Re: including a Sweave/R code chunk in a LyX table cell

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Ricardo,

Just one thought, make sure that there is a copy of Sweave.sty installed
in your LaTeX path (and make sure that LyX can find it).  I was having
some troubles with Sweave and LyX 2.0 on Mac a while ago, and this is
what ultimately fixed it.

But, to be honest, I haven't really played with LyX 2.0 on my Mac
recently.  I've been on a book deadline and it just felt to unstable to
any real work.  On Linux, though, it's been very reliable.

Cheers,

Rob

On Tue, 2010-05-11 at 00:13 +0200, [Ricardo Rodriguez] eBioTIC. wrote:
 Hi!
 
 Jean-Marc LASGOUTTES wrote: 
   Without doing any other step, if I create a new document and go to
   DocumentSettingsModules and try to add Sweave module, LyX crashes. I
   am nevertheless able to add other modules like Braille or EndNote.
   
  
  This is bad. However, I do not see where it comes from. Do you have
  messages in the console (launch Console.app and look for messages that
  may come from LyX).
  

 
 Sorry, I've not been able to regain access to the concerned box until
 late in the afternoon. Here what I've found:
 
 These are the lines recorded in the console log each time LyX crashes
 after trying to load Sweave module:
 
 *
 5/10/10 7:06:09 PM [0x0-0x57057].org.lyx.lyx[685] terminate called
 after throwing an instance of 'lyx::support::ExceptionMessage'
 5/10/10 7:06:09 PM [0x0-0x57057].org.lyx.lyx[685]   what():  Package
 not available
 5/10/10 7:06:09 PM [0x0-0x57057].org.lyx.lyx[685] The module sweave
 requires a package that is
 5/10/10 7:06:09 PM [0x0-0x57057].org.lyx.lyx[685] not available in
 your LaTeX installation. LaTeX output
 5/10/10 7:06:09 PM [0x0-0x57057].org.lyx.lyx[685] may not be possible.
 5/10/10 7:06:09 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[121]
 ([0x0-0x57057].org.lyx.lyx[685]) Job appears to have crashed: Abort
 trap
 5/10/10 7:06:09 PM ReportCrash[907] Saved crash report for lyx[685]
 version 2.0.0alpha2 (???)
 to 
 /Users/rrodriguez/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/lyx_2010-05-10-190609_Ricardo-Rodriguezs-Mac-Pro.crash
 *
 
 For easier reference...
 
 http://xen.net/onLyX/lyxCrashConsoleMessages.html
 
 The full report generated by Mac OS X is available here...
 
 http://xen.net/onLyX/lyxCrashProbReport.html
 
 The box has a fresh and fully updated Mac OS X 10.6.3 (10D573)
 
 I've installed MacTeX (as per section 2.2 at
 http://www.lyx.org/Download) prior to install LyX 1.6.5, then to
 install LyX 2.0.0 alpha2
 
 The link at the LyX download page drove me to...
 http://www.tug.org/mactex/2009/
 [ approximately 1.3G - 12 March 2010 ] 
 MacTeX-2009.mpkg
 MacTeX.mpkg.zip
 
 Please, does this make any sense for you? Let me know how I can be of
 any further help. Thanks!
 
 Cheers,
 
 Ricardo 
 -- 
 Ricardo Rodríguez
 CTO
 eBiotic.
 Life Sciences, Data Modeling and Information Management Systems

Re: including a Sweave/R code chunk in a LyX table cell

[Rob Oakes]

This is clearly either a problem in the way that R installs itself, or
the way that LaTeX installs itself.  I'm not actually sure which though
and I don't know where to file the bug report.

When I just checked, I was not able to find a sweave package for R,
nor was I able to find one for TeXLive 2009 (don't know about MikTeX).
But I've experienced a similar problem on Mac OS X and on Linux, which
provides some evidence that it's not getting packaged.

Because out of the box support for Sweave is one of LyX 2's newest (and
IMHO, killer) features, it might make sense to include a copy of
Sweave.sty with the installation script and have it installed at the
time of LyX configuration.  LyX already does this with a few specialty
document classes anyway (broadway, hollywood).

Cheers,

Rob

Re: Order of Tables and Figures

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Rob,

I'm not sure that I follow what you're trying to accomplish.  Do you
need your figures to appear in text, or do you need them to appear at
the end of your document after the references section?  (The way that
many biomedical journals specify an article must be submitted.)

And what do you mean, by the default order isn't what I want.
Typically figures are printed in the order that they appear in the
document.  If you are doing fancy things with wrap-floats, that can
throw the ordering of the figures off; but otherwise, whatever order you
specify in your document should be the order they appear.

Which means, that if you need them at the end of your document, then
that is where I would place them (after the bibliography).  You can then
refer to them in the text by using a tag + cross-reference.

If you need them to appear in your text at a particular position, then
that is where you should place the float.  There are ways to make floats
go to the end of a document and arrange themselves into separate figures
and tables sections, but it involves resetting LaTeX values and some
ugly hackery.

Cheers,

Rob

Personal Dictionary - Hunspell - Linux

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX Users,

Does anyone happen to know where the personal dictionary for Hunspell
lives?  I've been trying to do a write-up of the new spell-checking
features in LyX 2, and have found that while I can add words to a
personal dictionary while I keep the program open, they aren't getting
stored between sessions (e.g., close the program and then re-open it).

The only explanation that I've been able to come up with is that my
system dictionaries are in a folder which my user account doesn't have
read/write permissions to.

Does anyone know if there is a hunspell user dictionary stored in
the /home/ folder that I should be using instead?  (I've already gotten
the same thing to work with aspell.)

Thanks,

Rob Oakes

Re: Fwd: Word import

[Rob Oakes]

It's been a while since I've used it, but I thought that EndNote was
able to directly export to BibTeX.  If not, you can export to EndNote
XML and then import using JabRef, BibDesk (Mac OS X), Zotero or
Mendeley.  Or you can upload to CiteULike and then download a converted
BibTeX file to use locally.

The very nice thing about BibTeX is that it seems like everything is
able to read and write to it.  Now, if you were trying to import .doc
files to LyX, that is a little bit more difficult ...

Automatically Importing Word Documents Into LyX

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX-Users,

Everytime this particular topic comes up, I find myself exploring
different options for automatically importing MS Word into LyX.  This
latest time round, I managed to come up with an automated system that
meets most of my needs.

A description with links and instructions can be found at:

http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/05/14/msword-lyx-import

I mostly use this to import rough drafts that I receive from others, and
it does an admirable job of maintaining doc structure (including
images).  Unfortunately, it doesn't play as nicely with tables.  But
then, I tend to generate all of my tables in R anyway or in
Excel/OpenOffice and export as separate LaTeX files.  (Trying to create
tables in LyX or LaTeX by hand is just painful.)

If anyone else tries it, I'd be interested in your feedback and
thoughts.  I've thought about expanding the base python library to also
support Word to DocBook conversions in an effort to see if that results
in a more faithful conversion.

Cheers,

Rob

xetexCV and LyX

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX Users,

About six months ago, I started a blog series about a custom document
class called xetexCV.  From the very beginning, I intended to create a
layout file for this class and explain how to use it from LyX.

But then I started work on a book, got bogged down in things at work,
and had a couple of family crises.  During each, the completion date for
the layout file and the final blog post got pushed a little further into
the future and eventually, it simply became defined as soon.  

Well, it turns out that soon apparently means about six months.
Today, I finally got around to finishing/testing the layout file, and
posted the usage instructions.  They can be found at:

http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/05/19/latex-cv-part4

Because there was some interest from users of this list, I thought that
I would post the link here.  Also, I included some bits about a few
other topics that recently came up, including:

* Using latex photo commands from a LyX doc (turns out that they should
probably be used in the preamble)
* How to automatically generate a Publications list using the \nocite
command.

If you download and use the class/layout, I would be extremely
appreciative of any feedback; particularly if things don't work quite
right.  I would like to include this class with aforementioned book, and
I hate to release code with bugs.

Cheers,

Rob Oakes

Re: entry-level question

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Ricardo,

If you'd find it helpful, I've been working on a book appendix that
compares some of the most common LaTeX document classes.  It shows
examples, and goes over their more common features.  It's still in draft
form, but I would be happy to provide a download link if you think it
would be helpful.

If so, just send me a private message. It's a little bit too big to send
over emails.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: Install LyX 2.0 alpha3 in Ubuntu

[Rob Oakes]

Probably the easiest way to do this is to downloa and install the Qt SDK
for Windows (http://qt.nokia.com/downloads).  It includes the Qt4
development libraries, documentation, and an IDE called Qt Creator.

Using Qt Creator in addition to CMake (http://www.cmake.org/) is
probably the easiest way I've found to get up and running with a LyX
development environment.  All it involves is checking out the code,  to
opening a new project, and then clicking on the
development/cmake/CMakeLists.txt file.  Qt Creator will then configure,
compile and index your project for you.  And best of all, everything is
free.

There are ways to get up and running with MS Visual Studio, but I'm not
nearly patient enough to figure them out.

Cheers,

Rob

LyTero and LyX 2

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX Users,

I've been toiling away on a book chapter about Reference Managers and 
Cite-While-You-Write software and I've run into a bit of a snag.  Does anyone 
know if Lytero currently supports the new version of LyX?  Whenever I try and 
use it (regardless of platform), it says that it is unable to either locate the 
LyX pipe or that it is unable to find the bibliography style.

I'm just wondering if anyone has had success getting it to work with one of the 
alpha builds of LyX or with the SVN versions.

Cheers,

Rob Oakes

Re: Environments and layouts

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Will,

This article might be of some interest:

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

As might this one, though it describes working with the local layout of a file 
rather than a module.  (The same principles for adding character styles to a 
module/document layout are the same.)

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

There is also a wealth of information available from the LyX wiki.

http://wiki.lyx.org/Layouts/CreatingLayouts

The answer to your other questions are Yes.  The information in the two 
articles above should help you get started (and may even be enough to help you 
sort it out).  If not, feel free to shoot me an email and I'd be happy to try 
and walk you through it.

Cheers,

Rob Oakes

On Jun 1, 2010, at 9:35 AM, Will wrote:

 I am trying to modify the book class for my thesis.  I have a LaTeX class 
 file which basically woks, but there are a few suboptimal interactions with 
 LyX right now that I would like to correct (so I could give the *.cls and 
 *.layout files to other students writing theses at my school).
 
