Re: LyX document diff/merge tools for cooperative editing?

[Gregory Jefferis]

On 7 Dec 2012, at 17:46, Nico Williams wrote:

 On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 6:02 AM, Rainer M Krug r.m.k...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 07/12/12 12:45, Gregory Jefferis wrote:
 Has anyone tried using latexdiff for change comparison in not merging? 
 Presumably a small script to export both versions to latex, invoke 
 latexdiff and then generate the marked-up PDF (which is what you get with 
 latexdiff) would work. For latexdiff there are already scripts to handle 
 git revisions which should allow one to diff a pair of arbitrary revisions 
 in a git repository.
 
 This should work, but it would be really nice if these changes were on LyX 
 level and that one could
 save a file LyX file containing the differences as tracked changes.
 
 Right, the goal is to merge LyX documents.  Unless converstion to/from
 LaTeX is loss-less this is not a solution.

Just to clarify (since it was apparently not clear) my suggestion re latexdiff 
was specifically about change *comparison* not merging (though I had admittedly 
wondered about the possibility of a round trip via latex). But for me seeing 
changes in context is half the battle!

Returning to the original question of merging + VCS, we currently use git + lyx 
for collaborative editing of papers in the lab (normally =3 people) using 
git's built in merge. For us this a tremendous improvement over the emailed 
word file strategy. We have not managed to break a LyX file with an 
inappropriate automated merge. Merge conflicts are obviously possible if 2 
users edit the same piece of text but in our use very rare – we encourage 
frequent push/pull, avoid e.g. fixing spelling errors all across the document 
without checking that changes have been committed and pushed. But on the rare 
occasions when conflicts do happen they unfortunately a showstopper for most 
users. It would indeed be very nice to have the option to merge in LyX when 
this happens, when one would typically use git mergetool. However, I do note 
that when a merge conflict happens, the file with conflicts left marked by 
git's regular merge or what you typically get by using git mergetool to start a 
generic merge tool (I use FileMerge on a Mac) is 3 way with ancestry. That 
means you only have to worry about the *conflicts* not the compatible changes 
in each branch. So in these circumstances firing up a text editor to fix the 
conflict might be much quicker (albeit more dangerous) than using LyX to 
accept/reject all changes displayed in a 2 way diff. In some sense a strategy 
that turned conflict markers into LyX tracked changes (or a 3 way diff) is 
really what one is after.

When I am working with less tech savvy people outside the lab, I usually tell 
them to use track changes (and commit their work manually to git). You can even 
consider asking people to use track changes when using a VCS if someone is 
going to review all changes for integration. Regrettably there is still the 
possibility of merge conflict even after the discussion/fix noted here:

http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/6058

if two or more people both start tracking changes before merging to master.

Hope some of this experience might be of use.

Best,

Greg.

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Richard Heck]

On 12/09/2012 10:27 PM, David L. Johnson wrote:

On 12/09/2012 07:23 PM, Uwe Stöhr wrote:
I am opposed to this. What is the benefit of a layout for a journal 
submission class you cannot use for submission to that journal? Why 
should we invest time to write and, more important, to maintain it?


My understanding is that APA is used by a wide range of humanistic and 
social sciences publications.  It is possible that some of them would 
indeed accept Latex (though maybe not likely), and others might well 
accept pdf files, as limiting as that may seem.


And some people might want to use the APA class for their own reasons, 
or maybe the APA will decide to start accepting LaTeX again, or who 
knows what. The point was that if someone wants to write an updated 
layout file, they can do so, and we'll be happy to include it with LyX. 
But it probably does seem like something that's not very pressing.


Richard

[BUG] Custom insets 1: ResetsFont

[Richard Heck]

On 12/08/2012 04:16 AM, Andrew Parsloe wrote:
I'm trying to clarify some issues about custom insets. (I have a 
project that makes heavy use of them.) The Customization manual says 
(Sect. 5.3.9 on flex insets):


ResetsFont [0,1] Whether this inset should use the font of its 
surrounding environment or uses its own. Default is true: uses its own.


The 1 is emphasized (italic) in the manual, indicating it is the 
default. I interpret this as meaning that text within the inset will, 
by default, *not* take on the style of the surrounding text. Yet I 
find exactly the opposite. I need to put


ResetsFont 0

to ensure that text in an inset is unaffected by the font outside.

Even so, if an inset with ResetsFont 0 is inserted into, say, a line 
of emphasized text, any text typed into the inset will be emphasized, 
but *thereafter* it will be immune to any changes to the style of the 
surrounding text.


This sounds like a bug. I've had a quick look at the code myself, and 
can't say I understand what it is supposed to be doing.


Please post a bug report on trac.

Richard

Pipe in FlexInset Names

[Richard Heck]

On 12/08/2012 04:17 AM, Andrew Parsloe wrote:
(1) If an inset name contains a vertical bar, |, the part after the 
bar is not shown in the Insert  Custom Insets list, but is retained 
in LyX format. Using the schema, inset definition = Custom Insets 
list = LyX file format,


InsetLayout Flex:foo|bah = foo = \begin_inset Flex foo|bah

(This works also with quotes around inset names containing spaces.) 
This is surprisingly useful, but doesn't seem to be documented in the 
Customization manual. It allows information, which doesn't need to be 
shown to the user, to be passed in the name of the inset from the 
module in which it is defined to LyX. I've used this 'to serious 
purpose' and without ill effect so far, but would like to be sure, 
given the lack of documentation, that it is not going to snag on some 
other feature of LyX.


The | character is used in Qt4 to specify menu shortcuts. See e.g. the 
stdmenus.inc file. So whatever follows it is being interpreted as an 
attempt to specify a menu shortcut. So I'd not recommend using it this 
way, but I'm not sure what we should do about it. At least, we should 
put something into the documentation.


(2) Quotes are needed if a custom inset name has a space. I noticed 
that if the space is deleted but the quotes retained, not only does 
the inset disappear from the Custom Insets list (it's replaced by a 
blank line), but in LyX format it becomes undefined:


InsetLayout Flex:foobah =  = \begin_inset Flex undefined

The natural behaviour seems to me for the quotes to have no effect 
when there's no space in the name. This feels like a bug.


This is a bug in the layout2layout conversion routine. Quoted names that 
do not contain spaces were wrongly being detected as unquoted names. 
I've fixed it. Since this is just in the layout2layout.py script, you 
can fix the bug in your own installation by applying 24dea042c.



(3) Underscores in inset names:

InsetLayout Flex:foo_bah = foo bah = \begin_inset Flex foo bah

Although the underscore is replaced by a space in the middle  right 
columns, using quotes around the name again produces invisibility in 
the Custom Insets list and an undefined inset in LyX file format. 
Again I can't see any documentation about underscores in the 
Customization manual.



Same bug.

Richard

Re: Custom insets 3: CopyStyle

[Richard Heck]

On 12/08/2012 04:17 AM, Andrew Parsloe wrote:
Does CopyStyle do *anything* in custom insets? I was just about to 
send off another Custom insets query when a last trial--error thought 
struck me: although


CopyStyle name

doesn't seem to do anything, where name is the name of a previously 
defined inset, perhaps


CopyStyle Flex:name

will work? And to my surprise, because I have struggled with this for 
far too long, it *does* work.


I will guess that you are using an older layout format, rather than the 
current one for 2.0.x (which is format 35), since one of the bugs you 
reported involved a layout2layout problem. In 2.0.x, Flex insets MUST be 
named Flex:whatever. This is documented under 5.3.9. This was not true 
in 1.6.x, and we attempt to convert older layouts, which do not use the 
Flex: prefix, to the newer form (including the CopyStyle 
declarations). But it doesn't always work---some cases have to be 
handled manually), and that is why you are seeing this bug. Indeed, it 
may well be the same bug you reported in the second post. Hard to say in 
the abstract.


Richard

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[obregonmateo]

I think people are missing the point here ... Lyx is *great* for writing and 
getting references and labels right! This goes for APA journals as much as for 
math/engineering journals.

I have co-authored several articles for APA journals and the pay-off of writing 
them in Lyx and then getting them into LaTeX or PDF has been wonderful, 
especially as I have *not* had to make final typo changes/corrections to the 
submitted/reviewed article before printing.

So, *please* keep the APA6 layout and corresponding bibtex referencing 
up-to-date!

Mateo.

On Monday 10 December 2012, Richard Heck wrote:
 On 12/09/2012 10:27 PM, David L. Johnson wrote:
  On 12/09/2012 07:23 PM, Uwe Stöhr wrote:
  I am opposed to this. What is the benefit of a layout for a journal 
  submission class you cannot use for submission to that journal? Why 
  should we invest time to write and, more important, to maintain it?
 
  My understanding is that APA is used by a wide range of humanistic and 
  social sciences publications.  It is possible that some of them would 
  indeed accept Latex (though maybe not likely), and others might well 
  accept pdf files, as limiting as that may seem.
 
 And some people might want to use the APA class for their own reasons, 
 or maybe the APA will decide to start accepting LaTeX again, or who 
 knows what. The point was that if someone wants to write an updated 
 layout file, they can do so, and we'll be happy to include it with LyX. 
 But it probably does seem like something that's not very pressing.
 
 Richard
 
 

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Jacob Bishop]

I recently shifted from Engineering to Psychology (actually Engineering
Education, but I am currently preparing a publication for an APA journal).
I used LyX for my masters' thesis, and LaTeX is the only acceptable thesis
format for some of the Engineering departments. When professors started
requiring that I write my papers using APA6, I quickly tried to figure out
how that could be done with LyX. I was not about to abandon my favorite
document preparation system for nothing. I have found there are basically
two routes you can go. There is an apa6e class and an apa6 class. The apa6e
class is a minimal class that incorporates apa6 guidelines for formatting
titles, but leaves references and things to the user to configure. The apa6
class is a bit more thorough. It is an updated version of the apa class and
as such has three modes for preparing an article. It adheres fairly
strictly to apa guidelines and the reference format is hard-coded. I
recently had to borrow some code from this class and combine it with the
Engineering dissertation template from my u to get a suitable dissertation
format that makes both the college of Engineering, and the department (of
Engineering Education) happy. I would also mention that for the publication
I am preparing, we use structural equation diagrams that I prepare with
TikZ and go right into the LyX document. I would hate to have to do those
diagrams any other way.

So, while it is unfortunate that we do not have an official apa6 template
with LyX, there are LaTeX users who do apa6 (like me). You can use that
class with any document. To get it to work, I basically just copied the LyX
layout file from the apa class and made a few modifications. Then, I
downloaded the apa6 class file and used it. This works reasonably well. By
the way, it is not the APA who decides whether to accept LaTeX or not, it
is each journal individually. Frankly, I think this is sort of a chicken
and the egg problem. If enough users wanted to submit with LaTeX, journals
would accept it, but many won't bother until there are more LaTeX users.
Also, I have found very few people in the social sciences who are even
aware of LaTeX. Not closed minded, just unaware. They use MS Word and
Endnote because they don't know that there are good/better (free)
alternatives.

Jacob

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Ray Rashif]

On 11 December 2012 01:21, Jacob Bishop bishop.ja...@gmail.com wrote:
 have found very few people in the social sciences who are even aware of
 LaTeX. Not closed minded, just unaware. They use MS Word and Endnote because
 they don't know that there are good/better (free) alternatives.

