Re: Spellchecker and ú
Am 02.11.2010 um 03:28 schrieb Christopher Menzel: On 10/30/2010 02:53 AM, Stephan Witt wrote: Am 29.10.2010 um 22:01 schrieb Christopher Menzel: Greetings LyX users, The aspell-based spellchecker in LyX does not appear to be happy checking a document containing a Spanish name that includes the character ú. Specifically, the name seems throw the checker pretty seriously off balance; it begins to stop on perfectly ordinary words that occur in the document a word or two *after* a word that it apparently isn't recognizing internally -- for example, it asked if I wanted to replace the word that with bisection, where that occurred two words after bijection, which was clearly the word it had stopped on internally. Is there a solution to this beyond avoiding non-English unicode characters? Sorry, I've no solution but a question. You're using LyX 1.6.7? Which platform? 1.6.7 on a Mac, latest version of Snow Leopard. Interestingly... there are 2 options to use aspell then. What's your setup exactly? What did you do to make aspell work? Other question (again): did you mark the spanish name as Spanish language? Stephan
Re: LyX and LuaTeX
Rob Oakes wrote: I am currently slogging my way through a book chapter on advanced methods in LyX/LaTeX and just had a quick question. Does anyone know if there is documentation on how to use LyX with luaTeX? I know that it isn't officially supported, and things would probably break terribly, and that it might corrupt my mind and force me to sacrifice my first born. But I'm kind of curious to experiment. Has anyone spent any time using luaTeX from within LyX? Care to comment on just how broken things were? I tried it once, just out of interest, but LuaTeX was not very stable back then. I suppose now that you can use fontspec, it's just a slight variation from the XeTeX setup described here: http://wiki.lyx.org/LyX/XeTeX Of course it would be very welcome if you could document your effort on the wiki. Jürgen
♥ The Alvareses ... heart shaped symbols
Dear all: I need to use glyphs like the heart symbol (below) from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_(symbol) in my text: ♥ The Alvareses: Question: what encoding should I use? Unicode (UTF 8) doesn't seem to work. FN Frederick Noronha :: +91-9822122436 :: +91-832-2409490
Re: ♥ The Alvareses ... heart shaped symbols
Frederick Noronha wrote: Dear all: I need to use glyphs like the heart symbol (below) from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_(symbol) in my text: ♥ The Alvareses: On possibility: \usepackage{pxfonts} in preamble and $\varheartsuit$ The Alvareses: in Text (with $\varheartsuit$ in TeX mode). Jürgen
Re: ♥ The Alvareses ... heart shaped symbols
Thanks a lot. Works perfectly! FN Frederick Noronha :: +91-9822122436 :: +91-832-2409490 On 2 November 2010 15:42, Jürgen Spitzmüller sp...@lyx.org wrote: $\varheartsuit$ The Alvareses:
Re: box alignment
Hi! Uwe Stöhr wrote: Am 01.11.2010 23:50, schrieb [Ricardo Rodriguez] eBioTIC.: As far as I see, the paragraph keeps the same in the last alpha6 release. Could I be of any help to clarify this text? I removed now the second sentence since 90% of the LyX users won't understand the difference between a LaTeX-command and LaTeX-environment. Don't you think it is worth to introduce this concept to LyX users? I think that many people, like me, are using LyX not only as WYSIWYM editor, but also as an entry point to the LaTeX ecosystem. I've found this document quite useful to better understand what are we speaking about... http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Customizing_LaTeX Another solution is to defined a new command that sets up the box for you. Then you would have to insert this command as TeX-code instead of a box. I can define such a command for you, but you need to decide what box you want to have. If you made this decision, send me a LyX file with your box and I'll have a look. I don't want anything fancy. Simply, something like that: http://ebiotic.net/bin/download/ICT/LyXBox/dummyTextMargins.pdf Box has the same width as the text column and it is centred with it. Here the source file... http://ebiotic.net/bin/download/ICT/LyXBox/dummyTextMargins.lyx In your example the box has a width of only 95% not 100%. However, I defined a command for your box in the preamble of the attached document. You can insert then your custom box by inserting the TeX-code command \mybox as I have shown in the example. Great! Thank you so much. I've learnt a lot with this example. In general, I must thank all the people answering here. You always provide accurate and clear answers! What I don't understand here is the however. Please, what do you mean? I see {0.95\columnwidth}, so I guess this is the parameter I must tweak to reach this result. Simply: a great universe of possibilities! Thanks! BTW: I get two errors when opening the document the first time after saving it from your email: Document header error Unknown token: \use_refstyle \use_refstyle Document header error Unknown token: 0 0 They disappear once I locally save the document. Please, where these errors come from? Thanks! The color of the box is set in the document settings. regards Uwe All the best, Ricardo -- Ricardo Rodríguez CTO eBioTIC. Life Sciences, Data Modeling and Information Management Systems
Re: ♥ The Alvareses ... heart shaped symbols
Les Denham wrote: I know one solution has already been given, but the following works perfectly for me: Insert-Special Character-Symbols and select the ♥ from Miscellaneous Symbols. Yes, the character is supported by LyX's unicode symbol table. I suppose Frederick does not have the txfonts installed properly, and hence the \usepackage{pxfonts} did make the difference. (this is also here with TeXLive 2010: txfonts gives a pdflatex error). Jürgen
Re: box alignment
Am 02.11.2010 11:41, schrieb [Ricardo Rodriguez] eBioTIC.: In your example the box has a width of only 95% not 100%. However, I defined a command for your box in the preamble of the attached document. You can insert then your custom box by inserting the TeX-code command \mybox as I have shown in the example. What I don't understand here is the however. Please, what do you mean? I see {0.95\columnwidth}, so I guess this is the parameter I must tweak to reach this result. You said that you box should have the width of the text. This means you must set 1\columnwidth but your example you used 95% width which is 0.95\columnwidth. BTW: I get two errors when opening the document the first time after saving it from your email: Document header error Unknown token: \use_refstyle \use_refstyle Document header error Unknown token: 0 0 They disappear once I locally save the document. This was a bug in the alpha 6 release. This has been fixed. Therefore: Don't use LyX 2.0 for anything else than testing. regards Uwe
Understanding Lyx