 I have one side question first.  Is there an introduction to how to write new 
 layouts posted anywhere on the internet?  The only layout documentation I 
 have been able to find describes how to modify an existing layout to use a 
 new LaTeX *.cls or *.sty file and advises users to look at previous layout 
 files for examples (which I find frustrating).
 
 The main thing I want to do is add an abstract in front of my title page.  
 Right now I modify the \maketitle command to include the abstract before the 
 title page.  I define abstractText{} which contains the text for the 
 abstract.  I have to put this in the preamble right now because of the way 
 LyX formats the LaTeX (it puts \maketitle before \abstractText{} if I try to 
 put \abstractText{} into the main document).  I would like to be able to type 
 the abstract text into the main document using an environment selected from 
 the environment drop down box.  
 
 Maybe it's easy to modify my existing layout/class files to do this?  Or 
 maybe I should redefine things with the abstract outside of maketitle?  My 
 layout file is just a copy of book.layout modified as directed in the 
 Customization documentation.  The relevant part of my class file is shown at 
 the end of the email.
 
 There are a couple other minor uses of ERT in my document right now that I 
 would like to remove by modifying my layout/class if possible:
 
 1. I restart the page numbering in arabic when I get to chapter 1.  Right now 
 I do this by putting \frontmatterend in ERT right before chapter 1.  Is there 
 any way to make this part of the my layout/class?  Or make \frontmatterend 
 somehow something that is selectable from a menu so you don't have to know to 
 type it in by hand?
 
 2. For my front matter, right now I use Chapter* for the different sections 
 (acknowledgments, glossary, etc).  To get these in the table of contents, I 
 have \usepackage{tocbibind} in the preamble and put 
 \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Glossary} in front of each section.  Is there 
 any way to put \usepackage{tocbibind} into the layout file and make 
 Chapter*'s have the \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Glossary} line added by 
 default?
 
 I asked several questions -- if you only want to answer one, the answer will 
 still be appreciated, thanks!
 
 Will
 
 %
 
 % \advisor{}
 %
 \def\advisor#1{\gd...@dvisor{#1}}
 \d...@dvisor{\@la...@warning@n...@line{no \noexpand\advisor given}}
 %
 % \abstractText{}
 %
 \def\abstracttext#1{\gd...@bstracttext{#1}}
 \d...@bstracttext{\@la...@warning@n...@line{no \noexpand\abstractText given}}
 %
 % \makecopyright
 %
 \newcommand{\makecopyright}{%
 \hbox{\hfil}\vspace{1.5in}\begin{center}
 \begin{singlespace}
 Copyright \copyright\ \the\year\ by \...@author \\
 All rights reserved.
 \end{singlespace}
 \end{center}
 \clearpage
 }%
 %
 % \frontmatterend
 %
 \newcommand{\frontmatterend}{%
 \setcounter{page}{0}
 \pagenumbering{arabic}
 }%
 %
 % Customize \maketitle
 %
 \renewcommand\maketitle{\begin{titlepage}%
 \begin{center}
 {\bf Abstract}\par\bigskip
 {\Large \bf \...@title}\par\bigskip
 \...@author \\
 \the\year \\
 \...@bstracttext
 \end{center}
 \clearpage
 \pagestyle{empty}
 \null \vskip 40

Custom Insets with multiple arguments

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX-Users,

I am in the process of creating a custom of modules for personal use
(one for easily creating dropcaps via letrine and the stringstrings
package, and another for the creation of epigraphs).  For the epigraph
module to work correctly, it is important that I be able to use multiple
input arguments.  For example, the LaTeX code for the epigraph command
has the form \epigraph{Quotation}{Source}.

\epigraph{If a picture isn't worth a thousand words, the hell with
it.}{Ad Reinhardt}

Is anyone aware of a way to create an inset that could support this type
of macro?  I've looked through several of the examples shipped with LyX
and wasn't able to find a similar example.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: keeping PDF output files

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Ivan,

Instead of using the View PDF, use the Export option instead.  This will 
create a copy of the PDF in the working directory.  As I understand it, the 
View option is meant to look at the progress of your document rather than 
create a copy for distribution.

Cheers,

Rob

On Jun 3, 2010, at 8:13 AM, Ivan Werning wrote:

 I would like to control the management of output and auxiliary files. I would 
 like to have LyX keep the output PDF automatically in the current working 
 directory, and not delete it automatically. Now it creates it in a temporary 
 directory and deletes it upon closing. 
 
 Is there a way to do this. I couldn't find the option, nor any discussion 
 about this.
 
 -Ivan

Re: keeping PDF output files

[Rob Oakes]

 I was also hoping to control other files. Can I have LyX keep other output 
 and aux files, so that latex and bibtex can run fewer times and produce the 
 output faster (example, references and bibs). My understanding is that 
 everything is wiped out if I close and reopen. This can waste time, 


I am very well acquainted with this particular complaint.  I've been working on 
a book draft that has several thousand pictures (screenshots, example mockups, 
etc).  Building the entire draft can take on the order of 15 - 20 minutes.  If 
there was a way not to have to start over every time I run xelatex, that would 
be marvelous.

To the best of my knowledge, I don't believe that such a setting exists  
However, this might be a very worthwhile request and I'm not sure that it would 
take a lot of effort to implement it.  Perhaps it might be included in the 
upcoming LyX 2?  You might consider filing a feature request on the LyX 
bugtracker.  If you have any experience with C++, I'm sure that any 
contributions you might make would be welcomed with open arms.

I've been working on some enhancements to the LyX outline pane (for more info, 
see http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/05/24/lyx-outline02) and from 
personal experience, I can confirm that the core developers are extremely 
friendly, helpful, and patient.

(If anyone is aware of a setting that I've missed, this is something that I 
would *love* to be wrong about.)

Cheers,

Rob

Re: keeping PDF output files

[Rob Oakes]

Thanks BH,

I had missed that setting, or completely misunderstood what it did.  (At the 
moment, I'm much too addled to figure out which.)  Unfortunately, I'm not sure 
that it did me much good. Even after enabling it, the book still takes ages to 
compile.

But it would probably take ages if I exported to LaTeX and compiled there, as 
well. I suppose that is the price that I pay for having a very complicated 
document and desiring beautiful typesetting.  Even so, I'm sure that I will 
survive.

Cheers,

Rob

On Jun 3, 2010, at 9:12 AM, BH wrote:

 On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 10:54 AM, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us wrote:
 I was also hoping to control other files. Can I have LyX keep other output 
 and aux files, so that latex and bibtex can run fewer times and produce the 
 output faster (example, references and bibs). My understanding is that 
 everything is wiped out if I close and reopen. This can waste time,
 
 
 I am very well acquainted with this particular complaint.  I've been working 
 on a book draft that has several thousand pictures (screenshots, example 
 mockups, etc).  Building the entire draft can take on the order of 15 - 20 
 minutes.  If there was a way not to have to start over every time I run 
 xelatex, that would be marvelous.
 
 Did you miss this one? --
 
 Preferences  File Handling  Converters  Converter File Cache
 (enable the check box)
 
 BH

Re: keeping PDF output files

[Rob Oakes]

For a futre enhancement of LyX, it might also be worth adding .bib, .aux, and 
other such files between sessions.  As others have pointed out, caching of 
these files might greatly improve the compilation time between sessions.  And 
as most of them are text based, it would not greatly add to the size of the 
cache.

While I'm thinking about it, allowing the user to specify a custom location for 
the LyX cache might also be a very nice feature to have.

Cheers,

Rob

On Jun 3, 2010, at 11:38 AM, BH wrote:

 On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 1:11 PM, Ivan Werning iwern...@economics.mit.edu 
 wrote:
 On Jun 3, 2010, at 11:12 AM, BH wrote:
 
 Did you miss this one? --
 
 Preferences  File Handling  Converters  Converter File Cache
 (enable the check box)
 
 BH
 
 Thanks. Yes, I had missed that one. I looked now and I have that checked. 
 Does this mean it is saving all the bib aux log etc. files between sessions? 
 Based entirely on observed speed patterns I had assumed it wasn't, but I may 
 have been wrong.
 
 (Please make sure you reply to the list so that others can benefit
 from the conversation.)
 
 It will keep all converted files, such as .eps or .jpg figures that
 need to be converted to .pdf when you typeset with pdflatex. It won't
 save .bib, .aux, etc.; all of that gets trashed when you close the
 .lyx document.
 
 BH

Python Project: PDF Optimization

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX-Users and Developers,

I am writing regarding a project idea that I had.  A couple of weeks ago, I was 
putting together an article about the different utilities available for working 
with PDF documents on Linux 
(http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/05/26/pdf-linux).  While doing so, I 
looked high and low for something that would make it easy to optimize a PDF for 
web distribution.  Specifically, I wanted a tool to downsample images, convert 
between different color spaces, and streamline the PDF for web viewing.

I came up empty handed.

PDF optimization seems to be the last big hurdle to having a complete set of 
GUI tools on Linux, and as I've become pretty sensitive to these sorts of holes 
and annoyances (referred to as paper cuts within the Ubuntu project) it 
really struck a nerve  (writing a book that claims that open source tools are 
better for writing than proprietary ones opens the eyes to all kinds of 
shortcomings).  As a result, I spent some of my free-time researching ways to 
implement this sort of tool.

As it turns out, slapping together a functional (and useful) prototype probably 
wouldn't be too hard.

The GUI and framework already exists in the form of PDF-Shufler 
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfshuffler/), which is written in Python and 
relies on python-pdf.  The image manipulation could be done using any one four 
or five image processing frameworks for Python.  The only missing piece is some 
backend code that can integrate the two, and some GUI code to provide users 
with options.

I am writing to see if there are any students, budding Python programmers, or 
others who might be interested in collaborating on this.  I've already created 
a GUI layout and a pretty detailed spec that could serve as a starting point.  
Unfortunately, given work stuff,  the outliner module for LyX and the book I'm 
writing, I can't take on responsibility for yet another project.  From what 
I've put together so far, I estimate that it would take about 25 to 30 hours of 
programming time to implement.

Such a program would plug a *really* big hole in the world of Linux 
based/writing and publishing and would be an enormous aid to many people, it 
would also be a great project for people who wish to learn more about document 
manipulation or image processing.  (Requests for this type of tool repeatedely 
show up on users mailing list.)  And as per the GPL, any patches would be sent 
upstream to the maintainer of PDF-Shuffler.