And this stems from the fact that social science has negligible need
for (typesetting) equations, because that's what really sets LaTeX
apart. With MS Word you can configure references, cite them and
arrange your document based on styles. For qualitative/descriptive
papers, that is enough. As such, few people find any need to go out of
their way to look for something better.


--
GPG/PGP ID: C0711BF1

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[stefano franchi]

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 11:59 AM, Ray Rashif schivmeis...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 11 December 2012 01:21, Jacob Bishop bishop.ja...@gmail.com wrote:
  have found very few people in the social sciences who are even aware of
  LaTeX. Not closed minded, just unaware. They use MS Word and Endnote
 because
  they don't know that there are good/better (free) alternatives.

 And this stems from the fact that social science has negligible need
 for (typesetting) equations, because that's what really sets LaTeX
 apart. With MS Word you can configure references, cite them and
 arrange your document based on styles. For qualitative/descriptive
 papers, that is enough. As such, few people find any need to go out of
 their way to look for something better.


rant
Not true. LyX/Latex's benefits are not limited to typesetting equations
(although it does a much better job that its competition in that area). A
Latex-typeset document looks better in many other respects---from
paragraph-division and typesetting (in spite of recent improvements in
Word's algorithms), to consistent application of style, down to small but
crucial things such as determining font sizes/leading[1].

The reason why Social sciences/Humanities are happy with Word/Endnote is
(historically speaking) different: authors used to submit  Word files (or,
earlier, Wordstar) and the publisher would import and typeset with real
typesetting software. Such programs (and still are) were usually very bad
at typesetting complex mathematical formulas unless each single formula was
tweaked by hand, a very painful and expensive proposition. That was
prompted D Knuth to invent TeX---the poor quality of professional
typesetting software for math, not the similar but irrelevant problem in
word processing program. The lack of equations in the Humanities/Social
Sciences made the traditional process working smooth and insured that the
typographical quality of publications in the fields was high, or at least
acceptable. Authors used primitive (typographically speaking) software,
publishers used real typesetters and everyone was happy.

Except...that desktop publishing happened and publishers started to cut
down on costs by using word as a typesetting program. Even worse, when they
started asking for pdf,  camera-ready  they would provide typographical
specs as series of Word instructions, since they do not know any better
(all the typesetters having long gone). The result is that the vast
majority of Humanities/Social Sciences journal and and increasing number of
Humanities *books*  are now typographically ugly and often barely readable

The same radical cost-cutting  measures took place  in the Natural
sciences/Engineering, of course. But since *they* were already using
Latex/TeX, the quality of their journal and books was only minimally
affected (although it was: it takes a truly capable typesetter to achieve
high results in Latex--relying on standard classes is only the starting
point. And most authors not named Knuth are not great typesetters).

That's why we in the Humanities are stuck with Word as a publishing
tool---because it used to work well as a drafting tool when the industry
worked differently, not because we do not use equations.

/rant








-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic StudiesPh:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas AM University  Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[David L. Johnson]

On 12/10/2012 02:01 PM, stefano franchi wrote:


rant

8
Such programs [Word and Wordstar] (and still are) were usually very 
bad at typesetting complex mathematical formulas unless each single 
formula was tweaked by hand, a very painful and expensive proposition. 
That was prompted D Knuth to invent TeX---the poor quality of 
professional typesetting software for math, not the similar but 
irrelevant problem in word processing program.


Actually, TeX predated Word, and Wordstar (or Wordperfect).  People used 
to run it on DECs.  While there were other math-typsetting (to use the 
phrase loosely) PC programs before TeX became usable on PCs, such as Jim 
Milgram's Techprint which he wrote for Radio-Shack computers with 28K 
ram, most of us used a combination of typewriters and hand-written 
symbols.  A respectable journal would typeset the paper from the 
typewritten copy, but a few insisted on camera-ready --- literally --- 
proofs, which resulted in published papers and books with handwritten 
symbols.  I suspect that Knuth was reacting to that mess rather than 
equations in Word.  I typed my own Ph.D. thesis on an IBM selectric, 
with those interchangeable golf-ball fonts, going over each line 2 or 3 
times.   A nightmare.


I experienced the full range of mathematical text preparation.  I've 
written papers on the typewriter, using hand-drawn symbols and markups 
for a typesetter, Techprint (another nightmare), 2 or 3 PC-based, 
non-graphical programs that produced half-assed output, a couple of 
WYSIWYG programs, plain AMS-TeX using a text editor with occasional 
previews, to LyX.  Clearly the present situation has been the only 
reasonable one.




The same radical cost-cutting  measures took place  in the Natural 
sciences/Engineering, of course. But since *they* were already using 
Latex/TeX, the quality of their journal and books was only minimally 
affected
With the exception of those journals and texts that were typeset with a 
full array of symbols, the use of TeX has vastly improved the appearance 
of papers (if not the content).  The AMS journals from the 1970s and 
before were works of art, but even most Springer-Verlag monographs were 
truly ugly.


--

David L. Johnson

The motor car reflects our standard of living and gauges the speed of
our present life. It long ago ran down Simple Living, and never halted
to inquire about the prostrate figure which fell as its victim.
-- Warren G. Harding

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Richard Heck]

On 12/10/2012 02:29 PM, David L. Johnson wrote:

On 12/10/2012 02:01 PM, stefano franchi wrote:



The same radical cost-cutting  measures took place  in the Natural 
sciences/Engineering, of course. But since *they* were already using 
Latex/TeX, the quality of their journal and books was only minimally 
affected


With the exception of those journals and texts that were typeset with 
a full array of symbols, the use of TeX has vastly improved the 
appearance of papers (if not the content).  The AMS journals from the 
1970s and before were works of art, but even most Springer-Verlag 
monographs were truly ugly.


What always amuses me is that there seem to be several journals that 
won't accept LaTeX but then when you get the proofs, it's obvious it's 
LaTeX. You see the filename at the top of the page. Fortunately, there 
seems to be a bit of a trend here, and people will get it figured out.


Richard

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Scott Kostyshak]

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 11:42 AM,  obregonma...@gmail.com wrote:
 I think people are missing the point here ... Lyx is *great* for writing and 
 getting references and labels right! This goes for APA journals as much as 
 for math/engineering journals.

 I have co-authored several articles for APA journals and the pay-off of 
 writing them in Lyx and then getting them into LaTeX or PDF has been 
 wonderful, especially as I have *not* had to make final typo 
 changes/corrections to the submitted/reviewed article before printing.

 So, *please* keep the APA6 layout and corresponding bibtex referencing 
 up-to-date!

Hi Mateo, John, Ray, Jacob (and everyone else),

It seems APA6 is useful to a lot of people and in particular to you
guys. How about we make a layout for it together then?

I know absolutely nothing about APA6 (or psychology for that matter),
little about layouts, and very little about document classes. But I am
confident that we can do it. Look in your library directory (go to
Help  About if you don't know where it is) and then go to
layouts/apa.layout.
Open it up. It shouldn't look too scary to you. It looks more like
English to me than programming (thank you to the LyX developers who
have made it look so nice and flexible). So this is an opportunity
where even if you don't know/like programming, you can help out.

But wait, that's not all. If we learn the LyX layout format, in
addition to us making an apa6 layout (and thus helping ourselves and
potentially a lot of others), we'll learn how to customize LyX layouts
to our liking. This can be very useful and can make using LyX a lot
more fun and personalized.

The developers around here are extremely nice and generous and would
help us out when we get stuck. But they are involved in a million
things and it's not clear at all to me that they should stop doing
those things in order to make this layout, especially when I'm sure
we're capable of doing it.

Who's in?

Scott

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Rob Oakes]

If you're going to go the customization route, this might be of help:

http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2009/11/02/custom-lyx-nih

It talks about creating a custom layout for an existing document class.

Related posts with more examples can be found at:

http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2009/11/14/customize-lyx-character-styles
(Character styles)

http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/05/19/latex-cv-part4
(Second example of how to create a layout for an existing document
class. The other posts in the same series how to write a custom document
class.)

Best of luck in the endeavor!

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Richard Heck]

On 12/10/2012 03:07 PM, Scott Kostyshak wrote:

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 11:42 AM,  obregonma...@gmail.com wrote:

I think people are missing the point here ... Lyx is *great* for writing and 
getting references and labels right! This goes for APA journals as much as for 
math/engineering journals.

I have co-authored several articles for APA journals and the pay-off of writing them in 
Lyx and then getting them into LaTeX or PDF has been wonderful, especially as I have 
*not* had to make final typo changes/corrections to the submitted/reviewed 
article before printing.

So, *please* keep the APA6 layout and corresponding bibtex referencing 
up-to-date!

Hi Mateo, John, Ray, Jacob (and everyone else),

It seems APA6 is useful to a lot of people and in particular to you
guys. How about we make a layout for it together then?

I know absolutely nothing about APA6 (or psychology for that matter),
little about layouts, and very little about document classes. But I am
confident that we can do it. Look in your library directory (go to
Help  About if you don't know where it is) and then go to
layouts/apa.layout.
Open it up. It shouldn't look too scary to you. It looks more like
English to me than programming (thank you to the LyX developers who
have made it look so nice and flexible). So this is an opportunity
where even if you don't know/like programming, you can help out.

But wait, that's not all. If we learn the LyX layout format, in
addition to us making an apa6 layout (and thus helping ourselves and
potentially a lot of others), we'll learn how to customize LyX layouts
to our liking. This can be very useful and can make using LyX a lot
more fun and personalized.

The developers around here are extremely nice and generous and would
help us out when we get stuck. But they are involved in a million
things and it's not clear at all to me that they should stop doing
those things in order to make this layout, especially when I'm sure
we're capable of doing it.

Who's in?
I'm happy to give loads of advice, too. Here's how I'd start: Get some 
kind of example LaTeX file that exercises as much of what APA6 provides 
as is possible. Copy the existing apa.layout file to apa6.layout and 
change the second line to:


#  \DeclareLaTeXClass[apa6]{article (APA v6)}

Now try to load your example file in LyX. What doesn't work will be what 
needs fixing. There will be more to do, as well, but you will get a long 
way just doing that much.


Oh, and I'd avoid the biblatex bits of APA6 for now. Use something like:
ClassOptions
Other natbib
End
to force the use of that option.

Richard

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Ray Rashif]

On 11 December 2012 03:01, stefano franchi stefano.fran...@gmail.com wrote:
 rant
 Not true. LyX/Latex's benefits are not limited to typesetting equations
 (although it does a much better job that its competition in that area). A
 Latex-typeset document looks better in many other respects---from
 paragraph-division and typesetting (in spite of recent improvements in
 Word's algorithms), to consistent application of style, down to small but
 crucial things such as determining font sizes/leading[1].

 The reason why Social sciences/Humanities are happy with Word/Endnote is
 (historically speaking) different: authors used to submit  Word files (or,
 earlier, Wordstar) and the publisher would import and typeset with real
 typesetting software. Such programs (and still are) were usually very bad at
 typesetting complex mathematical formulas unless each single formula was
 tweaked by hand, a very painful and expensive proposition. That was prompted
 D Knuth to invent TeX---the poor quality of professional typesetting
 software for math, not the similar but irrelevant problem in word processing
 program. The lack of equations in the Humanities/Social Sciences made the
 traditional process working smooth and insured that the typographical
 quality of publications in the fields was high, or at least acceptable.
 Authors used primitive (typographically speaking) software, publishers used
 real typesetters and everyone was happy.