Dear all: this is a note I sent to our Free Software Users' Group in Goa, India [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fsug-goa] but would like to share with you too. Thanks in advance for any tips. FN Frederick Noronha, Managing Trustee http://goa1556.goa-india.org [An alternative book publishing venture] -- Forwarded message -- Dear all: I've spoken about Lyx in the past. We use it to create our books (15 so far). At this point, I badly need to deepen my understanding of Lyx. Is there anyone else with a shared interest? Can we share notes? In particular, I'm keen to understand: * Sharable templates which make for better designs. * How to convert a design from the drawingboard to a lyx template. * How to install templates. * How to bring two comps (using different distros) in tandem with Lyx versions (so that files can be shared across them). * Examples of good design for books done using Lyx. Thanks for any help you could offer. FN Frederick Noronha :: +91-9822122436 :: +91-832-2409490
Re: Understanding Lyx
Hi Frederick, This is a very large question. To narrow the scope (and provide better references), what specifically are you looking to do? When you say, sharable templates, what do you mean by that (templates are just LyX documents)? What do you mean, convert a design from the drawingboard to a lyx template? Are you talking about using a LaTeX document class that already exists, or writing your own classes and styles? Ditto for installing templates, as they are just documents, you mostly need to select a folder to keep them all together. There is a templates folder included with LyX, but I would advise having a user templates folder and copying the best/most used items there. When you say, bring two comps together, what are you looking to do? If you mean syncing documents between the computers, have a look at dropbox. Version control also works nicely (Subversion is best supported in LyX). As far as examples, I would take a look at the TeX showcase (http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/). That will give you an idea of what can be accomplished with LaTeX (and by extension, LyX). There are many resources. The first and most significant are the LyX manuals (available from the help menu). Start with the Tutorial, and then take a gander at the User's Guide, Additional Features and any Specific manuals that look interesting. Then, wander by the LyX wiki: wiki.lyx.org. The wiki is a treasure trove of information about how to better mesh LyX with LaTeX, and by extension, how to create documents which bring a childlike sense of wonder to the world. From there, you might consider wandering over to Steve Litt's LyX Library (http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/). It includes some marvelous information, though some is a bit dated. I've also written information about customizing LyX and how to use/create custom document classes. You can find the links to those articles, and a brief summary of them at http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/writing/latex. Finally, I happen to be working on a book that covers this exact subject. (I happen to be working through the advanced LyX/LaTeX chapter right now and hope to finish it today, actually) If you would be willing to provide feedback on the chapters, I would be happy to make the LyX/LaTeX chapters/appendix available for your review. If you can be more specific with your earlier questions, i will also try and provide additional help for those as well. Cheers, Rob
Re: LyX and LuaTeX
Thanks for the link. I was able to get LuaTeX working with normal pdfTeX documents via following the instructions on the wiki (using the MacTeX 2010 distribution and LyX 2.0). I'm running into problems using fontspec, though. I think that is due to the lack of a fontspec database. (Described in the fontspec2010 docs.) To generate the database, you need to download and run a script. I'll have to experiment with it when I have a bit more time. But, initial experiments show that it was easy to get up and running, and that it works with LyX 2.0 very well. Take care with UTF characters, though. I probably could have gotten it sorted out, but didn't really want to fuss with it. I will update the wiki when I get a moment. (I'm also going to have a go with fontspec and see if I can get the problems sorted). Cheers, Rob
XeTeX Updates in TeX Live 2010/MacTeX
Dear LyX Users, Not sure if this is of interest to many LyX users, but I think I'll post it anyway. TeX Live 2010/MacTeX were released a few weeks ago (maybe months ago, I haven't really been paying attention). Anyway, I updated this morning and wanted to send a general report for Mac users. Here's my report: if you are thinking about upgrading, do it. Now. MacTeX 2010 is a big improvement over MacTeX 2009. Particularly if you're a XeTeX user. The feature that has me *really* jazzed is that XeTeX has added support for margin kerning. This means that several microtypographical goodies, like hanging punctuation (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hanging_punctuation), finally work right. The new default version of PDF is also now 1.5, which means that it no longer mangles my illustrations. Yay! When I compiled several of my test documents this morning, they looked noticeably better. (Which isn't to say they looked poor last night.) Also, it seems to work very well with LyX. I have not yet had any trouble, even when compiling absurdly complicated things (like my book draft). Anyway, I thought I would let you know. Cheers, Rob
Sharing documents among different versions of Lyx
Is there some tool that makes the sharing of documents among different versions of Lyx a little easier? FN Frederick Noronha :: +91-9822122436 :: +91-832-2409490
Re: Understanding Lyx
Hi Frederick, My apologies for not explaining myself adequately -- I'm a content person, not technical and hence the handicap. Please don't apologize. It would probably be a better world if content people forced technical people to explain themselves. I know what I want the first pages of my chapters to look like, but don't have a clue as to how to convert that into Lyx. Okay, it sounds like you are asking about chapter headings and styles. Do I understand correctly? Here is what I would recommend, rather than try and code chapter headings on your own, try taking a look at a few of the packages/document classes that provide them. For starters, check out out the memoir class. It includes a very large number of well defined chapter styles. (This PDF provides a good overview www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/MemoirChapStyles/MemoirChapStyles.pdf). It will be likely that you can find one that matches your needs. If not, all of the memoir examples include the source code, which you might be able to modify. This is a technical job no doubt, but is there some way to translate from sketchpage to Lyx formatting? Short answer, yes. But it can be ugly and there is no automated tool that allows you to do this. You will need to write code. Creating a new chapter heading in LyX requires writing style definitions and formatting instructions in LaTeX and base TeX. Due to the work involved, these are then usually packaged as document classes or stand-alone modules. The PDF I link provides several (five or six) examples. There are even more on CTAN (the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network). I notice that you are a publisher or editor. If you need to produce a large number of unique document styles, here is a word of advice. I would recommend hiring a programmer to create the chapter headings for you. Adjusting fonts, spacing, margins, etc. is relatively simple and you could likely do it without too much trouble on your own. Chapter headings are not normally simple. Especially if you will be using ornamentation. Package