some time I have been evaluating Lyx as an academic word processor, but 
find it wanting in a few critical areas.

For instance, the stated goal of Lyx is to spend more time writing, but less time on formatting. Based on my experience, 
however, and from posts to this list, a great deal of time is spent inserting LaTeX tags into documents. In fact, my 
assessment is that more time is spent making Lyx work properly than is spent in dealing with a traditional 
word-processing environment, be it MS Word or OpenOffice. Moreover, a significant time investment is required to 
research the format of the tag and where to insert it, and then to debug the results. How does this save time?


Is the eventual goal of Lyx to "GUIfy" more of the LaTeX backend to avoid having to delve into adding tags? Or will this 
tool remain relatively marginalized, only used by those willing to undertake the significant time overhead needed to 
actually do productive work?


Judging from the number of posts to this lists, citations and bibliographies are a major issue. There is no easy to use 
method (e.g., a GUI) that can define the options for natbib, jurabib, or any number of bibliography styles. Most 
importantly, customizing these styles again requires one to write more code, yet again, instead of engaging in the 
writing process.


I suppose what I'm hoping for is someone to say 1) "no, you're wrong, because..."; 2) "wait x number of years and we'll 
be there"; or 3) "if you don't like coding, use a different tool."


This whole thing is extremely frustrating as I can see the huge promise that the LaTeX/Lyx system can offer, but it's 
awfully rough beneath the surface.


-Jeremy

Re: Copyrights of material contributed to the wiki (Was: Layout..)

[Steve Litt]

On Monday 19 June 2006 04:29 am, Georg Baum wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > Do we choose BSD or GPL for the default? Out of habit I'd lean towards
> > GPL, and also because that is what I'd expect if I never bothered to read
> > the Copyrights page.
>
> I'd say GPL. I did not follow this thread too closely, but as I understand
> it layout files can only be licensed under GPL: They require LyX, and LyX
> is GPL.

I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is the relationship between LyX and 
layouts is program vs. data, and in general you can use non-gpl or even 
non-free data as input to a GPL program, so I don't (and I'm not a lawyer ;-) 
think it's legally required to have the layout file be GPL.

SteveT
 
Steve Litt
Author: 
   * Universal Troubleshooting Process courseware
   * Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist
   * Manager's Guide to Technical Troubleshooting
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http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore
http://www.troubleshooters.com/utp/tcourses.htm

Problems with natbib

[Gustav Von Sydow]

Hi!

I'm using Lyx with natbib and have some problems with the citations.
Some of my citations look like this "poole [5]" and some of them look
like this "[8]". I do not want the author to appear in the document,
just the numbers. I have chosen citations style: numerical in the
preferences window, but it does not seem to help. 

In some of my citations I can chose style in the citation style-box.
Those citations also have parenthesis and not brackets when they appear
in the text... In the citations with brackets I can't chose style. 

It's really confusing...

 

/Gustav

Re: APA for LyX

[Thomas Widhalm]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

So sorry, I didn't set clear, what I mean by "APA": http://www.apa.org/

They have special guidelines for thesis', journals, reports, etc. I
found some postings referring to these in context with LaTeX and even
LyX, but I didn't manage to find something, my users can actually use
within LyX.

Regards,
Thomas

- --

*
* Thomas Widhalm Unix Administrator *
* University of Salzburg   ITServices (ITS) *
* Systems Management   Unix Systems *
* Hellbrunnerstr. 34 5020 Salzburg, Austria *
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] +43/662/8044-6774 *
* gpg: 6265BAE6http://www.users.sbg.ac.at/~widhalmt *
*
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFElpJZkbjs3GJluuYRAktZAJ9dJWqUAvFH6C7Yt3dS0N8IYOUb2QCghq3C
7vsofLgdaoT286wbs2B4IA8=
=d/gU
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APA for LyX

[Thomas Widhalm]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Hi,

I'm asking on behalf of one of my users.

I need to include the APA regulations for documents into LyX on a Fedora
Core 5 box. I found several packages, but didn't manage to install it in
an easy and quick way.
Now I am asking you, if I just weren't able to find, how to include
predefined packages for this, or if there are no such packages.

The designated use of the Documents are thesis', so book might be the
right DocumentClass.