 Except...that desktop publishing happened and publishers started to cut down
 on costs by using word as a typesetting program. Even worse, when they
 started asking for pdf,  camera-ready  they would provide typographical
 specs as series of Word instructions, since they do not know any better (all
 the typesetters having long gone). The result is that the vast majority of
 Humanities/Social Sciences journal and and increasing number of Humanities
 *books*  are now typographically ugly and often barely readable

 The same radical cost-cutting  measures took place  in the Natural
 sciences/Engineering, of course. But since *they* were already using
 Latex/TeX, the quality of their journal and books was only minimally
 affected (although it was: it takes a truly capable typesetter to achieve
 high results in Latex--relying on standard classes is only the starting
 point. And most authors not named Knuth are not great typesetters).

 That's why we in the Humanities are stuck with Word as a publishing
 tool---because it used to work well as a drafting tool when the industry
 worked differently, not because we do not use equations.

 /rant

Thank you Stefano - that was exactly the background story I was hoping
someone would fill in. My brief statement on equations was just a
layman's generalisation on why faculty would go through the trouble to
suggest LaTeX to students (surely, STEM lecturers would have _more_
reason).

TeX/LaTeX/LyX is definitely not _only_ about equations. I recently
edited and typeset (like you said, no one better than Knuth,
especially not someone who only played with his father's relic
typewriter as a toddler) a social science dissertation completely in
LyX with some LaTeX fiddling.


--
GPG/PGP ID: C0711BF1

No bibliography environment in DocBook document class

[Nico Williams]

Why is there no bibliography environment in the DocBook document
classes?  There must be a reason, of course, but then, bibtex is still
supported, so that's strange...

Nico
--

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[stefano franchi]

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 1:29 PM, David L. Johnson
david.john...@lehigh.eduwrote:

 On 12/10/2012 02:01 PM, stefano franchi wrote:


 rant

 8

 Such programs [Word and Wordstar] (and still are) were usually very bad
 at typesetting complex mathematical formulas unless each single formula was
 tweaked by hand, a very painful and expensive proposition. That was
 prompted D Knuth to invent TeX---the poor quality of professional
 typesetting software for math, not the similar but irrelevant problem in
 word processing program.


 Actually, TeX predated Word, and Wordstar (or Wordperfect).  People used
 to run it on DECs.  While there were other math-typsetting (to use the
 phrase loosely) PC programs before TeX became usable on PCs, such as Jim
 Milgram's Techprint which he wrote for Radio-Shack computers with 28K
 ram, most of us used a combination of typewriters and hand-written symbols.
  A respectable journal would typeset the paper from the typewritten copy,
 but a few insisted on camera-ready --- literally --- proofs, which
 resulted in published papers and books with handwritten symbols.  I suspect
 that Knuth was reacting to that mess rather than equations in Word.  I
 typed my own Ph.D. thesis on an IBM selectric, with those interchangeable
 golf-ball fonts, going over each line 2 or 3 times.   A nightmare.


I didn't mean to imply Word (or Wordstar) were used before TeX---just that
Word-equivalent software and/or mechanical devices (i.e. typerwriters: I
wrote my thesis on a Olivetti Lettera 22. And I was an innovator: my
adviser would only handwrite and had a secretary type his books) were the
common first step for both scientists and humanists. The publishers then
took the second and final step using different tools (and sometimes
resorting to handwritten symbols. I remember well that many of may symbolic
logic books in college contained such horrors).
But whereas publishers usually did a good job with humanists' texts, they
often did a terrible one with formulas. Hence, TeX.

When the second step was eliminated, scientists were left with TeX, and we
poor Humanists were left with Word. LyX is our great white hope. Or the
pink one, considering the default background

/really end rant

Cheers,

S.

-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic StudiesPh:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas AM University  Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[David L. Johnson]

On 12/10/2012 05:51 PM, stefano franchi wrote:


/really end rant

Cheers,


Hullabaloo, caneck, caneck.

--

David L. Johnson

Become MicroSoft-free forever.  Ask me how.

Re: No bibliography environment in DocBook document class

[José Matos]

On 12/10/2012 10:46 PM, Nico Williams wrote:
 Why is there no bibliography environment in the DocBook document
 classes?  There must be a reason, of course, but then, bibtex is still
 supported, so that's strange...

 Nico
 --

The reason why it was never implemented is/was lake of time, no more no
less. :-)

-- 
José Matos

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Uwe Stöhr]

Am 10.12.2012 02:33, schrieb Kayvan Sylvan:


They accept PDF submissions, so I suppose you could use apa6 in LyX if
it's available and export to PDF.


This seems to be the case, but only for supplements as I understood this and TeX is explicitly not 
allowed:

http://www.apa.org/pubs/authors/supp-material.aspx

Maybe I'm wrong and PDfs are also allowed for the main text. If so a layout for APA 6 would indeed 
be useful.


regards Uwe

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[obregonmateo]

Each APA-type journal has its own list of document types that it accepts; these 
journals are only guided by the APA _style_ conventions. All journals in 
psychology etc. that I have come across accept tex manuscripts, as long as the 
tex file contains everything the authors use (i.e., macros) and do not rely on 
any special latex compiling instructions.

With regards to the link below, it is only referring to file types that can be 
uploaded as supplementary material and *not* addressing in any way what the 
manuscript is prepared in.

Mateo.

On Monday 10 December 2012, Uwe Stöhr wrote:
 Am 10.12.2012 02:33, schrieb Kayvan Sylvan:
 
  They accept PDF submissions, so I suppose you could use apa6 in LyX if
  it's available and export to PDF.
 
 This seems to be the case, but only for supplements as I understood this and 
 TeX is explicitly not 
 allowed:
 http://www.apa.org/pubs/authors/supp-material.aspx
 
 Maybe I'm wrong and PDfs are also allowed for the main text. If so a layout 
 for APA 6 would indeed 
 be useful.
 
 regards Uwe
 

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Uwe Stöhr]

Am 11.12.2012 01:14, schrieb obregonma...@gmail.com:


Each APA-type journal has its own list of document types that it accepts; these 
journals are only guided by the APA _style_ conventions. All journals in 
psychology etc. that I have come across accept tex manuscripts, as long as the 
tex file contains everything the authors use (i.e., macros) and do not rely on 
any special latex compiling instructions.


Thanks for the clarification. So a layout for APA  6 is indeed useful.  However, I won't have time 
to write it and hope that anybody else can volunteer. if you like, I can review the layout.


thanks and regards
Uwe

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[obregonmateo]

Thanks Uwe for offering to review a layout for APA6.

Others here are also interested in making this work, so I'm sure we'll have 
something soon for you to look at.

Mateo.

On Tuesday 11 December 2012, Uwe Stöhr wrote:
 Am 11.12.2012 01:14, schrieb obregonma...@gmail.com:
 
  Each APA-type journal has its own list of document types that it accepts; 
  these journals are only guided by the APA _style_ conventions. All journals 
  in psychology etc. that I have come across accept tex manuscripts, as long 
  as the tex file contains everything the authors use (i.e., macros) and do 
  not rely on any special latex compiling instructions.
 
 Thanks for the clarification. So a layout for APA  6 is indeed useful.  
 However, I won't have time 
 to write it and hope that anybody else can volunteer. if you like, I can 
 review the layout.
 
 thanks and regards
 Uwe
 

Re: LyX document diff/merge tools for cooperative editing?

[Gregory Jefferis]

On 7 Dec 2012, at 17:46, Nico Williams wrote:

 On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 6:02 AM, Rainer M Krug r.m.k...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 07/12/12 12:45, Gregory Jefferis wrote:
 Has anyone tried using latexdiff for change comparison in not merging? 
 Presumably a small script to export both versions to latex, invoke 
 latexdiff and then generate the marked-up PDF (which is what you get with 
 latexdiff) would work. For latexdiff there are already scripts to handle 
 git revisions which should allow one to diff a pair of arbitrary revisions 
 in a git repository.
 
 This should work, but it would be really nice if these changes were on LyX 
 level and that one could
 save a file LyX file containing the differences as tracked changes.
 
 Right, the goal is to merge LyX documents.  Unless converstion to/from
 LaTeX is loss-less this is not a solution.

Just to clarify (since it was apparently not clear) my suggestion re latexdiff 
was specifically about change *comparison* not merging (though I had admittedly 
wondered about the possibility of a round trip via latex). But for me seeing 
changes in context is half the battle!

Returning to the original question of merging + VCS, we currently use git + lyx 
for collaborative editing of papers in the lab (normally =3 people) using 
git's built in merge. For us this a tremendous improvement over the emailed 
word file strategy. We have not managed to break a LyX file with an 
inappropriate automated merge. Merge conflicts are obviously possible if 2 
users edit the same piece of text but in our use very rare – we encourage 
frequent push/pull, avoid e.g. fixing spelling errors all across the document 
without checking that changes have been committed and pushed. But on the rare 
occasions when conflicts do happen they unfortunately a showstopper for most 
users. It would indeed be very nice to have the option to merge in LyX when 
this happens, when one would typically use git mergetool. However, I do note 
that when a merge conflict happens, the file with conflicts left marked by 
git's regular merge or what you typically get by using git mergetool to start a 
generic merge tool (I use FileMerge on a Mac) is 3 way with ancestry. That 
means you only have to worry about the *conflicts* not the compatible changes 
in each branch. So in these circumstances firing up a text editor to fix the 
conflict might be much quicker (albeit more dangerous) than using LyX to 
accept/reject all changes displayed in a 2 way diff. In some sense a strategy 
that turned conflict markers into LyX tracked changes (or a 3 way diff) is 
really what one is after.

When I am working with less tech savvy people outside the lab, I usually tell 
them to use track changes (and commit their work manually to git). You can even 
consider asking people to use track changes when using a VCS if someone is 
going to review all changes for integration. Regrettably there is still the 
possibility of merge conflict even after the discussion/fix noted here:

http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/6058

if two or more people both start tracking changes before merging to master.

Hope some of this experience might be of use.

Best,

Greg.

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Richard Heck]

On 12/09/2012 10:27 PM, David L. Johnson wrote:

On 12/09/2012 07:23 PM, Uwe Stöhr wrote:
I am opposed to this. What is the benefit of a layout for a journal 
submission class you cannot use for submission to that journal? Why 
should we invest time to write and, more important, to maintain it?


My understanding is that APA is used by a wide range of humanistic and 
social sciences publications.  It is possible that some of them would 
indeed accept Latex (though maybe not likely), and others might well 
accept pdf files, as limiting as that may seem.


And some people might want to use the APA class for their own reasons, 
or maybe the APA will decide to start accepting LaTeX again, or who 
knows what. The point was that if someone wants to write an updated 
layout file, they can do so, and we'll be happy to include it with LyX. 
But it probably does seem like something that's not very pressing.


Richard

[BUG] Custom insets 1: ResetsFont

[Richard Heck]

On 12/08/2012 04:16 AM, Andrew Parsloe wrote:
I'm trying to clarify some issues about custom insets. (I have a 
project that makes heavy use of them.) The Customization manual says 
(Sect. 5.3.9 on flex insets):


ResetsFont [0,1] Whether this inset should use the font of its 
surrounding environment or uses its own. Default is true: uses its own.