writing (where this is invariably going) is a different beast than than using LyX or LaTeX to craft your text. And while a programmer can produce a layout in a few hours, if you try and do it yourself, it will likely require *days* of work. Therefore, my recommendation is to develop a style guide and price it out on eLance. The $30 or $40 you will spend on programming time will be saved many times over in frustration, time and productivity. Please note that this advice only applies to chapter headings. For your book cover, the title page, and other front-matter, I would recommend that you use a visual program called Scribus to design them. You can then add them to the body through a package called pdfpages. In LyX, this is done via the Insert File External material link in the menu. When the dialog opens, select PDF from the available options and locate your file. If you look at the archives of this list, you will find that the subject has been discussed multiple times. There are many good suggestions in those threads. (If you have trouble finding a specific thread, just search for Steve Litt as a contributor. He preaches frontmatter design in a layout tool -- fingerpainting -- as gospel.) Hope this is of some help. Cheers, Rob
Re: Understanding Lyx
As Rob noted, this is a very large question. With regard to the question: * How to bring two comps (using different distros) in tandem with Lyx I do this with my computers, some running Windows, others running Linux. There are several parts to making this work. The first is to get some sort of software that can keep copies on both computers up-to-date. One method is to use SVN or a similar version control system that typically works over a network. Another method is to use Dropbox. The second part is to make sure that you always use relative paths when inserting external references. This applies when inserting an image, a bibtex bibliography, or any other external material. The third thing is to make sure you have software in both locations that can operate on any input given. For example, if including .svg images, you need to have a conversion program configured on both machines that operates properly when these files occur. If you use a special LaTeX package or font set, it must be somewhere it can be found by the LaTeX distribution on both machines. You can find more details for this and your other questions by using the many resources available, as outlined by Rob. One additional location for information that I don't think was pointed out yet is, of course, the archives for this and the other lyx mailing lists. For example, I can point out a recent discussion on the topic of your question I just addressed at: http://www.mail-archive.com/lyx-users@lists.lyx.org/ Jacob
Re: Sharing documents among different versions of Lyx
On 11/02/2010 04:16 PM, Frederick Noronha wrote: Is there some tool that makes the sharing of documents among different versions of Lyx a little easier? FN LyX 1.5.7 includes the same version of the lyx2lyx conversion tool that was released with 1.6.0, so that version of LyX should be able to open 1.6.x files. (Newer versions can always open older ones.) And, if you wanted to do so, you could simply copy the LyX 2.0 version of lyx2lyx into your local scripts directory, and LyX will use it. That said, I guess I'm wondering why people have sufficiently different versions that this would be an issue. The back and forth sometimes will turn LyX constructs into ERT, which can be kind of annoying. Richard
Re: Understanding Lyx
On 2 November 2010 23:15, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us wrote: When you say, sharable templates, what do you mean by that (templates are just LyX documents)? Dear Rob and Jacob, My apologies for not explaining myself adequately -- I'm a content person, not technical and hence the handicap. What I was looking for is something more like: http://zoonek.free.fr/LaTeX/LaTeX_samples_chapter/0.html What do you mean, convert a design from the drawingboard to a lyx template? Are you talking about using a LaTeX document class that already exists, or writing your own classes and styles? I know what I want the first pages of my chapters to look like, but don't have a clue as to how to convert that into Lyx. This is a technical job no doubt, but is there some way to translate from sketchpage to Lyx formatting? FN
Re: Understanding Lyx
On 11/02/2010 04:43 PM, Jacob Bishop wrote: The second part is to make sure that you always use relative paths when inserting external references. This applies when inserting an image, a bibtex bibliography, or any other external material. Even better, put these things into a place LaTeX can find them, and insert them using the sort of simple identifiers that LaTeX uses. E.g., I have my bib files under ~/files/bibtex/ and have BIBINPUTS set to include that directory. Richard
Re: Spellchecker and ú
Am 02.11.2010 um 03:28 schrieb Christopher Menzel: On 10/30/2010 02:53 AM, Stephan Witt wrote: Am 29.10.2010 um 22:01 schrieb Christopher Menzel: Greetings LyX users, The aspell-based spellchecker in LyX does not appear to be happy checking a document containing a Spanish name that includes the character ú. Specifically, the name seems throw the checker pretty seriously off balance; it begins to stop on perfectly ordinary words that occur in the document a word or two *after* a word that it apparently isn't recognizing internally -- for example, it asked if I wanted to replace the word that with bisection, where that occurred two words after bijection, which was clearly the word it had stopped on internally. Is there a solution to this beyond avoiding non-English unicode characters? Sorry, I've no solution but a question. You're using LyX 1.6.7? Which platform? 1.6.7 on a Mac, latest version of Snow Leopard. Interestingly... there are 2 options to use aspell then. What's your setup exactly? What did you do to make aspell work? Other question (again): did you mark the spanish name as Spanish language? Stephan
Re: LyX and LuaTeX
Rob Oakes wrote: I am currently slogging my way through a book chapter on advanced methods in LyX/LaTeX and just had a quick question. Does anyone know if there is documentation on how to use LyX with luaTeX? I know that it isn't officially supported, and things would probably break terribly, and that it might corrupt my mind and force me to sacrifice my first born. But I'm kind of curious to experiment. Has anyone spent any time using luaTeX from within LyX? Care to comment on just how broken things were? I tried it once, just out of interest, but LuaTeX was not very stable back then. I suppose now that you can use fontspec, it's just a slight variation from the XeTeX setup described here: http://wiki.lyx.org/LyX/XeTeX Of course it would be very welcome if you could document your effort on the wiki. Jürgen
♥ The Alvareses ... heart shaped symbols
Dear all: I need to use glyphs like the heart symbol (below) from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_(symbol) in my text: ♥ The Alvareses: Question: what encoding should I use? Unicode (UTF 8) doesn't seem to work. FN Frederick Noronha :: +91-9822122436 :: +91-832-2409490
Re: ♥ The Alvareses ... heart shaped symbols