Anyone who might interested?

Cheers,

Rob Oakes

Re: Python Project: PDF Optimization

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Liviu,

Thanks for the link.  I wasn't even aware that this project existed.  (I 
sincerely hope that I will eventually overcome my own ignorance.)

Anything that will make pdftk easier to ease and more accessible to others is a 
worthy endeavor.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure that it meets the specific need I 
describe (direct manipulation of images, downsampling high resolution images, 
conversion of color space, etc. versus simple compression and optimization).  
For that matter, I don't think even the command line version of pdftk is 
capable of directly manipulating images.

I'll look into this option, though.  If it is possible to aid an existing (and 
maintained) project, I consider that vastly superior to dumping more alpha 
quality, unmaintained code into the world.

Cheers,

Rob

On Jun 4, 2010, at 12:57 PM, Liviu Andronic wrote:

 Hello Rob
 
 On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 7:42 PM, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us wrote:
 I came up empty handed.
 
 What about PDF chain [1], an alpha-stage GUI to pdftk [2]? It has a
 compress/uncompress dialogue, but I'm not sure that it does what
 you're looking for.
 
 Regards
 Liviu
 
 [1] http://pdfchain.sourceforge.net/
 [2] http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk/

Re: installation problem

[Rob Oakes]

 Probably a silly question, but do you have a LaTeX distribution installed on 
 it?  (I don't know what all comes standard on a MacBook.)

To this, I would ask, which LaTeX distribution do you have installed?  (Mac OS 
X does not come with a LaTeX distribution by default, though most OS X users 
seem to use MacTeX, http://www.tug.org/mactex/2009/.)

If you are using MacTeX, it's also important to know where you have it 
installed.  If you used the default location, you might try to execute texhash 
with the sudo command:

sudo texhash

This will give texhash admin rights for your computer, and allow it to 
read/write to protected directories.

Just some thoughts.

Cheers,

Rob Oakes

University of Utah Thesis Class

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX Users,

Sorry for the spam, but ...

I had a friend contact me today who was looking for a current University of 
Utah Thesis class, and wondering if I might be willing to help him create a 
layout file for it.  Before I go about updating the (very old) class available 
from the mathematics department, I wanted to query a few different mailing 
lists (here and a few TUG lists I'm a member of) to see if someone is aware of 
a more recent version. (The lady I talked to at the library didn't have any 
idea what LaTeX was which didn't give me much hope that they maintain a current 
version.)

Does anyone have a current (or more current than 1999) thesis class for the 
University of Utah?  After updating and verifying that it is compliant with 
formatting guidelines, I'd be happy to return the updated files and a valid LyX 
template.  (To be clear, though, I have no desire to end up as a maintainer.)

Cheers,

Rob

Re: LyX template problems

[Rob Oakes]

Hi John,

This message means that the LaTeX document class needed by the layout is
not available.  You can install these using the MikTeX package manager.
Simply search for the required package name and then click on install.
Once you have installed the needed LaTeX packages, then you can
reconfigure LyX and things should work.

For more information on how LyX and LaTeX work together, see the first
section of this article:

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

The section is entitled, Understanding the Big Picture.

Cheers,

Rob

On Thu, 2010-06-17 at 18:58 +0100, John O Brien wrote:
 Hi,
 
 I just installed MiKTeX 2.8 and LyX 1.6. Whenever I try to open some
 templates in LyX I get the following message:
 
 the layout file requested by this document, aa.layout, is not usable.
 This is probably because a LaTeXclass or style file required by it is
 not available. See the Customization documentationfor more
 information. LyX will not be able to produce output.  I also get No
 information for exporting the format PDF (pdflatex). when I try to
 view PDF.
 
 I have seen many suggested fixes online such as reconfiguring LyX but
 none have worked. I have installed these on two laptops, one with XP
 and one with Windows 7 x64. Same problem on both. I have attached the
 textclass.lst if this is any help. 
 
 Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I have to get my
 thesis started asap. 
 
 Regards,
 John O Brien

Re: lyx chokes on documents with many subsections?

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Vincent,

 So.. could it be Rob's outliner enhancements then ??? 

That's certainly possible, but I think it unlikely.  To the best of my 
knowledge, Jose only began using the branch with the expanded outliner and 
other tools yesterday whereas the problem  has also been seen in  LyX 1.6.6.1 
and the main trunk.

With that said, I think that we should be very careful about drawing 
conclusions about the SVN version of LyX from the LyX-Outline branch. The 
outline version has a lot of changes and the code is not particularly optimized 
(though I am working on cleaning it up).  I do find it interesting that turning 
off the Outline pane resolves the problems.

Out of curiosity, do you notice the performance lags when using the expanded 
outline/corkboard widget?  If not, that would provide an important clue as to 
where the bottleneck is happening.  (My own gut says it has something to do 
with QTreeView on 64 bit systems.  I remember reading something about that on a 
forum a while back.)

Cheers,

Rob

LyX-Outline Update, Build Instructions and Stuff

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX-Users,

 

As I've gotten several emails already, I thought I would forward this along
to the list.

 

It appears that there is some interest in trying out the outline
enhancements I've been working on for the past few months.  I greatly
appreciate the interest in my little project, I really do.

 

With that said, there are a things I wanted to share.  These are mostly
unrelated points and questions that have swamped my Inbox this morning.  In
no particular order:

 

1)   Q:  Is LyX-Outline separate from LyX?

A:  No.  LyX-Outline is not separate from LyX.  It will eventually be
integrated into the current trunk (probably sometime after 2.0 is released).
At the moment, LyX trunk is moving toward stable.  Injecting a bunch of
untested and unproven code would delay that release and generally cause a
mess.  For that reason, the outline additions are being developed in their
own branch (which is regularly merged with trunk).



2)   Q: Will this program crash my computer and generally destroy my
life?

A: Quite likely.  It's alpha software.  Plan accordingly.   Nevertheless, if
you would like to see how things are going, feel free to check out and
compile a copy.  Instructions can be found at:

http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/06/25/lyx-outline02-1



3)   Q: I get errors when trying to compile.  I'm using Ubuntu 10.04.
Am I doing something wrong?

A: Yes.  You are.

The build process for LyX-Outline is slightly different than that for LyX
and requires cmake.  For reasons I don't understand, configuring with
autotools results in problems.  For that reason, just use cmake.



4)   General Observation: If you have problems compiling lyx-outline,
don't send me email.

This isn't because I don't enjoy receiving emails (because I do), but
rather, it's because private emails don't leave a public foot print.  This
morning alone, I've answered addressed the Use CMake  question three
times.

For this reason, if you have a problem, please leave a comment on the blog
posting.  That way, everyone is able to benefit.  (It also ensures a more
timely response, since there are dozens of unanswered email in my inbox.)



5)   Related Observation: If you have trouble configuring/compiling,
please don't email the lists (either lyx-users or lyx-devel).  LyX-Outline
is very much my personal project, and only tangentially related to LyX.  The
proper place for those questions is the comments of the aforementioned blog
posting.  Though I'm not sure, others may consider Help! emails as spam.
Generally spam isn't a popular thing and people don't like it.  Nor do they
have warm feelings toward those responsible for it.



6)   Additional Related Observation: If you have feature ideas or
comments, *PLEASE DO* email me and maybe copy the list.  I'd love to hear if
things work for you, and I'm very open to feature ideas.  I've been talking
to Jose about implementing code folding and improved search; but other
thoughts would be appreciated.  And this information is sort of relevant to
the future of LyX and might generate interesting discussion.

 

And . that's about it, really.

 

Cheers,

 

Rob

Re: Lyx on Windows without admin privileges (2010)

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Jim, 

I think that you can expect a very good experience on Windows without admin 
rights.  You may want to take a look at LyX-Portable.  There is even a project 
devoted to creating a LyX on Windows experience that can be run from a memory 
stick (see http://code.google.com/p/lytex/).

Additional information can be found on the Wiki, as well 
(http://wiki.lyx.org/Windows/PortableInstallation).

In my case, I prefer to install LaTeX as a local user.  I then compile LyX from 
source and manually set up my path environment.  This is pretty easy to do from 
the environment variables dialog.  (On Windows 7 or Vista, just type path into 
the search bar.  It will pull up the right dialog in the Control Panel.)

Cheers,

Rob

On Jun 25, 2010, at 4:21 PM, Jim Rockford wrote:

 This issue has come up in older threads, and I was curious to know where it 
 stands today.  As a long-time lyx user, I am in the unfortunate position of 
 being in a Windoze-only (XP) environment without administrator privileges.  
 Can anyone offer some insight as to whether I could expect a smooth-running 
 lyx experience with Lyx and MikTex installed to a directory of choice for 
 just a plain old ordinary Windoze user?  Does Aspell still require 
 installation to the C:\  directory?  
 
 If I can overcome this hurdle, the next one will involve the seamless 
 conversion of lyx/latex to MS Word and back, which I understand is a far more 
 challenging issue without commercial software.
 
 Thanks,
 Jim

Re: How to show the citations without the bibliography in lyx output?

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Jim,

The appearance of the detailed list of references is usually determined
by the bibliography style that you are using.  Is there a particular
style of references that you need (for example, footnotes)?  Or is there
a particular style that you are aiming for?  It would be especially
helpful if you know the name of the style manual.

Once you know what kind of citation style you require in the document,
then it's just a matter of finding a bibtex template that provides it.
Most LaTeX distributions come with a huge number of bibtex templates
already installed and may already have the one you need.  If not
installing a new template isn't particularly hard.

You can change the style template by clicking on the bibliography inset,
and then choosing the appropriate option from the drop down list.

For more informataion, you might want to look at the bibtex styles
information on the Reed College website
(http://web.reed.edu/cis/help/LaTeX/bibtexstyles.html).

If you have a hard time finding a template without a formatted list of
references, you can always accomplish the same thing by a strong arm
approach.  Simply place your bibliography at the very end of the
document.  Then, when you generate the PDF, lop off those pages.  Either
Acrobat Professional or PDF-Shuffler are good tools for this purpose
(this article has some additional information on PDF tools for Linux,
http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/05/26/pdf-linux).  While this
approach is slightly less than elegant, it does get the job done.  And
it's probably as fast as commenting out code lines.