The 1 is emphasized (italic) in the manual, indicating it is the 
default. I interpret this as meaning that text within the inset will, 
by default, *not* take on the style of the surrounding text. Yet I 
find exactly the opposite. I need to put


ResetsFont 0

to ensure that text in an inset is unaffected by the font outside.

Even so, if an inset with ResetsFont 0 is inserted into, say, a line 
of emphasized text, any text typed into the inset will be emphasized, 
but *thereafter* it will be immune to any changes to the style of the 
surrounding text.


This sounds like a bug. I've had a quick look at the code myself, and 
can't say I understand what it is supposed to be doing.


Please post a bug report on trac.

Richard

Pipe in FlexInset Names

[Richard Heck]

On 12/08/2012 04:17 AM, Andrew Parsloe wrote:
(1) If an inset name contains a vertical bar, |, the part after the 
bar is not shown in the Insert  Custom Insets list, but is retained 
in LyX format. Using the schema, inset definition = Custom Insets 
list = LyX file format,


InsetLayout Flex:foo|bah = foo = \begin_inset Flex foo|bah

(This works also with quotes around inset names containing spaces.) 
This is surprisingly useful, but doesn't seem to be documented in the 
Customization manual. It allows information, which doesn't need to be 
shown to the user, to be passed in the name of the inset from the 
module in which it is defined to LyX. I've used this 'to serious 
purpose' and without ill effect so far, but would like to be sure, 
given the lack of documentation, that it is not going to snag on some 
other feature of LyX.


The | character is used in Qt4 to specify menu shortcuts. See e.g. the 
stdmenus.inc file. So whatever follows it is being interpreted as an 
attempt to specify a menu shortcut. So I'd not recommend using it this 
way, but I'm not sure what we should do about it. At least, we should 
put something into the documentation.


(2) Quotes are needed if a custom inset name has a space. I noticed 
that if the space is deleted but the quotes retained, not only does 
the inset disappear from the Custom Insets list (it's replaced by a 
blank line), but in LyX format it becomes undefined:


InsetLayout Flex:foobah =  = \begin_inset Flex undefined

The natural behaviour seems to me for the quotes to have no effect 
when there's no space in the name. This feels like a bug.


This is a bug in the layout2layout conversion routine. Quoted names that 
do not contain spaces were wrongly being detected as unquoted names. 
I've fixed it. Since this is just in the layout2layout.py script, you 
can fix the bug in your own installation by applying 24dea042c.



(3) Underscores in inset names:

InsetLayout Flex:foo_bah = foo bah = \begin_inset Flex foo bah

Although the underscore is replaced by a space in the middle  right 
columns, using quotes around the name again produces invisibility in 
the Custom Insets list and an undefined inset in LyX file format. 
Again I can't see any documentation about underscores in the 
Customization manual.



Same bug.

Richard

Re: Custom insets 3: CopyStyle

[Richard Heck]

On 12/08/2012 04:17 AM, Andrew Parsloe wrote:
Does CopyStyle do *anything* in custom insets? I was just about to 
send off another Custom insets query when a last trial--error thought 
struck me: although


CopyStyle name

doesn't seem to do anything, where name is the name of a previously 
defined inset, perhaps


CopyStyle Flex:name

will work? And to my surprise, because I have struggled with this for 
far too long, it *does* work.


I will guess that you are using an older layout format, rather than the 
current one for 2.0.x (which is format 35), since one of the bugs you 
reported involved a layout2layout problem. In 2.0.x, Flex insets MUST be 
named Flex:whatever. This is documented under 5.3.9. This was not true 
in 1.6.x, and we attempt to convert older layouts, which do not use the 
Flex: prefix, to the newer form (including the CopyStyle 
declarations). But it doesn't always work---some cases have to be 
handled manually), and that is why you are seeing this bug. Indeed, it 
may well be the same bug you reported in the second post. Hard to say in 
the abstract.


Richard

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[obregonmateo]

I think people are missing the point here ... Lyx is *great* for writing and 
getting references and labels right! This goes for APA journals as much as for 
math/engineering journals.

I have co-authored several articles for APA journals and the pay-off of writing 
them in Lyx and then getting them into LaTeX or PDF has been wonderful, 
especially as I have *not* had to make final typo changes/corrections to the 
submitted/reviewed article before printing.

So, *please* keep the APA6 layout and corresponding bibtex referencing 
up-to-date!

Mateo.

On Monday 10 December 2012, Richard Heck wrote:
 On 12/09/2012 10:27 PM, David L. Johnson wrote:
  On 12/09/2012 07:23 PM, Uwe Stöhr wrote:
  I am opposed to this. What is the benefit of a layout for a journal 
  submission class you cannot use for submission to that journal? Why 
  should we invest time to write and, more important, to maintain it?
 
  My understanding is that APA is used by a wide range of humanistic and 
  social sciences publications.  It is possible that some of them would 
  indeed accept Latex (though maybe not likely), and others might well 
  accept pdf files, as limiting as that may seem.
 
 And some people might want to use the APA class for their own reasons, 
 or maybe the APA will decide to start accepting LaTeX again, or who 
 knows what. The point was that if someone wants to write an updated 
 layout file, they can do so, and we'll be happy to include it with LyX. 
 But it probably does seem like something that's not very pressing.
 
 Richard
 
 

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Jacob Bishop]

I recently shifted from Engineering to Psychology (actually Engineering
Education, but I am currently preparing a publication for an APA journal).
I used LyX for my masters' thesis, and LaTeX is the only acceptable thesis
format for some of the Engineering departments. When professors started
requiring that I write my papers using APA6, I quickly tried to figure out
how that could be done with LyX. I was not about to abandon my favorite
document preparation system for nothing. I have found there are basically
two routes you can go. There is an apa6e class and an apa6 class. The apa6e
class is a minimal class that incorporates apa6 guidelines for formatting
titles, but leaves references and things to the user to configure. The apa6
class is a bit more thorough. It is an updated version of the apa class and
as such has three modes for preparing an article. It adheres fairly
strictly to apa guidelines and the reference format is hard-coded. I
recently had to borrow some code from this class and combine it with the
Engineering dissertation template from my u to get a suitable dissertation
format that makes both the college of Engineering, and the department (of
Engineering Education) happy. I would also mention that for the publication
I am preparing, we use structural equation diagrams that I prepare with
TikZ and go right into the LyX document. I would hate to have to do those
diagrams any other way.

So, while it is unfortunate that we do not have an official apa6 template
with LyX, there are LaTeX users who do apa6 (like me). You can use that
class with any document. To get it to work, I basically just copied the LyX
layout file from the apa class and made a few modifications. Then, I
downloaded the apa6 class file and used it. This works reasonably well. By
the way, it is not the APA who decides whether to accept LaTeX or not, it
is each journal individually. Frankly, I think this is sort of a chicken
and the egg problem. If enough users wanted to submit with LaTeX, journals
would accept it, but many won't bother until there are more LaTeX users.
Also, I have found very few people in the social sciences who are even
aware of LaTeX. Not closed minded, just unaware. They use MS Word and
Endnote because they don't know that there are good/better (free)
alternatives.

Jacob

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Ray Rashif]

On 11 December 2012 01:21, Jacob Bishop bishop.ja...@gmail.com wrote:
 have found very few people in the social sciences who are even aware of
 LaTeX. Not closed minded, just unaware. They use MS Word and Endnote because
 they don't know that there are good/better (free) alternatives.

And this stems from the fact that social science has negligible need
for (typesetting) equations, because that's what really sets LaTeX
apart. With MS Word you can configure references, cite them and
arrange your document based on styles. For qualitative/descriptive
papers, that is enough. As such, few people find any need to go out of
their way to look for something better.


--
GPG/PGP ID: C0711BF1

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[stefano franchi]

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 11:59 AM, Ray Rashif schivmeis...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 11 December 2012 01:21, Jacob Bishop bishop.ja...@gmail.com wrote:
  have found very few people in the social sciences who are even aware of
  LaTeX. Not closed minded, just unaware. They use MS Word and Endnote
 because
  they don't know that there are good/better (free) alternatives.

 And this stems from the fact that social science has negligible need
 for (typesetting) equations, because that's what really sets LaTeX
 apart. With MS Word you can configure references, cite them and
 arrange your document based on styles. For qualitative/descriptive
 papers, that is enough. As such, few people find any need to go out of
 their way to look for something better.


rant
Not true. LyX/Latex's benefits are not limited to typesetting equations
(although it does a much better job that its competition in that area). A
Latex-typeset document looks better in many other respects---from
paragraph-division and typesetting (in spite of recent improvements in
Word's algorithms), to consistent application of style, down to small but
crucial things such as determining font sizes/leading[1].

The reason why Social sciences/Humanities are happy with Word/Endnote is
(historically speaking) different: authors used to submit  Word files (or,
earlier, Wordstar) and the publisher would import and typeset with real
typesetting software. Such programs (and still are) were usually very bad
at typesetting complex mathematical formulas unless each single formula was
tweaked by hand, a very painful and expensive proposition. That was
prompted D Knuth to invent TeX---the poor quality of professional
typesetting software for math, not the similar but irrelevant problem in
word processing program. The lack of equations in the Humanities/Social
Sciences made the traditional process working smooth and insured that the
typographical quality of publications in the fields was high, or at least
acceptable. Authors used primitive (typographically speaking) software,
publishers used real typesetters and everyone was happy.

Except...that desktop publishing happened and publishers started to cut
down on costs by using word as a typesetting program. Even worse, when they
started asking for pdf,  camera-ready  they would provide typographical
specs as series of Word instructions, since they do not know any better
(all the typesetters having long gone). The result is that the vast
majority of Humanities/Social Sciences journal and and increasing number of
Humanities *books*  are now typographically ugly and often barely readable

The same radical cost-cutting  measures took place  in the Natural
sciences/Engineering, of course. But since *they* were already using
Latex/TeX, the quality of their journal and books was only minimally
affected (although it was: it takes a truly capable typesetter to achieve
high results in Latex--relying on standard classes is only the starting
point. And most authors not named Knuth are not great typesetters).

That's why we in the Humanities are stuck with Word as a publishing
tool---because it used to work well as a drafting tool when the industry
worked differently, not because we do not use equations.

/rant








-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic StudiesPh:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas AM University  Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[David L. Johnson]

On 12/10/2012 02:01 PM, stefano franchi wrote:


rant

8
Such programs [Word and Wordstar] (and still are) were usually very 
bad at typesetting complex mathematical formulas unless each single 
formula was tweaked by hand, a very painful and expensive proposition. 
That was prompted D Knuth to invent TeX---the poor quality of 
professional typesetting software for math, not the similar but 
irrelevant problem in word processing program.


Actually, TeX predated Word, and Wordstar (or Wordperfect).  People used 
to run it on DECs.  While there were other math-typsetting (to use the 
phrase loosely) PC programs before TeX became usable on PCs, such as Jim 
Milgram's Techprint which he wrote for Radio-Shack computers with 28K 
ram, most of us used a combination of typewriters and hand-written 
symbols.  A respectable journal would typeset the paper from the 
typewritten copy, but a few insisted on camera-ready --- literally --- 
proofs, which resulted in published papers and books with handwritten 
symbols.  I suspect that Knuth was reacting to that mess rather than 
equations in Word.  I typed my own Ph.D. thesis on an IBM selectric, 
with those interchangeable golf-ball fonts, going over each line 2 or 3 
times.   A nightmare.