Frederick Noronha wrote: Dear all: I need to use glyphs like the heart symbol (below) from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_(symbol) in my text: ♥ The Alvareses: On possibility: \usepackage{pxfonts} in preamble and $\varheartsuit$ The Alvareses: in Text (with $\varheartsuit$ in TeX mode). Jürgen
Re: ♥ The Alvareses ... heart shaped symbols
Thanks a lot. Works perfectly! FN Frederick Noronha :: +91-9822122436 :: +91-832-2409490 On 2 November 2010 15:42, Jürgen Spitzmüller sp...@lyx.org wrote: $\varheartsuit$ The Alvareses:
Re: box alignment
Hi! Uwe Stöhr wrote: Am 01.11.2010 23:50, schrieb [Ricardo Rodriguez] eBioTIC.: As far as I see, the paragraph keeps the same in the last alpha6 release. Could I be of any help to clarify this text? I removed now the second sentence since 90% of the LyX users won't understand the difference between a LaTeX-command and LaTeX-environment. Don't you think it is worth to introduce this concept to LyX users? I think that many people, like me, are using LyX not only as WYSIWYM editor, but also as an entry point to the LaTeX ecosystem. I've found this document quite useful to better understand what are we speaking about... http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Customizing_LaTeX Another solution is to defined a new command that sets up the box for you. Then you would have to insert this command as TeX-code instead of a box. I can define such a command for you, but you need to decide what box you want to have. If you made this decision, send me a LyX file with your box and I'll have a look. I don't want anything fancy. Simply, something like that: http://ebiotic.net/bin/download/ICT/LyXBox/dummyTextMargins.pdf Box has the same width as the text column and it is centred with it. Here the source file... http://ebiotic.net/bin/download/ICT/LyXBox/dummyTextMargins.lyx In your example the box has a width of only 95% not 100%. However, I defined a command for your box in the preamble of the attached document. You can insert then your custom box by inserting the TeX-code command \mybox as I have shown in the example. Great! Thank you so much. I've learnt a lot with this example. In general, I must thank all the people answering here. You always provide accurate and clear answers! What I don't understand here is the however. Please, what do you mean? I see {0.95\columnwidth}, so I guess this is the parameter I must tweak to reach this result. Simply: a great universe of possibilities! Thanks! BTW: I get two errors when opening the document the first time after saving it from your email: Document header error Unknown token: \use_refstyle \use_refstyle Document header error Unknown token: 0 0 They disappear once I locally save the document. Please, where these errors come from? Thanks! The color of the box is set in the document settings. regards Uwe All the best, Ricardo -- Ricardo Rodríguez CTO eBioTIC. Life Sciences, Data Modeling and Information Management Systems
Re: ♥ The Alvareses ... heart shaped symbols
Les Denham wrote: I know one solution has already been given, but the following works perfectly for me: Insert-Special Character-Symbols and select the ♥ from Miscellaneous Symbols. Yes, the character is supported by LyX's unicode symbol table. I suppose Frederick does not have the txfonts installed properly, and hence the \usepackage{pxfonts} did make the difference. (this is also here with TeXLive 2010: txfonts gives a pdflatex error). Jürgen
Re: box alignment
Am 02.11.2010 11:41, schrieb [Ricardo Rodriguez] eBioTIC.: In your example the box has a width of only 95% not 100%. However, I defined a command for your box in the preamble of the attached document. You can insert then your custom box by inserting the TeX-code command \mybox as I have shown in the example. What I don't understand here is the however. Please, what do you mean? I see {0.95\columnwidth}, so I guess this is the parameter I must tweak to reach this result. You said that you box should have the width of the text. This means you must set 1\columnwidth but your example you used 95% width which is 0.95\columnwidth. BTW: I get two errors when opening the document the first time after saving it from your email: Document header error Unknown token: \use_refstyle \use_refstyle Document header error Unknown token: 0 0 They disappear once I locally save the document. This was a bug in the alpha 6 release. This has been fixed. Therefore: Don't use LyX 2.0 for anything else than testing. regards Uwe
Understanding Lyx
Dear all: this is a note I sent to our Free Software Users' Group in Goa, India [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fsug-goa] but would like to share with you too. Thanks in advance for any tips. FN Frederick Noronha, Managing Trustee http://goa1556.goa-india.org [An alternative book publishing venture] -- Forwarded message -- Dear all: I've spoken about Lyx in the past. We use it to create our books (15 so far). At this point, I badly need to deepen my understanding of Lyx. Is there anyone else with a shared interest? Can we share notes? In particular, I'm keen to understand: * Sharable templates which make for better designs. * How to convert a design from the drawingboard to a lyx template. * How to install templates. * How to bring two comps (using different distros) in tandem with Lyx versions (so that files can be shared across them). * Examples of good design for books done using Lyx. Thanks for any help you could offer. FN Frederick Noronha :: +91-9822122436 :: +91-832-2409490
Re: Understanding Lyx
Hi Frederick, This is a very large question. To narrow the scope (and provide better references), what specifically are you looking to do? When you say, sharable templates, what do you mean by that (templates are just LyX documents)? What do you mean, convert a design from the drawingboard to a lyx template? Are you talking about using a LaTeX document class that already exists, or writing your own classes and styles? Ditto for installing templates, as they are just documents, you mostly need to select a folder to keep them all together. There is a templates folder included with LyX, but I would advise having a user templates folder and copying the best/most used items there. When you say, bring two comps together, what are you looking to do? If you mean syncing documents between the computers, have a look at dropbox. Version control also works nicely (Subversion is best supported in LyX). As far as examples, I would take a look at the TeX showcase (http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/). That will give you an idea of what can be accomplished with LaTeX (and by extension, LyX). There are many resources. The first and most significant are the LyX manuals (available from the help menu). Start with the Tutorial, and then take a gander at the User's Guide, Additional Features and any Specific manuals that look interesting. Then, wander by the LyX wiki: wiki.lyx.org. The wiki is a treasure trove of information about how to better mesh LyX with LaTeX, and by extension, how to create documents which bring a childlike sense of wonder to the world. From there, you might consider wandering over to Steve Litt's LyX Library (http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/). It includes some marvelous information, though some is a bit dated. I've also written information about customizing LyX and how to use/create custom document classes. You can find the links to those articles, and a brief summary of them at http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/writing/latex. Finally, I happen to be working on a book that covers this exact subject. (I happen to be working through the advanced LyX/LaTeX chapter right now and hope to finish it today, actually) If you would be willing to provide feedback on the chapters, I would be happy to make the LyX/LaTeX chapters/appendix available for your review. If you can be more specific with your earlier questions, i will also try and provide additional help for those as well. Cheers, Rob