Cheers,

Rob Oakes

On Tue, 2010-06-29 at 11:07 -0400, Jim Rockford wrote:
 What I'd like to do is generate a PDF document from my lyx source that
 shows all the reference citations in the main body, but does not
 produce the detailed list of references at the end, where the
 \bibliography command is placed.  Is there a quick and easy way to do
 this in Lyx?  Simply commenting out the \bibliography doesn't work
 because it messes up the citations, and other tricks I have seen (i.e.
 http://groups.google.com/group/latexusersgroup/browse_thread/thread/330d7dda163dcd91)
  cannot be implemented in an obvious way so far as I can tell.
 
 Thanks,
 Jim 

Re: How to show the citations without the bibliography in lyx output?

[Rob Oakes]

I just realized that there might be a second option as well.  The
appearance of the bibliography in a latex document is determined by an
environment called thebibliography.

When I was working on a CV template (see
http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2009/11/25/latex-cv-part1 and
http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2009/12/02/latex-cv-part3), I wanted
to do some fancy stuff in the bibliography and played around with
modifying this environment

I'm not sure if it would work, but you might simply try adding this to
your preamble:

\renewenvironment{thebibliography}{}{}

This should, theoretically, wipe out the pre-defined formatting without
modifying the appearance of in-text citations and might work with a
footnote style guide, like Chicago.

Cheers,

Rob


On Tue, 2010-06-29 at 11:07 -0400, Jim Rockford wrote:
 What I'd like to do is generate a PDF document from my lyx source that
 shows all the reference citations in the main body, but does not
 produce the detailed list of references at the end, where the
 \bibliography command is placed.  Is there a quick and easy way to do
 this in Lyx?  Simply commenting out the \bibliography doesn't work
 because it messes up the citations, and other tricks I have seen (i.e.
 http://groups.google.com/group/latexusersgroup/browse_thread/thread/330d7dda163dcd91)
  cannot be implemented in an obvious way so far as I can tell.
 
 Thanks,
 Jim 

Re: How to show the citations without the bibliography in lyx output?

[Rob Oakes]

Right, so just overlook everything in that last email.  It doesn't work.
You might be able to accomplish something by redefining the
\thebibliography and \bibitem commands (and probably one or two more),
but I'd need to think about how to go about doing it before making
recommendations.

If this route interests you, you can find some additional information
at:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Bibliography_Management

And in chapter 12 in the LaTeX companion.

Cheers,

Rob

On Tue, 2010-06-29 at 11:07 -0400, Jim Rockford wrote:
 What I'd like to do is generate a PDF document from my lyx source that
 shows all the reference citations in the main body, but does not
 produce the detailed list of references at the end, where the
 \bibliography command is placed.  Is there a quick and easy way to do
 this in Lyx?  Simply commenting out the \bibliography doesn't work
 because it messes up the citations, and other tricks I have seen (i.e.
 http://groups.google.com/group/latexusersgroup/browse_thread/thread/330d7dda163dcd91)
  cannot be implemented in an obvious way so far as I can tell.
 
 Thanks,
 Jim 

Re: How to show the citations without the bibliography in lyx output?

[Rob Oakes]

I think that would work pretty well.  It turns out, there's actually a
couple of different approaches you can take.  I'm trying to write up a
guide.

The one serious limitation to placing the information in a Note inset is
that it doesn't get passed to LaTeX.  As a result, you need to manually
load the bibliography databases in the preamble using LaTeX.  (This is
already covered in the biblatex pages on the wiki.)

It looks as though there are a few LaTeX packages that can be used to
redefine the bibliography environment and remove the formatted lists.
I've played with a few of them, but have found them to be somewhat
fickle.

I'm not sure that there is a best way here.

On Thu, 2010-07-01 at 10:48 -0400, Paul A. Rubin wrote: 
 On 6/30/2010 3:34 AM, Julio Rojas wrote:
  Are you telling me that if you put the bibliography in a note it
  doesn't work? I think I remember that was the way to do it.
 
 Fodder for the wiki?
 
 /Paul
 

Re: Help: Newbie writing a report- Help in drawing diagrams particularly circuits

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Bob,

The best way to create specific types of drawings for a LyX document is to use 
a program designed for that purpose (like a circuit diagram editor) and then 
exporting to an appropriate image format (PDF, PNG, JPEG, etc.).  There may be 
LaTeX packages that can draw circuit diagrams (I wouldn't know, not my cup of 
tea), but the learning curve associated with those packages is far too steep to 
mount by your deadline.

Better to use what you know (even if that's stencil sets and pen/paper + a 
scanner), then to try and reinvent the wheel on a deadline.  Once the image is 
created, you can then add it to a document and use a float to add a caption.

Cheers,

Rob


On Jul 15, 2010, at 7:50 AM, BOB Merhebi wrote:

 Hello,
 
 I am a newbie to LyX. I searched most manuals  wikis but could find nothing 
 about drawing diagrams (physics related). I am in urgent need of help as I am 
 writing a reports for my physics labs which are due in less than 24 hrs. I 
 particularly need to draw electrical ciruits.
 
 You help is appreciated
 thx
 
 Sincerely Yours,
 BOB Merhebi

Re: question about overriding Lyx default document class

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Anders,

I've had good success first converting to HTML, then running a filter on the 
HTML, and then importing to LyX.  The overall process is described here:

http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/05/14/msword-lyx-import

While some formatting is lost, it's mostly the type of formatting that I don't 
really care about (finger painted headings, etc.). Even better, the process can 
be automated (also described in the article) using a fairly simply python 
script.

Cheers,

Rob

On Jul 31, 2010, at 7:54 PM, Anders Host-Madsen wrote:

 Just a comment here, not a solution.
 
 A problem is, as stated, that open office produces very poor latex. It seems
 that the goal of the designers of the translation module was to make
 the latex output resemble the formatting of the open office document, rather
 than making the contents the same. That is, they are trying to
 'finger-paint' with latex, directly opposed to the philosophy of LyX.
 
 I tried to use open office to convert MS Word documents into lyx
 (MS Word-OO-Latex-LyX), but had to give up because the
 latex produced by OO was so poor.
 

Re: question about overriding Lyx default document class

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Steve,

 I notice that your conversion isn't done by OO itself, but by
ConvertDoc. Does  ConvertDoc pass through paragraph and character
styles? If so, this is VERY useful. Note that I don't even care if it
translates the style defs -- I can just make a layout. What I want is a
final doc with the styles applied, and a list of all the character and
paragraph styles so I can put em all in the layout. 

At present, it does not.  ConvertDoc is a very simple python script that
I wrote to automate some of the conversion steps.  Right now, it
basically takes the input arguments supplied by LyX, starts a version of
OpenOffice, converts from .doc to .odf and then closes the running
version of OpenOffice.

In the (relatively) near future (depending on workload, book progress,
LyX-Outline release and other things), I intend to expand the script to
do other things.  One conversion route from doc to lyx I've been
experimenting with is through DocBook XML.

People have already written style sheets and transformation scripts to
faithfully go from Doc to DocBook and back (round tripping).  I
particularly like the idea of using DocBook because the style sheets do
not require Word (which is evil) or OpenOffice (which is frustrating).
An additional benefit is that it could be expanded to deal with custom
style definitions.  It's as simple as adding an extra input and output
definition.

Right now, I don't really have the time to expand ConvertDoc.  It's most
definitely on my to-do list, but there are a lot of items with much
higher priority.  Nevertheless, an expanded ConvertDoc that uses XML to
convert between Word and LyX would be an excellent foundation for
word2lyx.

If there is someone who is interested in working on this project, let me
know.  I'd be happy to provide a copy of my notes, the modified
stylesheets I've been playing with and a (more or less proper) spec.
The biggest challenge would be gluing all of the pieces together.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: Side by Side Figures Not Aligned

[Rob Oakes]

On Mon, 2010-08-02 at 10:00 -0500, Bruce Pourciau wrote: 
 I have two figures (eps files) inserted as side by side graphics  
 (directly, not in floats). Each lies in its own Box (Minipage), the  
 boxes separated by a couple of \qquads. But one figure prints higher  
 than the other, I suppose because the amount of space around the  
 figure that's included in the file is not the same. What can I do to  
 make the figures print on roughly the same horizontal line?
 
 Bruce 

Hi Bruce,

There are a couple of ways to solve this problem.  The first is to crop
white space and ensure that the two figures are as close to the same
dimensions as possible.

Once you've done that, you can also modify the baseline alignment.  This
is done by fiddling with the alignment options of the minipages (right
click and then select settings).  It requires some experimentation,
but you you can usually find a setting that will minimize differences.
I've personally had good luck with aligning content to middle, but as
I said, you'll need to experiment to satisfy your aesthetic muse.

Cheers,

Rob

Simple Memo Document Class (and LyX Layout)

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX-Users,

Due to the recent discussion of memos in LaTeX/LyX, I thought that this
article might be of some use to members of the list:

http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/08/02/texmemo

It shows off a simple memo class I put together for personal use.  The
class supports a custom logo, and adds commands for To, From, Subject,
etc.  (The included examples show how to use them in the document.)

The code is very simple and should be largely self-explanatory to anyone
who would like to customize it further.  If anyone on the list has any
specific recommendations or requests, let me know and I'll try and add
them.

Cheers,

Rob Oakes

Re: appendices and numbering

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Benjamin,

I'm not sure that I follow the second question either.  What are these PDF 
files?  Are they multiple pages worth of material, or just a single page of 
material?  If they are just a single page of material (any you've already sized 
them appropriately), I would just add them using the traditional picture 
command.  This would allow you to use Figure floats as needed.

If it's the latter, you might take a look at the pdfpages package.

Cheers,

Rob


On Aug 6, 2010, at 4:51 PM, Richard Heck wrote:

 On 08/06/2010 06:24 PM, Benjamin Deschamps wrote:
 Hi everyone,
 
 I am finishing my thesis, have been using Lyx all along, so far so good. I 
 hope someone can help me out with two issues.
 
 1) How can I insert appendices at the end of my document? I would also like 
 them listed in the TOC.
 
   
 DocumentStart Appendix Here. Insert chapters or sections, depending upon 
 your document class.
 
 2) I have external PDF files embedded in the appendices. The are sized 
 according to the available text space (6.5 by 9 inches), so the header space 
 is not covered. How can I continue the page numbering and headers on theses 
 pages?
 
   
 I'm not sure what the question is here. The appendix pages should be 
 numbered, etc, as normal.
 
 rh
 

Re: changeset/35060 - color regressions

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Jean-Marc,

 I'd like to have at least one good theme before looking at multiple  
 themes :)

I'm not thinking multiple themes so much as a theming system.  We could
save the list out as a text/xml file and then load an entire list of
colors in at once.