I experienced the full range of mathematical text preparation.  I've 
written papers on the typewriter, using hand-drawn symbols and markups 
for a typesetter, Techprint (another nightmare), 2 or 3 PC-based, 
non-graphical programs that produced half-assed output, a couple of 
WYSIWYG programs, plain AMS-TeX using a text editor with occasional 
previews, to LyX.  Clearly the present situation has been the only 
reasonable one.




The same radical cost-cutting  measures took place  in the Natural 
sciences/Engineering, of course. But since *they* were already using 
Latex/TeX, the quality of their journal and books was only minimally 
affected
With the exception of those journals and texts that were typeset with a 
full array of symbols, the use of TeX has vastly improved the appearance 
of papers (if not the content).  The AMS journals from the 1970s and 
before were works of art, but even most Springer-Verlag monographs were 
truly ugly.


--

David L. Johnson

The motor car reflects our standard of living and gauges the speed of
our present life. It long ago ran down Simple Living, and never halted
to inquire about the prostrate figure which fell as its victim.
-- Warren G. Harding

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Richard Heck]

On 12/10/2012 02:29 PM, David L. Johnson wrote:

On 12/10/2012 02:01 PM, stefano franchi wrote:



The same radical cost-cutting  measures took place  in the Natural 
sciences/Engineering, of course. But since *they* were already using 
Latex/TeX, the quality of their journal and books was only minimally 
affected


With the exception of those journals and texts that were typeset with 
a full array of symbols, the use of TeX has vastly improved the 
appearance of papers (if not the content).  The AMS journals from the 
1970s and before were works of art, but even most Springer-Verlag 
monographs were truly ugly.


What always amuses me is that there seem to be several journals that 
won't accept LaTeX but then when you get the proofs, it's obvious it's 
LaTeX. You see the filename at the top of the page. Fortunately, there 
seems to be a bit of a trend here, and people will get it figured out.


Richard

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Scott Kostyshak]

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 11:42 AM,  obregonma...@gmail.com wrote:
 I think people are missing the point here ... Lyx is *great* for writing and 
 getting references and labels right! This goes for APA journals as much as 
 for math/engineering journals.

 I have co-authored several articles for APA journals and the pay-off of 
 writing them in Lyx and then getting them into LaTeX or PDF has been 
 wonderful, especially as I have *not* had to make final typo 
 changes/corrections to the submitted/reviewed article before printing.

 So, *please* keep the APA6 layout and corresponding bibtex referencing 
 up-to-date!

Hi Mateo, John, Ray, Jacob (and everyone else),

It seems APA6 is useful to a lot of people and in particular to you
guys. How about we make a layout for it together then?

I know absolutely nothing about APA6 (or psychology for that matter),
little about layouts, and very little about document classes. But I am
confident that we can do it. Look in your library directory (go to
Help  About if you don't know where it is) and then go to
layouts/apa.layout.
Open it up. It shouldn't look too scary to you. It looks more like
English to me than programming (thank you to the LyX developers who
have made it look so nice and flexible). So this is an opportunity
where even if you don't know/like programming, you can help out.

But wait, that's not all. If we learn the LyX layout format, in
addition to us making an apa6 layout (and thus helping ourselves and
potentially a lot of others), we'll learn how to customize LyX layouts
to our liking. This can be very useful and can make using LyX a lot
more fun and personalized.

The developers around here are extremely nice and generous and would
help us out when we get stuck. But they are involved in a million
things and it's not clear at all to me that they should stop doing
those things in order to make this layout, especially when I'm sure
we're capable of doing it.

Who's in?

Scott

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Rob Oakes]

If you're going to go the customization route, this might be of help:

http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2009/11/02/custom-lyx-nih

It talks about creating a custom layout for an existing document class.

Related posts with more examples can be found at:

http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2009/11/14/customize-lyx-character-styles
(Character styles)

http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/05/19/latex-cv-part4
(Second example of how to create a layout for an existing document
class. The other posts in the same series how to write a custom document
class.)

Best of luck in the endeavor!

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Richard Heck]

On 12/10/2012 03:07 PM, Scott Kostyshak wrote:

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 11:42 AM,  obregonma...@gmail.com wrote:

I think people are missing the point here ... Lyx is *great* for writing and 
getting references and labels right! This goes for APA journals as much as for 
math/engineering journals.

I have co-authored several articles for APA journals and the pay-off of writing them in 
Lyx and then getting them into LaTeX or PDF has been wonderful, especially as I have 
*not* had to make final typo changes/corrections to the submitted/reviewed 
article before printing.

So, *please* keep the APA6 layout and corresponding bibtex referencing 
up-to-date!

Hi Mateo, John, Ray, Jacob (and everyone else),

It seems APA6 is useful to a lot of people and in particular to you
guys. How about we make a layout for it together then?

I know absolutely nothing about APA6 (or psychology for that matter),
little about layouts, and very little about document classes. But I am
confident that we can do it. Look in your library directory (go to
Help  About if you don't know where it is) and then go to
layouts/apa.layout.
Open it up. It shouldn't look too scary to you. It looks more like
English to me than programming (thank you to the LyX developers who
have made it look so nice and flexible). So this is an opportunity
where even if you don't know/like programming, you can help out.

But wait, that's not all. If we learn the LyX layout format, in
addition to us making an apa6 layout (and thus helping ourselves and
potentially a lot of others), we'll learn how to customize LyX layouts
to our liking. This can be very useful and can make using LyX a lot
more fun and personalized.

The developers around here are extremely nice and generous and would
help us out when we get stuck. But they are involved in a million
things and it's not clear at all to me that they should stop doing
those things in order to make this layout, especially when I'm sure
we're capable of doing it.

Who's in?
I'm happy to give loads of advice, too. Here's how I'd start: Get some 
kind of example LaTeX file that exercises as much of what APA6 provides 
as is possible. Copy the existing apa.layout file to apa6.layout and 
change the second line to:


#  \DeclareLaTeXClass[apa6]{article (APA v6)}

Now try to load your example file in LyX. What doesn't work will be what 
needs fixing. There will be more to do, as well, but you will get a long 
way just doing that much.


Oh, and I'd avoid the biblatex bits of APA6 for now. Use something like:
ClassOptions
Other natbib
End
to force the use of that option.

Richard

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Ray Rashif]

On 11 December 2012 03:01, stefano franchi stefano.fran...@gmail.com wrote:
 rant
 Not true. LyX/Latex's benefits are not limited to typesetting equations
 (although it does a much better job that its competition in that area). A
 Latex-typeset document looks better in many other respects---from
 paragraph-division and typesetting (in spite of recent improvements in
 Word's algorithms), to consistent application of style, down to small but
 crucial things such as determining font sizes/leading[1].

 The reason why Social sciences/Humanities are happy with Word/Endnote is
 (historically speaking) different: authors used to submit  Word files (or,
 earlier, Wordstar) and the publisher would import and typeset with real
 typesetting software. Such programs (and still are) were usually very bad at
 typesetting complex mathematical formulas unless each single formula was
 tweaked by hand, a very painful and expensive proposition. That was prompted
 D Knuth to invent TeX---the poor quality of professional typesetting
 software for math, not the similar but irrelevant problem in word processing
 program. The lack of equations in the Humanities/Social Sciences made the
 traditional process working smooth and insured that the typographical
 quality of publications in the fields was high, or at least acceptable.
 Authors used primitive (typographically speaking) software, publishers used
 real typesetters and everyone was happy.

 Except...that desktop publishing happened and publishers started to cut down
 on costs by using word as a typesetting program. Even worse, when they
 started asking for pdf,  camera-ready  they would provide typographical
 specs as series of Word instructions, since they do not know any better (all
 the typesetters having long gone). The result is that the vast majority of
 Humanities/Social Sciences journal and and increasing number of Humanities
 *books*  are now typographically ugly and often barely readable

 The same radical cost-cutting  measures took place  in the Natural
 sciences/Engineering, of course. But since *they* were already using
 Latex/TeX, the quality of their journal and books was only minimally
 affected (although it was: it takes a truly capable typesetter to achieve
 high results in Latex--relying on standard classes is only the starting
 point. And most authors not named Knuth are not great typesetters).

 That's why we in the Humanities are stuck with Word as a publishing
 tool---because it used to work well as a drafting tool when the industry
 worked differently, not because we do not use equations.

 /rant

Thank you Stefano - that was exactly the background story I was hoping
someone would fill in. My brief statement on equations was just a
layman's generalisation on why faculty would go through the trouble to
suggest LaTeX to students (surely, STEM lecturers would have _more_
reason).

TeX/LaTeX/LyX is definitely not _only_ about equations. I recently
edited and typeset (like you said, no one better than Knuth,
especially not someone who only played with his father's relic
typewriter as a toddler) a social science dissertation completely in
LyX with some LaTeX fiddling.


--
GPG/PGP ID: C0711BF1

No bibliography environment in DocBook document class

[Nico Williams]

Why is there no bibliography environment in the DocBook document
classes?  There must be a reason, of course, but then, bibtex is still
supported, so that's strange...

Nico
--

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[stefano franchi]

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 1:29 PM, David L. Johnson
david.john...@lehigh.eduwrote:

 On 12/10/2012 02:01 PM, stefano franchi wrote:


 rant

 8

 Such programs [Word and Wordstar] (and still are) were usually very bad
 at typesetting complex mathematical formulas unless each single formula was
 tweaked by hand, a very painful and expensive proposition. That was
 prompted D Knuth to invent TeX---the poor quality of professional
 typesetting software for math, not the similar but irrelevant problem in
 word processing program.


 Actually, TeX predated Word, and Wordstar (or Wordperfect).  People used
 to run it on DECs.  While there were other math-typsetting (to use the
 phrase loosely) PC programs before TeX became usable on PCs, such as Jim
 Milgram's Techprint which he wrote for Radio-Shack computers with 28K
 ram, most of us used a combination of typewriters and hand-written symbols.
  A respectable journal would typeset the paper from the typewritten copy,
 but a few insisted on camera-ready --- literally --- proofs, which
 resulted in published papers and books with handwritten symbols.  I suspect
 that Knuth was reacting to that mess rather than equations in Word.  I
 typed my own Ph.D. thesis on an IBM selectric, with those interchangeable
 golf-ball fonts, going over each line 2 or 3 times.   A nightmare.


I didn't mean to imply Word (or Wordstar) were used before TeX---just that
Word-equivalent software and/or mechanical devices (i.e. typerwriters: I
wrote my thesis on a Olivetti Lettera 22. And I was an innovator: my
adviser would only handwrite and had a secretary type his books) were the
common first step for both scientists and humanists. The publishers then
took the second and final step using different tools (and sometimes
resorting to handwritten symbols. I remember well that many of may symbolic
logic books in college contained such horrors).
But whereas publishers usually did a good job with humanists' texts, they
often did a terrible one with formulas. Hence, TeX.

When the second step was eliminated, scientists were left with TeX, and we
poor Humanists were left with Word. LyX is our great white hope. Or the
pink one, considering the default background

/really end rant

Cheers,

S.