Re: LyX and LuaTeX
Thanks for the link. I was able to get LuaTeX working with normal pdfTeX documents via following the instructions on the wiki (using the MacTeX 2010 distribution and LyX 2.0). I'm running into problems using fontspec, though. I think that is due to the lack of a fontspec database. (Described in the fontspec2010 docs.) To generate the database, you need to download and run a script. I'll have to experiment with it when I have a bit more time. But, initial experiments show that it was easy to get up and running, and that it works with LyX 2.0 very well. Take care with UTF characters, though. I probably could have gotten it sorted out, but didn't really want to fuss with it. I will update the wiki when I get a moment. (I'm also going to have a go with fontspec and see if I can get the problems sorted). Cheers, Rob
XeTeX Updates in TeX Live 2010/MacTeX
Dear LyX Users, Not sure if this is of interest to many LyX users, but I think I'll post it anyway. TeX Live 2010/MacTeX were released a few weeks ago (maybe months ago, I haven't really been paying attention). Anyway, I updated this morning and wanted to send a general report for Mac users. Here's my report: if you are thinking about upgrading, do it. Now. MacTeX 2010 is a big improvement over MacTeX 2009. Particularly if you're a XeTeX user. The feature that has me *really* jazzed is that XeTeX has added support for margin kerning. This means that several microtypographical goodies, like hanging punctuation (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hanging_punctuation), finally work right. The new default version of PDF is also now 1.5, which means that it no longer mangles my illustrations. Yay! When I compiled several of my test documents this morning, they looked noticeably better. (Which isn't to say they looked poor last night.) Also, it seems to work very well with LyX. I have not yet had any trouble, even when compiling absurdly complicated things (like my book draft). Anyway, I thought I would let you know. Cheers, Rob
Sharing documents among different versions of Lyx
Is there some tool that makes the sharing of documents among different versions of Lyx a little easier? FN Frederick Noronha :: +91-9822122436 :: +91-832-2409490
Re: Understanding Lyx
Hi Frederick, My apologies for not explaining myself adequately -- I'm a content person, not technical and hence the handicap. Please don't apologize. It would probably be a better world if content people forced technical people to explain themselves. I know what I want the first pages of my chapters to look like, but don't have a clue as to how to convert that into Lyx. Okay, it sounds like you are asking about chapter headings and styles. Do I understand correctly? Here is what I would recommend, rather than try and code chapter headings on your own, try taking a look at a few of the packages/document classes that provide them. For starters, check out out the memoir class. It includes a very large number of well defined chapter styles. (This PDF provides a good overview www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/MemoirChapStyles/MemoirChapStyles.pdf). It will be likely that you can find one that matches your needs. If not, all of the memoir examples include the source code, which you might be able to modify. This is a technical job no doubt, but is there some way to translate from sketchpage to Lyx formatting? Short answer, yes. But it can be ugly and there is no automated tool that allows you to do this. You will need to write code. Creating a new chapter heading in LyX requires writing style definitions and formatting instructions in LaTeX and base TeX. Due to the work involved, these are then usually packaged as document classes or stand-alone modules. The PDF I link provides several (five or six) examples. There are even more on CTAN (the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network). I notice that you are a publisher or editor. If you need to produce a large number of unique document styles, here is a word of advice. I would recommend hiring a programmer to create the chapter headings for you. Adjusting fonts, spacing, margins, etc. is relatively simple and you could likely do it without too much trouble on your own. Chapter headings are not normally simple. Especially if you will be using ornamentation. Package writing (where this is invariably going) is a different beast than than using LyX or LaTeX to craft your text. And while a programmer can produce a layout in a few hours, if you try and do it yourself, it will likely require *days* of work. Therefore, my recommendation is to develop a style guide and price it out on eLance. The $30 or $40 you will spend on programming time will be saved many times over in frustration, time and productivity. Please note that this advice only applies to chapter headings. For your book cover, the title page, and other front-matter, I would recommend that you use a visual program called Scribus to design them. You can then add them to the body through a package called pdfpages. In LyX, this is done via the Insert File External material link in the menu. When the dialog opens, select PDF from the available options and locate your file. If you look at the archives of this list, you will find that the subject has been discussed multiple times. There are many good suggestions in those threads. (If you have trouble finding a specific thread, just search for Steve Litt as a contributor. He preaches frontmatter design in a layout tool -- fingerpainting -- as gospel.) Hope this is of some help. Cheers, Rob
Re: Understanding Lyx
As Rob noted, this is a very large question. With regard to the question: * How to bring two comps (using different distros) in tandem with Lyx I do this with my computers, some running Windows, others running Linux. There are several parts to making this work. The first is to get some sort of software that can keep copies on both computers up-to-date. One method is to use SVN or a similar version control system that typically works over a network. Another method is to use Dropbox. The second part is to make sure that you always use relative paths when inserting external references. This applies when inserting an image, a bibtex bibliography, or any other external material. The third thing is to make sure you have software in both locations that can operate on any input given. For example, if including .svg images, you need to have a conversion program configured on both machines that operates properly when these files occur. If you use a special LaTeX package or font set, it must be somewhere it can be found by the LaTeX distribution on both machines. You can find more details for this and your other questions by using the many resources available, as outlined by Rob. One additional location for information that I don't think was pointed out yet is, of course, the archives for this and the other lyx mailing lists. For example, I can point out a recent discussion on the topic of your question I just addressed at: http://www.mail-archive.com/lyx-users@lists.lyx.org/ Jacob