 
 Qt is supposed to help us here.

I agree, but sometimes the Qt themes are subtly wrong.  Case in point,
for the extended outline (the little pet project I've been working on)
in LyX-Outline on Mac, the selected text is far too dark.  It should use
a light blue color, instead it uses the dark blue of selected items.
It's really ugly.  It was bothering me so much that I went in and hard
coded the proper color.  I haven't seen the same problem on Linux or
Windows.

If we used system colors plus tweaks, it would allow us to both
customize and match the default values.  Having a system to load lists
of colors would allow for users to adjust colors and then save out the
list as they wanted.  It also probably wouldn't be a lot of work to
implement (yes, I know those are famous last words).

 Yes. One thin I'd like to add is the possibility to 'synchronize' by  
 default several colors.

Not sure I follow you here, but it sounds interesting.  Could you
elaborate?

Cheers,

Rob

Re: lyx chokes on documents with many subsections?

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Jose,

If you've been using the LyX-Outline branch, you may want to update to
the most recent version.  It's been a little over a week since I've
merge LyX trunk.  (I've been trying to fix a problem related to tabbing
to the next entry in the expanded outline view.)

I merged the source again this morning.  It incorporates a lot of
bugfixes that may have been specific to your problems.  (In addition to
fixing a small memory leak that I found with the Corkboard.)

Might be worth a try to see if it speeds up LyX for you.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: writing my Thesis with lyx

[Rob Oakes]

 I also, couldn't agree more.  I tend to hide my modifications as new 
document classes ... but front-matter should be finger painted.  After 
that, though, I don't want to see or think about ERT.


On 08/11/2010 12:40 PM, Liviu Andronic wrote:

On Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:19:43 -0400
Steve Littsl...@troubleshooters.com  wrote:

This is a minority opinion and a lot don't subscribe to it, but in my
opinion you save time by fingerpainting your front matter. In other
words, use embedded LaTeX, historically called ERT in the LyX
community, to insert your logo and employer and line them up exactly
how you want them and page break where you want and make fonts
exactly how you want them to look.


I'm not sure that this is minority.. At least I subscribe to it: if in
need for anything fancy, first page should be pure LaTeX. All below
should (mostly) be LyX.
Liviu

Re: lyx: Font derail (with semi-related ranting)

[Rob Oakes]

 Hi Morten,

 Since this discussion is turning to matters of taste, what do you 
think about the font choices? The default font is obviously dated, if 
elegant. What do you people use? 


Take care with calling Computer Modern dated.  I personally don't like 
it, but a lot of people do.  I'd use stronger language -- such as 
calling it rigid, pompous or and ghastly -- but that got me in trouble 
last time.  So I'll refrain.  There's no reason to start forest 
unnecessary forest fires.)  It works very nicely for mathematics and it 
has a cult following.


Beside, fonts never really become dated.  Look at Helvetica, or Gill 
Sans.  They've been around for 60 and 80 years, respectively, and are 
not going anywhere.  Helvetica is everywhere and Gill Sans is (more or 
less) the default Sans Serif for Mac computers.  Not bad for old timers.


As far as my personal preferences go, I'm a big fan of Minion and Myriad 
Pro fonts.  I use Minion for body text and Myriad as a sans serif.  I 
haven't quite found a mono spaced font that I like.  Yet.  Courier Std 
works in a pinch.  (If anyone has any other ideas, I would love to hear 
them.)  I leave Latin Modern for math.  Customizing math fonts in 
xelatex is a pain that no one should suffer willingly, so I don't bother.


Regarding files, I use the OpenType variants available with xelatex.  
There is also a MinionPro package that can be used with other tex 
variants 
(http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/minionpro/MinionPro.pdf).  It 
will even customize the math fonts for you.


Re: Palatino.  I absolutely love Palatino and second Liviu's 
recommendations.


The letter forms of Palatino may be the most refined ever created.  But, 
I've never really been able to find a sans-serif and mono-spaced font 
that matches well.  (At least not per my aesthetic taste.)  For that 
reason, I don't use it often.  A good designer friend says that Univers 
(or if you really need to go there, Helvetica) are appropriate 
pairings.  I think he consumed too many magic mushrooms in his youth.  
(I actually agree with the Univers pairing.  It offers good 
typographical contrast and the final effect really is quite nice, just 
not for really long texts.)


Re: Margins and Details

If you're using Minion, be sure to set appropriate margins.  Minion is 
slightly narrower than Palatino and related fonts, and your margins 
should be adjusted accordingly.


Re: General Advice

However ... I'd worry about fonts and appearance until the end.  The 
choice of font should complement the subject of your thesis, and it is 
usually impossible to choose before it has been written.  Book design 
follows the writing of the book, not before.


(I'm speaking from experience, rather than trying to be preachy.  I've 
been working on a book about Open Source writing and I've wasted 
inordinate amounts of time fretting about fonts, margins, and headings.  
This is why authors should also not be their own book designers.)


With the disclaimer, I would start looking at every book you see.  Spend 
time in the bookstore browsing titles that are similar to your thesis 
and look at how they lay things out.  In the frontmatter, it will 
usually say who designed the book and what typefaces were used.  If you 
find a pairing that you really like, by all means, steal it.  There is 
no reason to re-invent wheels if you don't have to.  Also, note how wide 
the margins are and whether they use fully justified text, or ragged 
right.  (These things really do matter, a lot.  Designer types have done 
lots of research about these things.)


With all that said, the default package pairings in LaTeX are really 
quite good.  Consider using one of those.  The LaTeX companion has an 
overview and I would highly recommend you take a look.


Just wait until you are finished, though, and know what type of effect 
you want to achieve.  It will save you hours of tinkering.  For working 
drafts, use Latin Modern.


Cheers,

Rob

Re: texMemo layoutfile

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Helmut, 

My apologies.  The article was cross-posted to two sites: blog.oak-tree.us and 
www.oak-tree.us.  The error was corrected on the first and not on the second.  
I have since updated the download link:

http://www.oak-tree.us/2010/08/02/texmemo/

Please let me know if you have any other problems, or any other feedback you 
might have.  I'm an attention whore and love hearing about how things work 
(especially if they don't work, so that I can fix any problems).

Cheers,

Rob


On Aug 15, 2010, at 2:10 PM, Hellmut Weber wrote:

 Hi Rob
 thanks for sharing this docuemnt type ;-)
 
 when i try to use the download link indicated
 
  tex Memo LyX files
 
 from your web page
 
  www.oak-tree.us/2010/08/02/texmemo
 
 the links resolves to
 
  http://oak-tree.us/stuff/LyX/xetexCV-LyX.zip
 
 and the content is what the filename says.
 
 Can you please put the link to the LyX layout file there instead.
 Thanks in advance
 
 
 Best regards
 
 Hellmut
 
 -- 
 Dr. Hellmut Weber m...@hellmutweber.de
 Degenfeldstraße 2 tel   +49-89-3081172
 D-80803 München-Schwabing mobil +49-172-8450321
 please: No DOCs, no PPTs. why: tinyurl.com/cbgq

Re: How to convert to MS Word?

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Steve,

I'd recommend that you first convert to HTML using eLyXer, and then use create 
an HTML to Word export filter.

The ConvertDoc script described in this article 
(http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/05/14/msword-lyx-import) can be used to 
automate the command line OpenOffice conversion so that everything can be done 
from inside of LyX.  When I originally wrote the article, I played with both 
import/export of Word documents and everything seems to work acceptably for the 
default character styles.  I'm not sure how well it works for custom character 
styles.

With an eye toward LyX 2.0, a better conversion filter might be created that 
uses the native XHTML export and XML stylesheets to export to Word.  
Theoretically, such a filter would be able to maintain all of the semantic 
markup.  I've been playing with round tripping with DocBook XML, and though the 
process is somewhat complicated, it wouldn't be too hard to automate it with 
python or similar language.  It also has the advantage of not relying on a copy 
of OpenOffice (which given the recent Oracle/Google nastiness, I'm not sure 
that I trust anymore).

Cheers,

Rob

On Aug 16, 2010, at 4:42 AM, Steve Litt wrote:

 Hi all,
 
 I know this question has been answered 1.1 million times on the list, but I 
 couldn't quickly find it in a search so I thought I'd ask it again...
 
 On my second-to-next book I'm going to use the services of a real copy 
 editor. 
 Most copy editors prefer (ugh) MS Word. I have to admit when I wrote Samba 
 Unleashed, the copy editing/proofreading process did work very well with MS 
 Word.
 
 My book will be typographically fairly simple and mostly styles-based. What's 
 the best way to convert from LyX to MS Word, hopefully retaining my styles. 
 I'm more than willing to rewrite my style definitions on the MS Word side -- 
 I'd just like the text marked by those styles to be retained as styles on the 
 MS Word side if possible. If not possible, having the appearances carry 
 through would be sufficient, as ultimately I'll need to manually put the 
 editor's suggestions back in my LyX doc.
 
 By the way, if any of you do proofing/copy-editing for a living, please feel 
 free to email me off list.
 
 Thanks
 
 SteveT
 
 Steve Litt
 Recession Relief Package
 http://www.recession-relief.US
 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt
 

Re: texMemo layoutfile

[Rob Oakes]

I'm sorry about that Hellmut, I've been using LyX 2.0 exclusively for months 
and I tend to forget that layou files and enhancements released for the newer 
versions will not always work with the old.  Glad to hear that you got it 
working, though.

If you run into any other problems, please let me know.  Also, if there are any 
feature enhancements you think would be worthwhile, that would also be good to 
hear.  Though I feel somewhat guilty about it, I like using the mailing list as 
a laboratory for different projects.  There is a tremendously diverse group of 
people here and I get a wide range of feedback that helps to improve my various 
projects.

Cheers,

Rob

On Aug 16, 2010, at 9:07 AM, Hellmut Weber wrote:

 Hi Rob,
 thanks for your quick answer ;-)
 
 Now i got the layout file.
 
 I ran into little problems because it seems the document class has been
 designed using lyx 2.0, and I#m still using 1.6.6.1.
 
 After a bit of brute force 'backporting' (Changing the format numbers in
 both, the *.lyx and the *.layout files and commenting out one line
 (concerning the children) in the *.lyx file, some header errors are
 shown the first time but after changing something (and thus probably
 overwriting the cause of these errors) it is working fine.
 