-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic StudiesPh:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas AM University  Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[David L. Johnson]

On 12/10/2012 05:51 PM, stefano franchi wrote:


/really end rant

Cheers,


Hullabaloo, caneck, caneck.

--

David L. Johnson

Become MicroSoft-free forever.  Ask me how.

Re: No bibliography environment in DocBook document class

[José Matos]

On 12/10/2012 10:46 PM, Nico Williams wrote:
 Why is there no bibliography environment in the DocBook document
 classes?  There must be a reason, of course, but then, bibtex is still
 supported, so that's strange...

 Nico
 --

The reason why it was never implemented is/was lake of time, no more no
less. :-)

-- 
José Matos

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Uwe Stöhr]

Am 10.12.2012 02:33, schrieb Kayvan Sylvan:


They accept PDF submissions, so I suppose you could use apa6 in LyX if
it's available and export to PDF.


This seems to be the case, but only for supplements as I understood this and TeX is explicitly not 
allowed:

http://www.apa.org/pubs/authors/supp-material.aspx

Maybe I'm wrong and PDfs are also allowed for the main text. If so a layout for APA 6 would indeed 
be useful.


regards Uwe

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[obregonmateo]

Each APA-type journal has its own list of document types that it accepts; these 
journals are only guided by the APA _style_ conventions. All journals in 
psychology etc. that I have come across accept tex manuscripts, as long as the 
tex file contains everything the authors use (i.e., macros) and do not rely on 
any special latex compiling instructions.

With regards to the link below, it is only referring to file types that can be 
uploaded as supplementary material and *not* addressing in any way what the 
manuscript is prepared in.

Mateo.

On Monday 10 December 2012, Uwe Stöhr wrote:
 Am 10.12.2012 02:33, schrieb Kayvan Sylvan:
 
  They accept PDF submissions, so I suppose you could use apa6 in LyX if
  it's available and export to PDF.
 
 This seems to be the case, but only for supplements as I understood this and 
 TeX is explicitly not 
 allowed:
 http://www.apa.org/pubs/authors/supp-material.aspx
 
 Maybe I'm wrong and PDfs are also allowed for the main text. If so a layout 
 for APA 6 would indeed 
 be useful.
 
 regards Uwe
 

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Uwe Stöhr]

Am 11.12.2012 01:14, schrieb obregonma...@gmail.com:


Each APA-type journal has its own list of document types that it accepts; these 
journals are only guided by the APA _style_ conventions. All journals in 
psychology etc. that I have come across accept tex manuscripts, as long as the 
tex file contains everything the authors use (i.e., macros) and do not rely on 
any special latex compiling instructions.


Thanks for the clarification. So a layout for APA  6 is indeed useful.  However, I won't have time 
to write it and hope that anybody else can volunteer. if you like, I can review the layout.


thanks and regards
Uwe

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[obregonmateo]

Thanks Uwe for offering to review a layout for APA6.

Others here are also interested in making this work, so I'm sure we'll have 
something soon for you to look at.

Mateo.

On Tuesday 11 December 2012, Uwe Stöhr wrote:
 Am 11.12.2012 01:14, schrieb obregonma...@gmail.com:
 
  Each APA-type journal has its own list of document types that it accepts; 
  these journals are only guided by the APA _style_ conventions. All journals 
  in psychology etc. that I have come across accept tex manuscripts, as long 
  as the tex file contains everything the authors use (i.e., macros) and do 
  not rely on any special latex compiling instructions.
 
 Thanks for the clarification. So a layout for APA  6 is indeed useful.  
 However, I won't have time 
 to write it and hope that anybody else can volunteer. if you like, I can 
 review the layout.
 
 thanks and regards
 Uwe
 

Re: LyX document diff/merge tools for cooperative editing?

[Gregory Jefferis]

On 7 Dec 2012, at 17:46, Nico Williams wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 6:02 AM, Rainer M Krug  wrote:
>> On 07/12/12 12:45, Gregory Jefferis wrote:
>>> Has anyone tried using latexdiff for change comparison in not merging? 
>>> Presumably a small script to export both versions to latex, invoke 
>>> latexdiff and then generate the marked-up PDF (which is what you get with 
>>> latexdiff) would work. For latexdiff there are already scripts to handle 
>>> git revisions which should allow one to diff a pair of arbitrary revisions 
>>> in a git repository.
>> 
>> This should work, but it would be really nice if these changes were on LyX 
>> level and that one could
>> save a file LyX file containing the differences as tracked changes.
> 
> Right, the goal is to merge LyX documents.  Unless converstion to/from
> LaTeX is loss-less this is not a solution.

Just to clarify (since it was apparently not clear) my suggestion re latexdiff 
was specifically about change *comparison* not merging (though I had admittedly 
wondered about the possibility of a round trip via latex). But for me seeing 
changes in context is half the battle!

Returning to the original question of merging + VCS, we currently use git + lyx 
for collaborative editing of papers in the lab (normally <=3 people) using 
git's built in merge. For us this a tremendous improvement over the emailed 
word file strategy. We have not managed to break a LyX file with an 
inappropriate automated merge. Merge conflicts are obviously possible if 2 
users edit the same piece of text but in our use very rare – we encourage 
frequent push/pull, avoid e.g. fixing spelling errors all across the document 
without checking that changes have been committed and pushed. But on the rare 
occasions when conflicts do happen they unfortunately a showstopper for most 
users. It would indeed be very nice to have the option to merge in LyX when 
this happens, when one would typically use git mergetool. However, I do note 
that when a merge conflict happens, the file with conflicts left marked by 
git's regular merge or what you typically get by using git mergetool to start a 
generic merge tool (I use FileMerge on a Mac) is 3 way with ancestry. That 
means you only have to worry about the *conflicts* not the compatible changes 
in each branch. So in these circumstances firing up a text editor to fix the 
conflict might be much quicker (albeit more dangerous) than using LyX to 
accept/reject all changes displayed in a 2 way diff. In some sense a strategy 
that turned conflict markers into LyX tracked changes (or a 3 way diff) is 
really what one is after.

When I am working with less tech savvy people outside the lab, I usually tell 
them to use track changes (and commit their work manually to git). You can even 
consider asking people to use track changes when using a VCS if someone is 
going to review all changes for integration. Regrettably there is still the 
possibility of merge conflict even after the discussion/fix noted here:

http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/6058

if two or more people both start tracking changes before merging to master.

Hope some of this experience might be of use.

Best,

Greg.

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Richard Heck]

On 12/09/2012 10:27 PM, David L. Johnson wrote:

On 12/09/2012 07:23 PM, Uwe Stöhr wrote:
I am opposed to this. What is the benefit of a layout for a journal 
submission class you cannot use for submission to that journal? Why 
should we invest time to write and, more important, to maintain it?


My understanding is that APA is used by a wide range of humanistic and 
social sciences publications.  It is possible that some of them would 
indeed accept Latex (though maybe not likely), and others might well 
accept pdf files, as limiting as that may seem.


And some people might want to use the APA class for their own reasons, 
or maybe the APA will decide to start accepting LaTeX again, or who 
knows what. The point was that if someone wants to write an updated 
layout file, they can do so, and we'll be happy to include it with LyX. 
But it probably does seem like something that's not very pressing.


Richard

[BUG] Custom insets 1: ResetsFont

[Richard Heck]

On 12/08/2012 04:16 AM, Andrew Parsloe wrote:
I'm trying to clarify some issues about custom insets. (I have a 
project that makes heavy use of them.) The Customization manual says 
(Sect. 5.3.9 on flex insets):


ResetsFont [0,1] Whether this inset should use the font of its 
surrounding environment or uses its own. Default is true: uses its own.


The 1 is emphasized (italic) in the manual, indicating it is the 
default. I interpret this as meaning that text within the inset will, 
by default, *not* take on the style of the surrounding text. Yet I 
find exactly the opposite. I need to put


ResetsFont 0

to ensure that text in an inset is unaffected by the font outside.

Even so, if an inset with ResetsFont 0 is inserted into, say, a line 
of emphasized text, any text typed into the inset will be emphasized, 
but *thereafter* it will be immune to any changes to the style of the 
surrounding text.


This sounds like a bug. I've had a quick look at the code myself, and 
can't say I understand what it is supposed to be doing.


Please post a bug report on trac.

Richard

Pipe in FlexInset Names

[Richard Heck]

On 12/08/2012 04:17 AM, Andrew Parsloe wrote:
(1) If an inset name contains a vertical bar, |, the part after the 
bar is not shown in the Insert > Custom Insets list, but is retained 
in LyX format. Using the schema, inset definition => Custom Insets 
list => LyX file format,


InsetLayout Flex:foo|bah => foo => \begin_inset Flex foo|bah

(This works also with quotes around inset names containing spaces.) 
This is surprisingly useful, but doesn't seem to be documented in the 
Customization manual. It allows information, which doesn't need to be 
shown to the user, to be passed in the name of the inset from the 
module in which it is defined to LyX. I've used this 'to serious 
purpose' and without ill effect so far, but would like to be sure, 
given the lack of documentation, that it is not going to snag on some 
other feature of LyX.


The | character is used in Qt4 to specify menu shortcuts. See e.g. the 
stdmenus.inc file. So whatever follows it is being interpreted as an 
attempt to specify a menu shortcut. So I'd not recommend using it this 
way, but I'm not sure what we should do about it. At least, we should 
put something into the documentation.


(2) Quotes are needed if a custom inset name has a space. I noticed 
that if the space is deleted but the quotes retained, not only does 
the inset disappear from the Custom Insets list (it's replaced by a 
blank line), but in LyX format it becomes undefined:


InsetLayout "Flex:foobah" =>  => \begin_inset Flex undefined

The natural behaviour seems to me for the quotes to have no effect 
when there's no space in the name. This feels like a bug.


This is a bug in the layout2layout conversion routine. Quoted names that 
do not contain spaces were wrongly being detected as unquoted names. 
I've fixed it. Since this is just in the layout2layout.py script, you 
can fix the bug in your own installation by applying 24dea042c.



(3) Underscores in inset names:

InsetLayout Flex:foo_bah => foo bah => \begin_inset Flex foo bah

Although the underscore is replaced by a space in the middle & right 
columns, using quotes around the name again produces invisibility in 
the Custom Insets list and an undefined inset in LyX file format. 
Again I can't see any documentation about underscores in the 
Customization manual.



Same bug.

Richard

Re: Custom insets 3: CopyStyle

[Richard Heck]

On 12/08/2012 04:17 AM, Andrew Parsloe wrote:
Does CopyStyle do *anything* in custom insets? I was just about to 
send off another Custom insets query when a last trial-&-error thought 
struck me: although


CopyStyle 

doesn't seem to do anything, where  is the name of a previously 
defined inset, perhaps


CopyStyle Flex:

will work? And to my surprise, because I have struggled with this for 
far too long, it *does* work.


I will guess that you are using an older layout format, rather than the 
current one for 2.0.x (which is format 35), since one of the bugs you 
reported involved a layout2layout problem. In 2.0.x, Flex insets MUST be 
named "Flex:whatever". This is documented under 5.3.9. This was not true 
in 1.6.x, and we attempt to convert older layouts, which do not use the 
Flex: prefix, to the newer form (including the "CopyStyle" 
declarations). But it doesn't always work---some cases have to be 
handled manually), and that is why you are seeing this bug. Indeed, it 
may well be the same bug you reported in the second post. Hard to say in 
the abstract.