Re: Sharing documents among different versions of Lyx
On 11/02/2010 04:16 PM, Frederick Noronha wrote: Is there some tool that makes the sharing of documents among different versions of Lyx a little easier? FN LyX 1.5.7 includes the same version of the lyx2lyx conversion tool that was released with 1.6.0, so that version of LyX should be able to open 1.6.x files. (Newer versions can always open older ones.) And, if you wanted to do so, you could simply copy the LyX 2.0 version of lyx2lyx into your local scripts directory, and LyX will use it. That said, I guess I'm wondering why people have sufficiently different versions that this would be an issue. The back and forth sometimes will turn LyX constructs into ERT, which can be kind of annoying. Richard
Re: Understanding Lyx
On 2 November 2010 23:15, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us wrote: When you say, sharable templates, what do you mean by that (templates are just LyX documents)? Dear Rob and Jacob, My apologies for not explaining myself adequately -- I'm a content person, not technical and hence the handicap. What I was looking for is something more like: http://zoonek.free.fr/LaTeX/LaTeX_samples_chapter/0.html What do you mean, convert a design from the drawingboard to a lyx template? Are you talking about using a LaTeX document class that already exists, or writing your own classes and styles? I know what I want the first pages of my chapters to look like, but don't have a clue as to how to convert that into Lyx. This is a technical job no doubt, but is there some way to translate from sketchpage to Lyx formatting? FN
Re: Understanding Lyx
On 11/02/2010 04:43 PM, Jacob Bishop wrote: The second part is to make sure that you always use relative paths when inserting external references. This applies when inserting an image, a bibtex bibliography, or any other external material. Even better, put these things into a place LaTeX can find them, and insert them using the sort of simple identifiers that LaTeX uses. E.g., I have my bib files under ~/files/bibtex/ and have BIBINPUTS set to include that directory. Richard
Re: Spellchecker and ú
Am 02.11.2010 um 03:28 schrieb Christopher Menzel: > On 10/30/2010 02:53 AM, Stephan Witt wrote: >> Am 29.10.2010 um 22:01 schrieb Christopher Menzel: >> >>> Greetings LyX users, >>> >>> The aspell-based spellchecker in LyX does not appear to be happy checking a >>> document containing a Spanish name that includes the character ú. >>> Specifically, the name seems throw the checker pretty seriously off >>> balance; it begins to stop on perfectly ordinary words that occur in the >>> document a word or two *after* a word that it apparently isn't recognizing >>> internally -- for example, it asked if I wanted to replace the word "that" >>> with "bisection", where "that" occurred two words after "bijection", which >>> was clearly the word it had stopped on internally. Is there a solution to >>> this beyond avoiding non-English unicode characters? >>> >> Sorry, I've no solution but a question. >> You're using LyX 1.6.7? Which platform? >> > 1.6.7 on a Mac, latest version of Snow Leopard. Interestingly... there are 2 options to use aspell then. What's your setup exactly? What did you do to make aspell work? Other question (again): did you mark the spanish name as "Spanish" language? Stephan
Re: LyX and LuaTeX
Rob Oakes wrote: > I am currently slogging my way through a book chapter on advanced methods > in LyX/LaTeX and just had a quick question. Does anyone know if there is > documentation on how to use LyX with luaTeX? > > I know that it isn't officially supported, and things would probably break > terribly, and that it might corrupt my mind and force me to sacrifice my > first born. But I'm kind of curious to experiment. Has anyone spent any > time using luaTeX from within LyX? Care to comment on just how broken > things were? I tried it once, just out of interest, but LuaTeX was not very stable back then. I suppose now that you can use fontspec, it's just a slight variation from the XeTeX setup described here: http://wiki.lyx.org/LyX/XeTeX Of course it would be very welcome if you could document your effort on the wiki. Jürgen
♥ The Alvareses ... heart shaped symbols
Dear all: I need to use glyphs like the heart symbol (below) from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_(symbol) in my text: ♥ The Alvareses: Question: what encoding should I use? Unicode (UTF 8) doesn't seem to work. FN Frederick Noronha :: +91-9822122436 :: +91-832-2409490
Re: ♥ The Alvareses ... heart shaped symbols
Frederick Noronha wrote: > Dear all: I need to use glyphs like the heart symbol (below) from > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_(symbol) in my text: > > ♥ The Alvareses: On possibility: \usepackage{pxfonts} in preamble and $\varheartsuit$ The Alvareses: in Text (with $\varheartsuit$ in TeX mode). Jürgen
Re: ♥ The Alvareses ... heart shaped symbols
Thanks a lot. Works perfectly! FN Frederick Noronha :: +91-9822122436 :: +91-832-2409490 On 2 November 2010 15:42, Jürgen Spitzmüllerwrote: > $\varheartsuit$ The Alvareses:
Re: box alignment
Hi! Uwe Stöhr wrote: Am 01.11.2010 23:50, schrieb [Ricardo Rodriguez] eBioTIC.: As far as I see, the paragraph keeps the same in the last alpha6 release. Could I be of any help to clarify this text? I removed now the second sentence since 90% of the LyX users won't understand the difference between a LaTeX-command and LaTeX-environment. Don't you think it is worth to introduce this concept to LyX users? I think that many people, like me, are using LyX not only as WYSIWYM editor, but also as an entry point to the LaTeX ecosystem. I've found this document quite useful to better understand what are we speaking about... http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Customizing_LaTeX Another solution is to defined a new command that sets up the box for you. Then you would have to insert this command as TeX-code instead of a box. I can define such a command for you, but you need to decide what box you want to have. If you made this decision, send me a LyX file with your box and I'll have a look. I don't want anything fancy. Simply, something like that: http://ebiotic.net/bin/download/ICT/LyXBox/dummyTextMargins.pdf Box has the same width as the text column and it is centred with it. Here the source file... http://ebiotic.net/bin/download/ICT/LyXBox/dummyTextMargins.lyx In your example the box has a width of only 95% not 100%. However, I defined a command for your box in the preamble of the attached document. You can insert then your custom box by inserting the TeX-code command \mybox as I have shown in the example. Great! Thank you so much. I've learnt a lot with this example. In general, I must thank all the people answering here. You always provide accurate and clear answers! What I don't understand here is the "however". Please, what do you mean? I see {0.95\columnwidth}, so I guess this is the parameter I must tweak to reach this result. Simply: a great universe of possibilities! Thanks! BTW: I get two errors when opening the document the first time after saving it from your email: Document header error Unknown token: \use_refstyle \use_refstyle Document header error Unknown token: 0 0 They disappear once I locally save the document. Please, where these errors come from? Thanks! The color of the box is set in the document settings. regards Uwe All the best, Ricardo -- Ricardo Rodríguez CTO eBioTIC. Life Sciences, Data Modeling and Information Management Systems