 
 Thanks a lot and happy LyXing
 
 Hellmut
 
 
 On 15.08.2010 23:29, Rob Oakes wrote:
 Hi Helmut, 
 
 My apologies.  The article was cross-posted to two sites: blog.oak-tree.us 
 and www.oak-tree.us.  The error was corrected on the first and not on the 
 second.  I have since updated the download link:
 
 http://www.oak-tree.us/2010/08/02/texmemo/
 
 Please let me know if you have any other problems, or any other feedback you 
 might have.  I'm an attention whore and love hearing about how things work 
 (especially if they don't work, so that I can fix any problems).
 
 Cheers,
 
 Rob
 
 
 On Aug 15, 2010, at 2:10 PM, Hellmut Weber wrote:
 
 Hi Rob
 thanks for sharing this docuemnt type ;-)
 
 when i try to use the download link indicated
 
 tex Memo LyX files
 
 from your web page
 
 www.oak-tree.us/2010/08/02/texmemo
 
 the links resolves to
 
 http://oak-tree.us/stuff/LyX/xetexCV-LyX.zip
 
 and the content is what the filename says.
 
 Can you please put the link to the LyX layout file there instead.
 Thanks in advance
 
 
 Best regards
 
 Hellmut
 
 -- 
 Dr. Hellmut Weber m...@hellmutweber.de
 Degenfeldstraße 2 tel   +49-89-3081172
 D-80803 München-Schwabing mobil +49-172-8450321
 please: No DOCs, no PPTs. why: tinyurl.com/cbgq
 
 
 
 -- 
 Dr. Hellmut Weber m...@hellmutweber.de
 Degenfeldstraße 2 tel   +49-89-3081172
 D-80803 München-Schwabing mobil +49-172-8450321
 please: No DOCs, no PPTs. why: tinyurl.com/cbgq

Fwd: [Bug 618690] Re: Sync lyx 1.6.7-1 (universe) from Debian testing (main)

[Rob Oakes]

It appears that the request for Feature Freeze exception has been granted.  I'm 
now trying to whittle down the list of Launchpad bugs.  Is it just me, or are 
the LyX website and trac down?

Also, were the problems with platex solved per LyX 1.6.7?  I remember some of 
the discussion, but haven't been able to check trac.

Cheers,

Rob

Begin forwarded message:

 From: StefanPotyra stefan.pot...@informatik.uni-erlangen.de
 Date: August 16, 2010 9:42:45 AM MDT
 To: lyx-de...@oak-tree.us
 Subject: [Bug 618690] Re: Sync lyx 1.6.7-1 (universe) from Debian testing 
 (main)
 Reply-To: Bug 618690 618...@bugs.launchpad.net
 
 As I've read the mailing list discussion: FFe granted. Thanks for taking
 care for lyx in Ubuntu.
 
 -- 
 Sync lyx 1.6.7-1 (universe) from Debian testing (main)
 https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/618690
 You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
 of the bug.
 
 Status in “lyx” package in Ubuntu: New
 
 Bug description:
 Please sync lyx 1.6.7-1 (universe) from Debian testing (main)
 
 Explanation of the Ubuntu delta and why it can be dropped:
 The Ubuntu delta applies to version 1.6.5 of LyX, which is obsoleted
 by 1.6.7 from Debian testing.  Version 1.6.7 fixes a number of bugs in
 addition to resolving all known conflicts with Qt 4.6 and 4.7.
 
 Changelog entries since current maverick version 1.6.5-1ubuntu1:
 
 lyx (1.6.7-1) unstable; urgency=low
 
  * New upstream release.
   + Remove debian/patches/spellcheckfix - applied upstream.
  * Update to Standards-Version: 3.9.0 - no changes required.
  * Remove build-dep on libaspell-dev and --with-aspell configure flag.
 
 -- Sven Hoexter hoex...@debian.org  Sat, 17 Jul 2010 18:02:22 +0200
 
 lyx (1.6.6-2) unstable; urgency=low
 
  * Add --with-enchant to the configure flags and add build-depend on
libenchant-dev.
  * Add librsvg2-bin | inkscape to the Recommends to support SVG image
handling (new in LyX 1.6.6).
  * Set elyxer to the first position in the list of HTML converters.
  * Add debian/patches/spellcheckfix which reverts upstream commit
r33567 to fix the broken spellchecker in LyX 1.6.6.
Upstream bugreport: http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/6708
 
 -- Sven Hoexter hoex...@debian.org  Fri, 28 May 2010 14:30:19 +0200
 
 lyx (1.6.6-1) unstable; urgency=low
 
  [ Per Olofsson ]
  * Add texlive-science to Recommends. It's not big, and it's required
for compiling the LyX math manual. Closes: #508939
 
  [ Sven Hoexter ]
  * New upstream release.
+ Should no longer crash when inserting floats. Closes: #579630
+ Refresh debian/patches/prefer-xdg-open.
  * Bump Standards-Version to 3.8.4 - no changes required.
  * Add debian/source/format to state that this is still a package in
1.0 format.
 
 -- Sven Hoexter hoex...@debian.org  Thu, 20 May 2010 13:34:14 +0200
 
 
 
 To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lyx/+bug/618690/+subscribe

Re: texMemo layoutfile

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Hellmut, 

Thanks for these recommendations.  They are appreciated.

  Permit some sort of textual logo (for people who know some LaTeX like
 me using different fonts, sizes, color, etc.)
 An elementary form could be an ERT block instead of the graphics inset
 but I don't have any idea how to do that in lyx.

Actually, the template layout allows you to use either text or graphics or any 
combination of the two.  This includes ERT insets.  You only need to place them 
inside the logo inset to make them work.

 * Offer fancy headers and footers
 (I'm somewhat compulsive wrt Author/Copyright and date on _every_ page
 of my documents, even memos ;-)
 Could probably be done on LaTeX level already in the preamble ?

The template is just based on article, which means that you could use fancyhdr 
to do this.  LyX even includes some limited support for fancyhdr in the 
Document Settings pane.  It's not something I've experimented with much, but 
you could probably get a long ways without needing to write much ERT.

Cheers,

Rob

LyX 1.6.7 Packages for Ubuntu

[Rob Oakes]

 Dear LyX Users and Developers,

I wanted to provide a bit of an update to my adventures with Ubuntu 
packaging (insofar as they are related to LyX).


I've spoken with the Ubuntu developers, and they have granted our 
request to include 1.6.7 in the next version of Ubuntu (Maverick 
Meerkat, 10.10).  Packages have been compiled and are available from 
Launchpad as of this moment (https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lyx).


For users of Lucid Lynx (10.04) who would like to upgrade, I have 
created a PPA that you can use 
(https://launchpad.net/~lyx-outline-devel/+archive/lyx-stable).  To 
update, use the following commands from the terminal:


sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lyx-outline-devel/lyx-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

This will add the repository to your list of software sources and then 
update any software you have installed.  If you have any problems, 
please let me know.


Cheers,

Rob

PS, if there is interest from the developer/user community, I would also 
be happy to create a PPA for the latest alpha of LyX 2 (or we on the 
betas yet?).  To prevent it from destroying your system, though, I would 
need to patch the packaging files and inertia prevents me from doing so 
unless there is interest.

Pure Promotion - LyX Talk at University of Utah

[Rob Oakes]

 Dear LyX Users,

This is a pure piece of personal promotion, but ... here goes.

Tonight, I will be giving a talk about LyX to the Salt Lake Linux Users 
Group.  The meeting will be at the University of Utah in the Warnock 
Engineering building.  (See below for directions.)


It will start at just after 7:00 pm.  Free admission.

Though it will focus heavily on LyX (I'm even going to demo a mostly 
functioning LyX-Outline), the talk will also deal with how to research, 
write, and publish using Linux.  For that reason, I'll also be 
highlighting several other programs (Zotero, BibTeX, Mendely, LaTeX, 
Inkscape and Scribus) and describing how they work together.


If this interests you at all, and you are in the Salt Lake area, please 
come.  It would be wonderful to put faces to email addresses.


/End Shameless Self Promotion

Cheers,

Rob


Warnock Engineering Building
72 South Central Campus Drive
Salt Lake City

*From Downtown*

  1. _Drive East on 400 South:_  As you reach the foothills, 400 South
 will curve so that it's name changes to 500 South by the time you
 are on top of the hill.  Continue driving East on 500 South until
 you come to the 1300 East intersection.
  2. _Turn left on 1300 East:_  You will now be facing North.  Continue
 driving North on 1300 East until you come to the 100 South
 intersection.
  3. _Turn right on 100 South_ (North Campus Drive):  You will now be
 facing East.  Continue driving East on 100 South.  As you go up
 the hill, 100 South will abruptly turn to the left (North), at
 which point it's name changes to North Campus Drive.  Later, it
 will make a large sweeping turn to the right (East).  Continue
 following North Camus Drive until you come to Central Campus Drive.
  4. _Turn right on Central Campus Drive:_  You will now be facing
 South.  Continue driving South on Central Campus Drive until you
 come to the intersection with the street named Federal Way.
  5. _The Warnock Engineering Building_ (WEB) is located off the South
 West corner of the intersection of Central Campus Drive and
 Federal Way.


*Parking
*

There is ample parking in three lots adjacent to WEB.  Additionally, 
7:00 pm is unofficially considered after hours by the attendants  With 
that said, the University of Utah parking trolls are evil, aggressive, 
and can magically detect the presence of violators.


(Really.  I have no other explanation for my most recent ticket.  I had 
to drop off an edit to a friend and was away from the car for five 
minutes.  By the time I got back to the car, the attendant was gone and 
the ticket was on my dash.  For this reason, you might consider the 
purchase of a parking day pass (Ithey're $5.00), even though it 
shouldn't be necessary.

Re: LyX 1.6.7 Packages for Ubuntu

[Rob Oakes]

 Hi Fareed,

Does this new LyX package depend on the the TexLive in Ubuntu's
repositories? Ubuntu's version of TexLive was out-of-date for a long
time, so I installed TexLive 2009 directly from its net installer, to
use its latex package manager. As a result I've had to install any latex
related programs (LyX, kile, etc) from source to prevent apt from
installing its own version of TexLive.
Unfortunately, it does.  I simply made a few (very minor) modifications 
to the existing debian package and then submitted it to the Launchpad 
build service.  I did not change the package requirements.