Richard

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[obregonmateo]

I think people are missing the point here ... Lyx is *great* for writing and 
getting references and labels right! This goes for APA journals as much as for 
math/engineering journals.

I have co-authored several articles for APA journals and the pay-off of writing 
them in Lyx and then getting them into LaTeX or PDF has been wonderful, 
especially as I have *not* had to make final "typo" changes/corrections to the 
submitted/reviewed article before printing.

So, *please* keep the APA6 layout and corresponding bibtex referencing 
up-to-date!

Mateo.

On Monday 10 December 2012, Richard Heck wrote:
> On 12/09/2012 10:27 PM, David L. Johnson wrote:
> > On 12/09/2012 07:23 PM, Uwe Stöhr wrote:
> >> I am opposed to this. What is the benefit of a layout for a journal 
> >> submission class you cannot use for submission to that journal? Why 
> >> should we invest time to write and, more important, to maintain it?
> >
> > My understanding is that APA is used by a wide range of humanistic and 
> > social sciences publications.  It is possible that some of them would 
> > indeed accept Latex (though maybe not likely), and others might well 
> > accept pdf files, as limiting as that may seem.
> >
> And some people might want to use the APA class for their own reasons, 
> or maybe the APA will decide to start accepting LaTeX again, or who 
> knows what. The point was that if someone wants to write an updated 
> layout file, they can do so, and we'll be happy to include it with LyX. 
> But it probably does seem like something that's not very pressing.
> 
> Richard
> 
> 

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Jacob Bishop]

I recently shifted from Engineering to Psychology (actually Engineering
Education, but I am currently preparing a publication for an APA journal).
I used LyX for my masters' thesis, and LaTeX is the only acceptable thesis
format for some of the Engineering departments. When professors started
requiring that I write my papers using APA6, I quickly tried to figure out
how that could be done with LyX. I was not about to abandon my favorite
document preparation system for nothing. I have found there are basically
two routes you can go. There is an apa6e class and an apa6 class. The apa6e
class is a minimal class that incorporates apa6 guidelines for formatting
titles, but leaves references and things to the user to configure. The apa6
class is a bit more thorough. It is an updated version of the apa class and
as such has three modes for preparing an article. It adheres fairly
strictly to apa guidelines and the reference format is hard-coded. I
recently had to borrow some code from this class and combine it with the
Engineering dissertation template from my u to get a suitable dissertation
format that makes both the college of Engineering, and the department (of
Engineering Education) happy. I would also mention that for the publication
I am preparing, we use structural equation diagrams that I prepare with
TikZ and go right into the LyX document. I would hate to have to do those
diagrams any other way.

So, while it is unfortunate that we do not have an official apa6 template
with LyX, there are LaTeX users who do apa6 (like me). You can use that
class with any document. To get it to work, I basically just copied the LyX
layout file from the apa class and made a few modifications. Then, I
downloaded the apa6 class file and used it. This works reasonably well. By
the way, it is not the APA who decides whether to accept LaTeX or not, it
is each journal individually. Frankly, I think this is sort of a chicken
and the egg problem. If enough users wanted to submit with LaTeX, journals
would accept it, but many won't bother until there are more LaTeX users.
Also, I have found very few people in the social sciences who are even
aware of LaTeX. Not closed minded, just unaware. They use MS Word and
Endnote because they don't know that there are good/better (free)
alternatives.

Jacob

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Ray Rashif]

On 11 December 2012 01:21, Jacob Bishop  wrote:
> have found very few people in the social sciences who are even aware of
> LaTeX. Not closed minded, just unaware. They use MS Word and Endnote because
> they don't know that there are good/better (free) alternatives.

And this stems from the fact that social science has negligible need
for (typesetting) equations, because that's what really sets LaTeX
apart. With MS Word you can configure references, cite them and
arrange your document based on styles. For qualitative/descriptive
papers, that is enough. As such, few people find any need to go out of
their way to look for something better.


--
GPG/PGP ID: C0711BF1

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[stefano franchi]

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 11:59 AM, Ray Rashif  wrote:

> On 11 December 2012 01:21, Jacob Bishop  wrote:
> > have found very few people in the social sciences who are even aware of
> > LaTeX. Not closed minded, just unaware. They use MS Word and Endnote
> because
> > they don't know that there are good/better (free) alternatives.
>
> And this stems from the fact that social science has negligible need
> for (typesetting) equations, because that's what really sets LaTeX
> apart. With MS Word you can configure references, cite them and
> arrange your document based on styles. For qualitative/descriptive
> papers, that is enough. As such, few people find any need to go out of
> their way to look for something better.
>
>

Not true. LyX/Latex's benefits are not limited to typesetting equations
(although it does a much better job that its competition in that area). A
Latex-typeset document looks better in many other respects---from
paragraph-division and typesetting (in spite of recent improvements in
Word's algorithms), to consistent application of style, down to small but
crucial things such as determining font sizes/leading[1].

The reason why Social sciences/Humanities are happy with Word/Endnote is
(historically speaking) different: authors used to submit  Word files (or,
earlier, Wordstar) and the publisher would import and typeset with real
typesetting software. Such programs (and still are) were usually very bad
at typesetting complex mathematical formulas unless each single formula was
tweaked by hand, a very painful and expensive proposition. That was
prompted D Knuth to invent TeX---the poor quality of professional
typesetting software for math, not the similar but irrelevant problem in
word processing program. The lack of equations in the Humanities/Social
Sciences made the traditional process working smooth and insured that the
typographical quality of publications in the fields was high, or at least
acceptable. Authors used primitive (typographically speaking) software,
publishers used real typesetters and everyone was happy.

Except...that desktop publishing happened and publishers started to cut
down on costs by using word as a typesetting program. Even worse, when they
started asking for pdf,  camera-ready  they would provide typographical
specs as series of Word instructions, since they do not know any better
(all the typesetters having long gone). The result is that the vast
majority of Humanities/Social Sciences journal and and increasing number of
Humanities *books*  are now typographically ugly and often barely readable

The same radical cost-cutting  measures took place  in the Natural
sciences/Engineering, of course. But since *they* were already using
Latex/TeX, the quality of their journal and books was only minimally
affected (although it was: it takes a truly capable typesetter to achieve
high results in Latex--relying on standard classes is only the starting
point. And most authors not named Knuth are not great typesetters).

That's why we in the Humanities are stuck with Word as a publishing
tool---because it used to work well as a drafting tool when the industry
worked differently, not because we do not use equations.










-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic StudiesPh:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas A University  Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[David L. Johnson]

On 12/10/2012 02:01 PM, stefano franchi wrote:




8<
Such programs [Word and Wordstar] (and still are) were usually very 
bad at typesetting complex mathematical formulas unless each single 
formula was tweaked by hand, a very painful and expensive proposition. 
That was prompted D Knuth to invent TeX---the poor quality of 
professional typesetting software for math, not the similar but 
irrelevant problem in word processing program.


Actually, TeX predated Word, and Wordstar (or Wordperfect).  People used 
to run it on DECs.  While there were other math-typsetting (to use the 
phrase loosely) PC programs before TeX became usable on PCs, such as Jim 
Milgram's "Techprint" which he wrote for Radio-Shack computers with 28K 
ram, most of us used a combination of typewriters and hand-written 
symbols.  A respectable journal would typeset the paper from the 
typewritten copy, but a few insisted on "camera-ready" --- literally --- 
proofs, which resulted in published papers and books with handwritten 
symbols.  I suspect that Knuth was reacting to that mess rather than 
equations in Word.  I typed my own Ph.D. thesis on an IBM selectric, 
with those interchangeable golf-ball fonts, going over each line 2 or 3 
times.   A nightmare.


I experienced the full range of mathematical text preparation.  I've 
written papers on the typewriter, using hand-drawn symbols and markups 
for a typesetter, Techprint (another nightmare), 2 or 3 PC-based, 
non-graphical programs that produced half-assed output, a couple of 
WYSIWYG programs, plain AMS-TeX using a text editor with occasional 
previews, to LyX.  Clearly the present situation has been the only 
reasonable one.




The same radical cost-cutting  measures took place  in the Natural 
sciences/Engineering, of course. But since *they* were already using 
Latex/TeX, the quality of their journal and books was only minimally 
affected
With the exception of those journals and texts that were typeset with a 
full array of symbols, the use of TeX has vastly improved the appearance 
of papers (if not the content).  The AMS journals from the 1970s and 
before were works of art, but even most Springer-Verlag monographs were 
truly ugly.


--

David L. Johnson

The motor car reflects our standard of living and gauges the speed of
our present life. It long ago ran down Simple Living, and never halted
to inquire about the prostrate figure which fell as its victim.
-- Warren G. Harding

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Richard Heck]

On 12/10/2012 02:29 PM, David L. Johnson wrote:

On 12/10/2012 02:01 PM, stefano franchi wrote:



The same radical cost-cutting  measures took place  in the Natural 
sciences/Engineering, of course. But since *they* were already using 
Latex/TeX, the quality of their journal and books was only minimally 
affected


With the exception of those journals and texts that were typeset with 
a full array of symbols, the use of TeX has vastly improved the 
appearance of papers (if not the content).  The AMS journals from the 
1970s and before were works of art, but even most Springer-Verlag 
monographs were truly ugly.


What always amuses me is that there seem to be several journals that 
won't accept LaTeX but then when you get the proofs, it's obvious it's 
LaTeX. You see the filename at the top of the page. Fortunately, there 
seems to be a bit of a trend here, and people will get it figured out.


Richard

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Scott Kostyshak]

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 11:42 AM,   wrote:
> I think people are missing the point here ... Lyx is *great* for writing and 
> getting references and labels right! This goes for APA journals as much as 
> for math/engineering journals.
>
> I have co-authored several articles for APA journals and the pay-off of 
> writing them in Lyx and then getting them into LaTeX or PDF has been 
> wonderful, especially as I have *not* had to make final "typo" 
> changes/corrections to the submitted/reviewed article before printing.
>
> So, *please* keep the APA6 layout and corresponding bibtex referencing 
> up-to-date!

Hi Mateo, John, Ray, Jacob (and everyone else),

It seems APA6 is useful to a lot of people and in particular to you
guys. How about we make a layout for it together then?

I know absolutely nothing about APA6 (or psychology for that matter),
little about layouts, and very little about document classes. But I am
confident that we can do it. Look in your library directory (go to
Help > About if you don't know where it is) and then go to
layouts/apa.layout.
Open it up. It shouldn't look too scary to you. It looks more like
English to me than programming (thank you to the LyX developers who
have made it look so nice and flexible). So this is an opportunity
where even if you don't know/like programming, you can help out.

But wait, that's not all. If we learn the LyX layout format, in
addition to us making an apa6 layout (and thus helping ourselves and
potentially a lot of others), we'll learn how to customize LyX layouts
to our liking. This can be very useful and can make using LyX a lot
more fun and personalized.

The developers around here are extremely nice and generous and would
help us out when we get stuck. But they are involved in a million
things and it's not clear at all to me that they should stop doing
those things in order to make this layout, especially when I'm sure
we're capable of doing it.