Re: ♥ The Alvareses ... heart shaped symbols
Les Denham wrote: > I know one solution has already been given, but the following works > perfectly for me: > > Insert->Special Character->Symbols and select the ♥ from Miscellaneous > Symbols. Yes, the character is supported by LyX's unicode symbol table. I suppose Frederick does not have the txfonts installed properly, and hence the \usepackage{pxfonts} did make the difference. (this is also here with TeXLive 2010: txfonts gives a pdflatex error). Jürgen
Re: box alignment
Am 02.11.2010 11:41, schrieb [Ricardo Rodriguez] eBioTIC.: In your example the box has a width of only 95% not 100%. However, I defined a command for your box in the preamble of the attached document. You can insert then your custom box by inserting the TeX-code command \mybox as I have shown in the example. What I don't understand here is the "however". Please, what do you mean? I see {0.95\columnwidth}, so I guess this is the parameter I must tweak to reach this result. You said that you box should have the width of the text. This means you must set 1\columnwidth but your example you used 95% width which is 0.95\columnwidth. BTW: I get two errors when opening the document the first time after saving it from your email: Document header error Unknown token: \use_refstyle \use_refstyle Document header error Unknown token: 0 0 They disappear once I locally save the document. This was a bug in the alpha 6 release. This has been fixed. Therefore: "Don't use LyX 2.0 for anything else than testing." regards Uwe
Understanding Lyx
Dear all: this is a note I sent to our Free Software Users' Group in Goa, India [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fsug-goa] but would like to share with you too. Thanks in advance for any tips. FN Frederick Noronha, Managing Trustee http://goa1556.goa-india.org [An alternative book publishing venture] -- Forwarded message -- Dear all: I've spoken about Lyx in the past. We use it to create our books (15 so far). At this point, I badly need to deepen my understanding of Lyx. Is there anyone else with a shared interest? Can we share notes? In particular, I'm keen to understand: * Sharable templates which make for better designs. * How to convert a design from the drawingboard to a lyx template. * How to install templates. * How to bring two comps (using different distros) in tandem with Lyx versions (so that files can be shared across them). * Examples of good design for books done using Lyx. Thanks for any help you could offer. FN Frederick Noronha :: +91-9822122436 :: +91-832-2409490
Re: Understanding Lyx
Hi Frederick, This is a very large question. To narrow the scope (and provide better references), what specifically are you looking to do? When you say, sharable templates, what do you mean by that (templates are just LyX documents)? What do you mean, "convert a design from the drawingboard to a lyx template"? Are you talking about using a LaTeX document class that already exists, or writing your own classes and styles? Ditto for installing templates, as they are just documents, you mostly need to select a folder to keep them all together. There is a templates folder included with LyX, but I would advise having a user templates folder and copying the best/most used items there. When you say, bring two comps together, what are you looking to do? If you mean syncing documents between the computers, have a look at dropbox. Version control also works nicely (Subversion is best supported in LyX). As far as examples, I would take a look at the TeX showcase (http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/). That will give you an idea of what can be accomplished with LaTeX (and by extension, LyX). There are many resources. The first and most significant are the LyX manuals (available from the help menu). Start with the Tutorial, and then take a gander at the User's Guide, Additional Features and any Specific manuals that look interesting. Then, wander by the LyX wiki: wiki.lyx.org. The wiki is a treasure trove of information about how to better mesh LyX with LaTeX, and by extension, how to create documents which bring a childlike sense of wonder to the world. From there, you might consider wandering over to Steve Litt's LyX Library (http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/). It includes some marvelous information, though some is a bit dated. I've also written information about customizing LyX and how to use/create custom document classes. You can find the links to those articles, and a brief summary of them at http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/writing/latex. Finally, I happen to be working on a book that covers this exact subject. (I happen to be working through the advanced LyX/LaTeX chapter right now and hope to finish it today, actually) If you would be willing to provide feedback on the chapters, I would be happy to make the LyX/LaTeX chapters/appendix available for your review. If you can be more specific with your earlier questions, i will also try and provide additional help for those as well. Cheers, Rob
Re: LyX and LuaTeX
Thanks for the link. I was able to get LuaTeX working with normal pdfTeX documents via following the instructions on the wiki (using the MacTeX 2010 distribution and LyX 2.0). I'm running into problems using fontspec, though. I think that is due to the lack of a fontspec database. (Described in the fontspec2010 docs.) To generate the database, you need to download and run a script. I'll have to experiment with it when I have a bit more time. But, initial experiments show that it was easy to get up and running, and that it works with LyX 2.0 very well. Take care with UTF characters, though. I probably could have gotten it sorted out, but didn't really want to fuss with it. I will update the wiki when I get a moment. (I'm also going to have a go with fontspec and see if I can get the problems sorted). Cheers, Rob
XeTeX Updates in TeX Live 2010/MacTeX
Dear LyX Users, Not sure if this is of interest to many LyX users, but I think I'll post it anyway. TeX Live 2010/MacTeX were released a few weeks ago (maybe months ago, I haven't really been paying attention). Anyway, I updated this morning and wanted to send a general report for Mac users. Here's my report: if you are thinking about upgrading, do it. Now. MacTeX 2010 is a big improvement over MacTeX 2009. Particularly if you're a XeTeX user. The feature that has me *really* jazzed is that XeTeX has added support for margin kerning. This means that several microtypographical goodies, like hanging punctuation (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hanging_punctuation), finally work right. The new default version of PDF is also now 1.5, which means that it no longer mangles my illustrations. Yay! When I compiled several of my test documents this morning, they looked noticeably better. (Which isn't to say they looked poor last night.) Also, it seems to work very well with LyX. I have not yet had any trouble, even when compiling absurdly complicated things (like my book draft). Anyway, I thought I would let you know. Cheers, Rob