However, Ubuntu updated the version of LaTeX to TeXLive 2009 in 10.04.  
If you're using an older version of Ubuntu, it is possible to have 
multiple versions of TeX installed side by side.  This article explains 
how (even though the instructions use Ubuntu 10.04 as an example, they 
work with older versions as well):


http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/07/15/latex-custom

If you object to that, it's also possible to create dummy packages, 
though that is more involved:


http://texblog.net/latex-archive/linux/kile-texlive-2008-equivs/

If you've already been installing from source, though, you may wish to 
continue with that.  It makes updating to newer versions significantly 
easier, and it sounds as though you've already made the initial time 
investment (which is what I find killer).


Cheers,

Rob

LyX Presentation Notes and Slides

[Rob Oakes]

 Dear LyX Users,

Because I got a couple of emails asking about the slides from my 
presentation yesterday, I thought I would pass along the following link:


http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/08/19/linux-typography

From there, you can download a copy of the slides, or view the 
slides/speaking notes.


Cheers,

Rob

Re: LyX 1.6.7 Packages for Ubuntu

[Rob Oakes]

On Aug 20, 2010, at 7:33 AM, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:

 Sure. But you lose one of the most important features of TeXLive: immediate 
 update to the most recent packages from CTAN.

I think it really depends on your needs.  The question for the user becomes, 
how often do you really need to update your LaTeX distribution? Given its 
maturity and the high quality of the original packages, I've found the answer 
is: not very often (at least for me).

For example, I just recently updated to TexLive 2009 on my main Ubuntu 
workstation.  For years, only TeXLive 2007 was available as part of the package 
repositories, so I used it.  In all that time, there was only one time that I 
needed a newer copy of a package and couldn't find a workaround.  Sure TeXLive 
included a  bunch of benefits, but I'd be pretty hard-pressed to name one that 
I take advantage of frequently.  In fact, without referring to the change-log, 
I'd be pretty hard pressed to name any at all (updated Tufte classes that 
correctly number margin figures might be one).

For this reason, up to the second versions of LaTeX packages aren't really all 
that important to me.  If the releases were packaged once per year, I think 
that's more than enough for my needs (and I would argue for the needs of most 
other users).  But the three years that it took to update TeXLive 2007 to 
TexLive 2009 was probably too long.  Though I didn't notice any practical need, 
there was a psychological need.  It's important to feel like your software is 
maintained, and going such a long time between updates made TeXLive on Debian 
feel abandoned.

(As a caveat, I'd like the ability to download needed packages on the fly (like 
MikTeX allows), but I am willing to forego that particular nicety for the 
convenience of a single packaging tool.)

So, though i largely agree with your recommendation, I would attach on 
addendum.  For novice LaTeX/LyX users, I would recommend staying with the 
default packages.  For more advanced users that are comfortable with managing 
their own LaTeX installations, going upstream makes a lot of sense.

As someone earlier in this thread said, I wonder if it would be worth packaging 
a version of LyX for this particular demographic.  I wouldn't make it the 
default, but we could easily set up a PPA (in addition to Red Hat/Open SuSe 
equivalents) and post installation instructions somewhere on the website.  If 
an advanced user is willing to set up a custom LaTeX distribution, surely they 
are motivated enough to seek out LyX options that don't require system packages?

Just my two cents, though.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: LyX 1.6.7 Packages for Ubuntu

[Rob Oakes]

 This is how, after all, python packages are managed (through setup.py). But I 
 agree if you really need this, advanced users can figure it out by 
 themselves. I can only dream.

I'm not sure that it's that simple.  (Or if it is, I really need to learn more 
about packaging!)  I maintain a python project for creating backups 
(http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/science-and-technology/time-drive).  While 
the packaging scripts use setup.py (distutils) in order to structure things 
during the build process, I'm not sure that it is used during installation.  
(My knowledge of packaging is minimal.  I struggled through it once so that I 
could figure out Time Drive, and a second time while learning to package LyX.  
In both cases, I had good examples and people had already done all the hard 
work for me.)

On the user end, everything seems to be managed by apt and dpkg.  Which takes 
us back to the original problem, there doesn't seem to be a way for the systems 
to automatically talk to one another on the user's system.  It still requires a 
human being (or a very smart build system) to create specific packages for the 
platform.

Which brings me to the question in the front of my mind.   Should we create 
another Ubuntu/Debian package for LyX that doesn't require the system LaTeX 
packages?

Cheers,

Rob

Re: creating a custom layout from scratch

[Rob Oakes]

 Hi Boraz,
Start by reading section 5.2 of Help  Customization.  Then I would 
suggest looking at a couple of layout files, first something simple 
like the basic article class (article.layout) and then a thesis-type 
layout file.  The layout files are located in a folder (cleverly named 
'layouts') beneath the installation directory for LyX.  If you're not 
sure where that is, try Help  About LyX and look for the Library 
directory path near the bottom.  Layout files are plain text, so you 
can view them in your favorite text editor.  Some of them import other 
files (.inc extension).


You will also need a LaTeX class for your new document type.  If you 
don't have a custom LaTeX class, shop around for a standard class that 
supports the various types of environment you need.
In addition to this excellent advice, I would take a look at the series 
of articles by Steve Litt 
(http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/surefire_layout.htm and 
http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/lyx_latex_tex.htm).  I've also 
written a series of articles that may be helpful.  You can find a full 
list of the LyX articles at:


http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/writing/latex

Additionally, there are links to a few custom document classes I 
maintain which also have layout files that might serve as examples.  You 
might start by looking at the texMemo layout file.  It is 
straightforward, but at the same time, includes examples of how to do 
character/paragraph styles in addition to custom insets.


If you have any questions, don't hesitate to write back to the list.  
Most of the people here are very nice (I might be the one major 
exception) and are willing to help.


Cheers,

Rob

Re: how to make fragile frames in beamer layout

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Guenter,

I'm probably missing something obvious, but can't you use a \protect command?  
In a few of the document classes I've written, this has allowed me to pass all 
kind of fragile commands (images, for examples in the texMemo class) while 
keeping the processor nice and happy.

Cheers,

Rob


On Aug 31, 2010, at 1:28 PM, Guenter Milde wrote:

 On 2010-08-31, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:
 
 This is due to the fact how frames are defined in LyX. Unfortunately, this 
 rules out native support for fragile frames (unless someone comes up with a 
 new definition of \lyxframe).
 
 How about a fragile frame inset?
 
 InsetLayout FragileFrame
   LyXType custom
   LatexType   Environment
   LatexName   ???
   ...
 
 
 Günter
 

Re: using different themes on same presentation with beamer

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Necati,

I don't typically use LyX when working with Beamer.  I think it's easier to 
just use plain LaTeX.

However, attached you will find the source file for the example slides I 
included earlier.  The theme commands are invoked with ERT insets.

If you have any questions, please feel free to let me know.

Cheers,

Rob



Crazy-Ones.lyx
Description: Binary data

Re: How to create a layout file?

[Rob Oakes]

Layout files are just simple text files that have been saved with the .layout 
extensions.  You then place this file in the layouts subdirectory of your LyX 
user directory.

(To see where your LyX user directory is located, simply click on Help  About, 
or if using Mac, Application Menu  About.)

There are some good links from the LyX Wiki (which you reference), though I 
would also take a look  at Steve Litt's guides to layouts.  There's some very 
helpful advice there.  About a year ago, I wrote a small series that looks at 
creating layouts and various ways of customizing LyX.  You can find those 
articles (and a few other LaTeX related things) at:

http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/writing/latex

If you have any specific questions, you can always post those here as well.  To 
my knowledge, all the developers subscribe to the users list and they are all 
very nice people.

Cheers,

Rob

On Sep 16, 2010, at 6:58 PM, emant777 wrote:

 
 This might be an obvious question but I can't figure out how to make the
 layout file itself. 
 I was reading  http://wiki.lyx.org/Layouts/CreatingLayouts
 and I want to type something like this into the file: 
 **
 #% Do not delete the line below; configure depends on this  
 #  \DeclareLaTeXClass[acmsiggraph]{ACM SigGraph}
 
 # Read the definitions from article.layout
 Input article.layout
 ***
 but I can't figure out how to create the file into which I am supposed to
 type this. Please help. Thank you.
 
 
 -- 
 View this message in context: 
 http://lyx.475766.n2.nabble.com/How-to-create-a-layout-file-tp5541048p5541048.html
 Sent from the LyX - Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Re: more on collaboration

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Jose and other LyX-Users,

Very interesting articles, thanks for sending them.

While trying to digest the ideas, though, I found myself asking two questions 
and I'd be interested in your feedback.  The first question, of course is 
spurred by pure skepticism.

In what instances do you think this feature would be useful?

For my part, I'm not a collaborative writer.  I don't think well in the 
presence of others and I hate writing with an audience.  My one and only 
experience with Google Wave was a nightmare.  People could see just how much 
backspacing was involved in my replies!  It was deeply humiliating and I'm 
quite glad that Wave died.  

(Unfortunately, this whole real time collaboration thing is the next major 
front in online communication, and I'm 
sure others will take up the mantle.  Pity.)

But I'm probably not representative of the general population.  Even VCS 
collaboration often feels too real time for me (though I use it and heartily 
recommend it to others).  I much prefer distinct drafts (PDF) sent via email.  
Even better is paper sent via post.   This allows for me to organize my 
commentary and deliver an overall impression and specific recommendations

(To be clear, I prefer this arrangement when editing and when receiving 
feedback.)

However, with all that said, real time collaboration is becoming an expected 
feature.  AbiWord and Google Docs have it, OpenOffice is talking about it, and 
MS Word even has a rudimentary option.  I have several colleagues that have 
moved to Google Docs specifically because of the real time collaboration 
options.  Even though they've never actually used them, at least to the best of 
my knowledge and the editing experience is hideous in every other respect.

The people I've talked to take solace in knowing that they are present and 
would never move to a platform that didn't have them.  I've even heard this 
from the small cadre of users I've converted to LyX.

In effect, real time document collaboration is a marketing feature.

Unfortunately, marketing features matter.  They differentiate program A from 
program B and providing a talking point.  And because they're talked about, 
such features become part of the criteria by which a program is judged.

If you need an example, look at what Google Docs has done for real time 
collaboration.  The presence/lack of a collaboration feature has become a 
standard review of any word processor.  Microsoft Word 2007 was knocked on 
ZdNet because it wasn't present.  MS Word 2010 was lauded because it was (even 
though it sucks).