Who's in?

Scott

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Rob Oakes]

If you're going to go the customization route, this might be of help:

http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2009/11/02/custom-lyx-nih

It talks about creating a custom layout for an existing document class.

Related posts with more examples can be found at:

http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2009/11/14/customize-lyx-character-styles
(Character styles)

http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/05/19/latex-cv-part4
(Second example of how to create a layout for an existing document
class. The other posts in the same series how to write a custom document
class.)

Best of luck in the endeavor!

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Richard Heck]

On 12/10/2012 03:07 PM, Scott Kostyshak wrote:

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 11:42 AM,   wrote:

I think people are missing the point here ... Lyx is *great* for writing and 
getting references and labels right! This goes for APA journals as much as for 
math/engineering journals.

I have co-authored several articles for APA journals and the pay-off of writing them in 
Lyx and then getting them into LaTeX or PDF has been wonderful, especially as I have 
*not* had to make final "typo" changes/corrections to the submitted/reviewed 
article before printing.

So, *please* keep the APA6 layout and corresponding bibtex referencing 
up-to-date!

Hi Mateo, John, Ray, Jacob (and everyone else),

It seems APA6 is useful to a lot of people and in particular to you
guys. How about we make a layout for it together then?

I know absolutely nothing about APA6 (or psychology for that matter),
little about layouts, and very little about document classes. But I am
confident that we can do it. Look in your library directory (go to
Help > About if you don't know where it is) and then go to
layouts/apa.layout.
Open it up. It shouldn't look too scary to you. It looks more like
English to me than programming (thank you to the LyX developers who
have made it look so nice and flexible). So this is an opportunity
where even if you don't know/like programming, you can help out.

But wait, that's not all. If we learn the LyX layout format, in
addition to us making an apa6 layout (and thus helping ourselves and
potentially a lot of others), we'll learn how to customize LyX layouts
to our liking. This can be very useful and can make using LyX a lot
more fun and personalized.

The developers around here are extremely nice and generous and would
help us out when we get stuck. But they are involved in a million
things and it's not clear at all to me that they should stop doing
those things in order to make this layout, especially when I'm sure
we're capable of doing it.

Who's in?
I'm happy to give loads of advice, too. Here's how I'd start: Get some 
kind of example LaTeX file that exercises as much of what APA6 provides 
as is possible. Copy the existing apa.layout file to apa6.layout and 
change the second line to:


#  \DeclareLaTeXClass[apa6]{article (APA v6)}

Now try to load your example file in LyX. What doesn't work will be what 
needs fixing. There will be more to do, as well, but you will get a long 
way just doing that much.


Oh, and I'd avoid the biblatex bits of APA6 for now. Use something like:
ClassOptions
Other "natbib"
End
to force the use of that option.

Richard

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Ray Rashif]

On 11 December 2012 03:01, stefano franchi  wrote:
> 
> Not true. LyX/Latex's benefits are not limited to typesetting equations
> (although it does a much better job that its competition in that area). A
> Latex-typeset document looks better in many other respects---from
> paragraph-division and typesetting (in spite of recent improvements in
> Word's algorithms), to consistent application of style, down to small but
> crucial things such as determining font sizes/leading[1].
>
> The reason why Social sciences/Humanities are happy with Word/Endnote is
> (historically speaking) different: authors used to submit  Word files (or,
> earlier, Wordstar) and the publisher would import and typeset with real
> typesetting software. Such programs (and still are) were usually very bad at
> typesetting complex mathematical formulas unless each single formula was
> tweaked by hand, a very painful and expensive proposition. That was prompted
> D Knuth to invent TeX---the poor quality of professional typesetting
> software for math, not the similar but irrelevant problem in word processing
> program. The lack of equations in the Humanities/Social Sciences made the
> traditional process working smooth and insured that the typographical
> quality of publications in the fields was high, or at least acceptable.
> Authors used primitive (typographically speaking) software, publishers used
> real typesetters and everyone was happy.
>
> Except...that desktop publishing happened and publishers started to cut down
> on costs by using word as a typesetting program. Even worse, when they
> started asking for pdf,  camera-ready  they would provide typographical
> specs as series of Word instructions, since they do not know any better (all
> the typesetters having long gone). The result is that the vast majority of
> Humanities/Social Sciences journal and and increasing number of Humanities
> *books*  are now typographically ugly and often barely readable
>
> The same radical cost-cutting  measures took place  in the Natural
> sciences/Engineering, of course. But since *they* were already using
> Latex/TeX, the quality of their journal and books was only minimally
> affected (although it was: it takes a truly capable typesetter to achieve
> high results in Latex--relying on standard classes is only the starting
> point. And most authors not named Knuth are not great typesetters).
>
> That's why we in the Humanities are stuck with Word as a publishing
> tool---because it used to work well as a drafting tool when the industry
> worked differently, not because we do not use equations.
>
> 

Thank you Stefano - that was exactly the background story I was hoping
someone would fill in. My brief statement on equations was just a
layman's generalisation on why faculty would go through the trouble to
suggest LaTeX to students (surely, STEM lecturers would have _more_
reason).

TeX/LaTeX/LyX is definitely not _only_ about equations. I recently
edited and "typeset" (like you said, no one better than Knuth,
especially not someone who only played with his father's relic
typewriter as a toddler) a social science dissertation completely in
LyX with some LaTeX fiddling.


--
GPG/PGP ID: C0711BF1

No bibliography environment in DocBook document class

[Nico Williams]

Why is there no bibliography environment in the DocBook document
classes?  There must be a reason, of course, but then, bibtex is still
supported, so that's strange...

Nico
--

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[stefano franchi]

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 1:29 PM, David L. Johnson
wrote:

> On 12/10/2012 02:01 PM, stefano franchi wrote:
>
>>
>> 
>>
> 8<
>
>> Such programs [Word and Wordstar] (and still are) were usually very bad
>> at typesetting complex mathematical formulas unless each single formula was
>> tweaked by hand, a very painful and expensive proposition. That was
>> prompted D Knuth to invent TeX---the poor quality of professional
>> typesetting software for math, not the similar but irrelevant problem in
>> word processing program.
>>
>
> Actually, TeX predated Word, and Wordstar (or Wordperfect).  People used
> to run it on DECs.  While there were other math-typsetting (to use the
> phrase loosely) PC programs before TeX became usable on PCs, such as Jim
> Milgram's "Techprint" which he wrote for Radio-Shack computers with 28K
> ram, most of us used a combination of typewriters and hand-written symbols.
>  A respectable journal would typeset the paper from the typewritten copy,
> but a few insisted on "camera-ready" --- literally --- proofs, which
> resulted in published papers and books with handwritten symbols.  I suspect
> that Knuth was reacting to that mess rather than equations in Word.  I
> typed my own Ph.D. thesis on an IBM selectric, with those interchangeable
> golf-ball fonts, going over each line 2 or 3 times.   A nightmare.
>
>
I didn't mean to imply Word (or Wordstar) were used before TeX---just that
Word-equivalent software and/or mechanical devices (i.e. typerwriters: I
wrote my thesis on a Olivetti Lettera 22. And I was an innovator: my
adviser would only handwrite and had a secretary type his books) were the
common first step for both scientists and humanists. The publishers then
took the second and final step using different tools (and sometimes
resorting to handwritten symbols. I remember well that many of may symbolic
logic books in college contained such horrors).
But whereas publishers usually did a good job with humanists' texts, they
often did a terrible one with formulas. Hence, TeX.

When the second step was eliminated, scientists were left with TeX, and we
poor Humanists were left with Word. LyX is our great white hope. Or the
pink one, considering the default background



Cheers,

S.

-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic StudiesPh:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas A University  Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[David L. Johnson]

On 12/10/2012 05:51 PM, stefano franchi wrote:




Cheers,


Hullabaloo, caneck, caneck.

--

David L. Johnson

Become MicroSoft-free forever.  Ask me how.

Re: No bibliography environment in DocBook document class

[José Matos]

On 12/10/2012 10:46 PM, Nico Williams wrote:
> Why is there no bibliography environment in the DocBook document
> classes?  There must be a reason, of course, but then, bibtex is still
> supported, so that's strange...
>
> Nico
> --

The reason why it was never implemented is/was lake of time, no more no
less. :-)

-- 
José Matos

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Uwe Stöhr]

Am 10.12.2012 02:33, schrieb Kayvan Sylvan:


They accept PDF submissions, so I suppose you could use apa6 in LyX if
it's available and export to PDF.


This seems to be the case, but only for supplements as I understood this and TeX is explicitly not 
allowed:

http://www.apa.org/pubs/authors/supp-material.aspx

Maybe I'm wrong and PDfs are also allowed for the main text. If so a layout for APA 6 would indeed 
be useful.


regards Uwe

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[obregonmateo]

Each APA-type journal has its own list of document types that it accepts; these 
journals are only guided by the APA _style_ conventions. All journals in 
psychology etc. that I have come across accept tex manuscripts, as long as the 
tex file contains everything the authors use (i.e., macros) and do not rely on 
any special latex compiling instructions.

With regards to the link below, it is only referring to file types that can be 
uploaded as "supplementary material" and *not* addressing in any way what the 
manuscript is prepared in.

Mateo.

On Monday 10 December 2012, Uwe Stöhr wrote:
> Am 10.12.2012 02:33, schrieb Kayvan Sylvan:
> 
> > They accept PDF submissions, so I suppose you could use apa6 in LyX if
> > it's available and export to PDF.
> 
> This seems to be the case, but only for supplements as I understood this and 
> TeX is explicitly not 
> allowed:
> http://www.apa.org/pubs/authors/supp-material.aspx
> 
> Maybe I'm wrong and PDfs are also allowed for the main text. If so a layout 
> for APA 6 would indeed 
> be useful.
> 
> regards Uwe
> 

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[Uwe Stöhr]

Am 11.12.2012 01:14, schrieb obregonma...@gmail.com:


Each APA-type journal has its own list of document types that it accepts; these 
journals are only guided by the APA _style_ conventions. All journals in 
psychology etc. that I have come across accept tex manuscripts, as long as the 
tex file contains everything the authors use (i.e., macros) and do not rely on 
any special latex compiling instructions.


Thanks for the clarification. So a layout for APA  6 is indeed useful.  However, I won't have time 
to write it and hope that anybody else can volunteer. if you like, I can review the layout.


thanks and regards
Uwe

Re: APA6 class with LyX?

[obregonmateo]

Thanks Uwe for offering to review a layout for APA6.

Others here are also interested in making this work, so I'm sure we'll have 
something soon for you to look at.

Mateo.

On Tuesday 11 December 2012, Uwe Stöhr wrote:
> Am 11.12.2012 01:14, schrieb obregonma...@gmail.com:
> 
> > Each APA-type journal has its own list of document types that it accepts; 
> > these journals are only guided by the APA _style_ conventions. All journals 
> > in psychology etc. that I have come across accept tex manuscripts, as long 
> > as the tex file contains everything the authors use (i.e., macros) and do 
> > not rely on any special latex compiling instructions.
> 
> Thanks for the clarification. So a layout for APA  6 is indeed useful.  
> However, I won't have time 
> to write it and hope that anybody else can volunteer. if you like, I can 
> review the layout.
> 
> thanks and regards
> Uwe
>