Just tell me, if I was searching in vain or if I haven't searched long
enough. Any links appreciated. :-)

Regards,
Thomas Widhalm
- --

*
* Thomas Widhalm Unix Administrator *
* University of Salzburg   ITServices (ITS) *
* Systems Management   Unix Systems *
* Hellbrunnerstr. 34 5020 Salzburg, Austria *
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] +43/662/8044-6774 *
* gpg: 6265BAE6http://www.users.sbg.ac.at/~widhalmt *
*
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFEloRNkbjs3GJluuYRAkqIAKCeQZlqf5zIF8BbDtjHEhNSz92bUgCglQ4+
LUivsBI8e7qs4miYUMqa5lM=
=dc24
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Jurabib and Lyx: Bibliography problem

[Julio Rojas]

Hi, this is a minor problem, but an annoying one. In Jurabib documentation
the format of each bibliographic reference shows:

Brox, Hans: Allgemeiner Teil des Bürgerlichen Gesetzbuches. 20th edition.
Köln, Berlin, Bonn, München, 1996

But in my document all references are show like this one:

Bobbio, Norberto: El tiempo de los derechos. Madrid: Sistema, 1991

As you can see, the address field (Madrid) is shown before the publisher
(Sistema). I would like them to be switched, but don't know if this is the
stardard Jurabib behavior, some configuration chosen by LyX or my own
configuration problem. The following code if from my Jurabib configuration
in my document preamble:

\jurabibsetup{%
authorformat=year,%
titleformat=italic,%
titleformat=colonsep,%
commabeforerest,%
ibidem=strict,%
pages=format,%
}

Hope somebody can help me.

--
-
Julio Rojas
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Copyrights of material contributed to the wiki (Was: Layout..)

[Georg Baum]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> Do we choose BSD or GPL for the default? Out of habit I'd lean towards
> GPL, and also because that is what I'd expect if I never bothered to read
> the Copyrights page.

I'd say GPL. I did not follow this thread too closely, but as I understand
it layout files can only be licensed under GPL: They require LyX, and LyX
is GPL.


Georg

Copyrights of material contributed to the wiki (Was: Layout..)

[christian . ridderstrom]

Ok, I think we're reaching some general consensus here. I've tried editing 
this draft page accordingly, please give me your opinions


http://wiki.lyx.org/Site/Copyrights-Draft

here, or simply add them to that page.

In David's text about default license, I replaced 'XXX' license with 'GPL' 
for now, but I'm open to changing it. David argued that:


I would suggest something like the BSD license as the basic one, so 
there are no real limitations or questions about use--commercial or 
otherwise


Do we choose BSD or GPL for the default? Out of habit I'd lean towards 
GPL, and also because that is what I'd expect if I never bothered to read 
the Copyrights page.


Do you think that is what people would expect if they had uploaded 
something (considering that LyX is licensed under GPL and not BSD)?


/Christian

PS. Maybe we should add a list of links to different license to the very 
last section? Does anyone have a link to the BSD license?


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

Re: Problems with "Chapter*" style

[Juergen Spitzmueller]

Julio Rojas wrote:
> I did... I'm goint to print my work today thanks to that solution... But
> I'm curious about a more "elegant" solution...

I would have told you if I knew ;-)
The problem is that [EMAIL PROTECTED] and similar commands (like amsmath's 
\numberwithin) need *two* counters. The one who has to be reset (e.g. 
footnote) and the one, who decides when the former has to be reset (e.g. 
chapter). By design, chapter* does not use a counter. So I fear you have to 
reset manually (maybe there's a package for that, dunno). 
The alternative is to redefine [EMAIL PROTECTED] [1], but I think it's not 
worth it.

Jürgen

[1] something like (for book.cls):

[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]@makeschapterhead{#1}]%
\else
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
\fi}

Re: Problems with "Chapter*" style

[Julio Rojas]

I did... I'm goint to print my work today thanks to that solution... But I'm
curious about a more "elegant" solution...

On 6/19/06, Juergen Spitzmueller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


Julio Rojas wrote:
> Yup, that's a solution... Thanks a lot... But I guess if there isn't a
> better solution???

Probably. But in the time you wait (or search) for that, you probably have
inserted the mentioned command easily. I thought you are in a hurry ...

Jürgen





--
-
Julio Rojas
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Problems with "Chapter*" style

[Julio Rojas]

On 6/19/06, Juergen Spitzmueller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


Julio Rojas wrote:
> Yup, that's a solution... Thanks a lot... But I guess if there isn't a
> better solution???

Probably. But in the time you wait (or search) for that, you probably have
inserted the mentioned command easily. I thought you are in a hurry ...

Jürgen





--
-
Julio Rojas
[EMAIL PROTECTED]