Sharing documents among different versions of Lyx
Is there some tool that makes the sharing of documents among different versions of Lyx a little easier? FN Frederick Noronha :: +91-9822122436 :: +91-832-2409490
Re: Understanding Lyx
Hi Frederick, > My apologies for not explaining myself adequately -- I'm a content > person, not technical and hence the handicap. Please don't apologize. It would probably be a better world if content people forced technical people to explain themselves. > I know what I want the first pages of my chapters to look like, but > don't have a clue as to how to convert that into Lyx. Okay, it sounds like you are asking about chapter headings and styles. Do I understand correctly? Here is what I would recommend, rather than try and code chapter headings on your own, try taking a look at a few of the packages/document classes that provide them. For starters, check out out the memoir class. It includes a very large number of well defined chapter styles. (This PDF provides a good overview www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/MemoirChapStyles/MemoirChapStyles.pdf). It will be likely that you can find one that matches your needs. If not, all of the memoir examples include the source code, which you might be able to modify. > This is a technical job no doubt, but is there some way to translate from > sketchpage to Lyx formatting? Short answer, yes. But it can be ugly and there is no automated tool that allows you to do this. You will need to write code. Creating a new chapter heading in LyX requires writing style definitions and formatting instructions in LaTeX and base TeX. Due to the work involved, these are then usually packaged as document classes or stand-alone modules. The PDF I link provides several (five or six) examples. There are even more on CTAN (the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network). I notice that you are a publisher or editor. If you need to produce a large number of unique document styles, here is a word of advice. I would recommend hiring a programmer to create the chapter headings for you. Adjusting fonts, spacing, margins, etc. is relatively simple and you could likely do it without too much trouble on your own. Chapter headings are not normally simple. Especially if you will be using ornamentation. Package writing (where this is invariably going) is a different beast than than using LyX or LaTeX to craft your text. And while a programmer can produce a layout in a few hours, if you try and do it yourself, it will likely require *days* of work. Therefore, my recommendation is to develop a style guide and price it out on eLance. The $30 or $40 you will spend on programming time will be saved many times over in frustration, time and productivity. Please note that this advice only applies to chapter headings. For your book cover, the title page, and other front-matter, I would recommend that you use a visual program called Scribus to design them. You can then add them to the body through a package called pdfpages. In LyX, this is done via the Insert > File > External material link in the menu. When the dialog opens, select "PDF" from the available options and locate your file. If you look at the archives of this list, you will find that the subject has been discussed multiple times. There are many good suggestions in those threads. (If you have trouble finding a specific thread, just search for Steve Litt as a contributor. He preaches frontmatter design in a layout tool -- fingerpainting -- as gospel.) Hope this is of some help. Cheers, Rob
Re: Understanding Lyx
As Rob noted, this is a very large question. With regard to the question: * How to bring two comps (using different distros) in tandem with Lyx I do this with my computers, some running Windows, others running Linux. There are several parts to making this work. The first is to get some sort of software that can keep copies on both computers up-to-date. One method is to use SVN or a similar version control system that typically works over a network. Another method is to use Dropbox. The second part is to make sure that you always use relative paths when inserting external references. This applies when inserting an image, a bibtex bibliography, or any other external material. The third thing is to make sure you have software in both locations that can operate on any input given. For example, if including .svg images, you need to have a conversion program configured on both machines that operates properly when these files occur. If you use a special LaTeX package or font set, it must be somewhere it can be found by the LaTeX distribution on both machines. You can find more details for this and your other questions by using the many resources available, as outlined by Rob. One additional location for information that I don't think was pointed out yet is, of course, the archives for this and the other lyx mailing lists. For example, I can point out a recent discussion on the topic of your question I just addressed at: http://www.mail-archive.com/lyx-users@lists.lyx.org/ Jacob
Re: Sharing documents among different versions of Lyx
On 11/02/2010 04:16 PM, Frederick Noronha wrote: Is there some tool that makes the sharing of documents among different versions of Lyx a little easier? FN LyX 1.5.7 includes the same version of the lyx2lyx conversion tool that was released with 1.6.0, so that version of LyX should be able to open 1.6.x files. (Newer versions can always open older ones.) And, if you wanted to do so, you could simply copy the LyX 2.0 version of lyx2lyx into your local scripts directory, and LyX will use it. That said, I guess I'm wondering why people have sufficiently different versions that this would be an issue. The back and forth sometimes will turn LyX constructs into ERT, which can be kind of annoying. Richard
Re: Understanding Lyx
On 2 November 2010 23:15, Rob Oakeswrote: > When you say, sharable templates, what do you > mean by that (templates are just LyX documents)? Dear Rob and Jacob, My apologies for not explaining myself adequately -- I'm a content person, not technical and hence the handicap. What I was looking for is something more like: http://zoonek.free.fr/LaTeX/LaTeX_samples_chapter/0.html > What do you mean, "convert a design from the > drawingboard to a lyx template"? Are you talking > about using a LaTeX document class that already > exists, or writing your own classes and styles? I know what I want the first pages of my chapters to look like, but don't have a clue as to how to convert that into Lyx. This is a technical job no doubt, but is there some way to translate from sketchpage to Lyx formatting? FN
Re: Understanding Lyx
On 11/02/2010 04:43 PM, Jacob Bishop wrote: The second part is to make sure that you always use relative paths when inserting external references. This applies when inserting an image, a bibtex bibliography, or any other external material. Even better, put these things into a place LaTeX can find them, and insert them using the sort of simple identifiers that LaTeX uses. E.g., I have my bib files under ~/files/bibtex/ and have BIBINPUTS set to include that directory. Richard