Yet, I've never actually met anyone who writes with others in real time.  The 
only counterexample I can think of was an exchange with Michael Foord, who uses 
it to start program documentation.  But when I pressed him, what Michael 
described was more of an outlining tool and could easily be created via an 
interactive whiteboard rather than a full-featured real-time editing 
environment.

Which leads to my second question.  What should real time collaboration look 
like in order to be helpful?  Should it be built into an IM client (ala 
screensharing) with voice and video? Or would it be better as an online 
service?  Is integration into a desktop writing program necessary? Or would an 
implementation similar to the MS Word 2010 version be more appropriate, which 
is a hybrid approach?

You have advocated for this strongly and I would love to hear your opinions on 
the above questions.  What would be most helpful for your work?  Based on other 
implementations, what doesn't work quite so well?

As more tools release similar real time solutions, I think calls for something 
similar in LyX will increase.  Not necessarily because it's useful, but because 
it's expected.  And yes, I know that this is a terrible reason to add new 
features.  Which is actually my general point.

Current implementations of real-time editing are generally terrible.  A desktop 
level approach would be infinitely superior to the approach we are seeing now 
where each word processor does its own thing.  So, if the feature doesn't fit 
within LyX, perhaps we could send the use case scenarios and discussion to 
another project where it did fit?  The natural fit, at least to my mind, would 
be one of the IM clients.  Perhaps Empathy?

Anyone else have any thoughts?

Cheers,

Rob Oakes

Re: more on collaboration

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Les,

 I had no idea people were asking for this kind of feature.  Real-time 
 collaboration on a document seems to me to be a formula for a colossal waste 
 of time, extending the concept of endless meetings to an online equivalent.

I'm not sure if ti's people in general or just people that I know.  But I've 
seen it come up quite frequently in the past few months.  Particularly on blogs 
and in discussion of software tools.  When it arises in face to face 
communication, as it did during a meeting a month ago, I really try to sit up 
and pay attention.

In the meeting, people were bitching about long-distance collaboration and the 
slow turn around of document exchange.  Several options were suggested: VCS, 
Google Docs, chat, phone conferences, WebEx, etc.  It was a very good 
discussion and even got a little heated.  But then, I'm on the fringes of 
academics and written documents (particularly reports) are extremely important. 
 It's how we get money and share the results of our work.

 In the organizations I'm involved in, written documents of all kinds seem to 
 be actively discouraged by most managers.  The most common kind of report 
 is 
 an incoherent PowerPoint presentation put together with thought processes and 
 artistic taste worthy of a four-year-old.
 
 Writing of any kind is so rare I can't imagine there being any demand for 
 collaborative writing.

Since I've been trying to move toward industry and private consulting, I've 
also noticed this as well.  For that reason, I might be experiencing the 
effects of an echo chamber.

To reiterate my other email, I'm extremely skeptical of the real time collab 
solutions in general.  But if there is a clear use-case where it can be 
helpful, count me interested.  I'd just like to see it done right.

Cheers,

Rob

External Programs and Add-On Modules for LyX

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX Users and Developers,

I'm currently working on the book chapter that covers writing with LyX and 
LaTeX.  While doing so, I've been trying to find a list of all of the external 
tools and modules that LyX works with.  While many of these are alluded to in 
the manuals, is anyone aware of a summary table that summarizes the information 
in one place?

Specifically, I'm interested in tools that allow for document conversion, the 
inclusion of file types within LyX documents, or modules that require a 
non-LaTeX processor in order to work correctly (such as Sweave;/R).  If this 
information doesn't exist, would anyone be interested in helping to compile it? 
 It would make a fantastic addition to either the wiki or the manuals.

While I mostly want the information for the book so that I don't mindlessly 
repeat things already available in the wonderful LyX manuals, I'd be happy to 
provide a copy to the documentation team or to post/update it on the wiki.

(Just a note to the documentation team, the manuals really are superb.  I just 
discovered the feynman manual this morning and I've been having great fun with 
it.  With all that said, though, you've made this chapter very hard to write 
and I consider that greatly unfair, albeit in a very good way.)

Cheers,

Rob

Re: External Programs and Add-On Modules for LyX

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Rainer,

Thank you for your comments.

 
 Nice - could you inform the list when it is available? Will it be 
 downloadable?

Short answer, yes.

Slightly longer answer: I'm not sure that it will be freely available, 
unfortunately.  It is dependent on the publisher  There will be several 
chapters available for download, and I'm strongly pushing for this one to be 
one of them.  Once the chapter is finished, however, I'd love to get feedback 
from members of the list.  If you'd be willing to look at a review copy, I'd be 
tremendously appreciative.  If so, please email me off list.

  
  While doing so, I've been trying to find a list of all of the external tools 
 and modules that LyX works with.  While many of these are alluded to in the 
 manuals, is anyone aware of a summary table that summarizes the information 
 in one place?
 
 Specifically, I'm interested in tools that allow for document conversion,
  
 Same as below - if you can write a converter, you can do it -- for import as 
 well as export. Import is definitely more difficult, but also possible 
 without having to go into LyX source code (That flexibility is brilliant in 
 LyX!)

I couldn't agree more.  The enormous flexibility of LyX is one of the great 
reasons that lyX has become my defacto writing environment for everything and 
why I talk about it to anyone who will listen.

I've used the conversion filters in the past for importing Microsoft Word 
documents and I've been relatively happy with the results (see 
http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/05/14/msword-lyx-import).  What I'm 
looking for are as you say, A list of examples of what can be done.

With the book, I am trying to target people who may be new to 
writing/publishing/typesetting (basically the state I was in as a junior in 
college), and are trying to understood the tools available to them.  I'm not 
trying to write a comprehensive manual to LyX (which is thoroughly unneeded, 
since the documentation is excellent), but rather provide tangible examples and 
information that can get people started.

For that purpose, I'd really like to include a table that lists the various 
tools that add significant value to LyX and are worth downloading alongside a 
new install.  Examples I've already included are R/Sweave (for statistical 
work), Lilypond for the typesetting of musical notation, Inkscape for 
incorporating SVG images, TeX4ht for exporting OpenDocuments, and Writer2LateX 
for importing OpenDocuments.  These, however, are only the options with which 
I'm personally familiar.  I'm interested in picking the collective mind to see 
if there is anything obvious that I've missed.

Of course, incorporating examples is even better.  It's one thing to discuss 
what's possible, it's much better to show it.

Cheers,

Rob

Default Fonts in KOMA-Script

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX-Users,

Sorry for spamming the list, but I am scrambling to compile a table on the 
default formatting for the common LaTeX document classes and I can't seem to 
find a piece of information.  I am hoping that someone on the list may know.

What is the default font used for the KOMA-Script classes?  I need the actual 
name.  When described in the KOMA-Script manual, they are simply referred to as 
serif and sans-serif.  It appears that they are computer modern, but short 
of hacking the PDF to locate the embedded font names, I can't seem to confirm 
it.

Does anyone know definitively or know of reference that says?

Thanks,

Rob

Re: Default Fonts in KOMA-Script

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Uwe,

Thank you for getting back to me.  I'm sorry if if my inquiry sounds stupid. (I 
will concede that it is mildly dense.)   Even so, I'm trying to track down 
which fonts the different packages use without making any modifications.  I 
know that it is very easy to change the font to an alternative either using a 
package, or if you use xetex, through fontspec.

But, not all of the classes use Computer Modern as the default typeface. (Yes, 
the majority do).  The Tufte classes, for example, make use of 
Palotino/Helvetica/Bera Mono.

For nearly all of the other classes I'm compiling a summary for: standard 
classes, AMS-LaTeX, Memoir, Beamer, Tufte, etc. I have been able to find an 
explicit reference that says, The default typeface is computer modern.

I have not been able to find this reference for KOMA, and it makes me uneasy to 
say it without an host of references to back it up.  Google has been 
essentially worthless for tracking the information down.  This is what prompted 
by original question to the group.

 The default font is ComputerModern as described in the LyX UserGuide.

I appreciate this pointer.  I finally got frustrated and compiled a sample 
document and then hacked it open.  The embedded fonts were cms (computer modern 
sans) and cmr (computer modern roman), just like the standard documents.  This 
evidence, taken with what you've offered, make me comfortable that computer 
modern is indeed the default.

Is there anyone who's had a contrary experience?

Cheers,

Rob

Re: Default Fonts in KOMA-Script

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Uwe,

Thanks for the response.  My question doesn't really have much to do with LyX, 
but rather about the defaults selected by particular LaTeX distributions.  I 
asked it on the users list mostly because it's where I know the most people and 
there are multiple TeX experts who hang out here.

On Oct 13, 2010, at 7:48 AM, Uwe Stöhr wrote:

 Seems that you misunderstood me. A document class defines how a document 
 should look, e.g. if the title uses a sans serif font in size huge. 

I think part of the reason for the misunderstanding is that we think about 
document appearance differently (very, very differently as it turns out) and 
I was operating under a serious misunderstanding.  When you say that document 
classes define how a document should look (please correct me if I'm wrong), 
you appear to be referring to styles (family [roman, sans, typewriter], weight 
[bold, medium, light], italics, small caps, etc.), margins, indentation, 
spacing. but not the typeface itself?  I know that the default typeface for 
LaTeX is CM, and from your comments it sounds as though the default typeface is 
determined at the level of LaTeX distribution and not at the level of document 
class.  Is that right?

 What font you are using for sans serif is your decision.


Here's my background.  I mostly come to LyX from a somewhat traditional 
printing background (I worked in a printer's shop part of my time during 
college and later did a turn as the production editor for a journal), though I 
am hardly an expert on anything.  But in that environment, when someone uses 
the word appearance, they are referring to all of the properties you describe 
in addition to the font.  Perhaps most especially the font.


 Note that the default font depends on the settings of your 
 LaTeX-distribution. It is possible that the default fonts are set to Latin 
 modern or CM super instead of Computer modern. So when you want to have a 
 certain font, you should select one in the LyX document settings.

To find out that document classes don't provide a recommendation for the 
default, which has been chosen to match the spacing and design of a particular 
class, is a little shocking.  It's like learning that a composer had no 
preference of instruments and that a concerto for flute could also be played on 
an oboe, or violin without causing people to raise an eyebrow.

Certainly, you are free to change it, but the default typeface is the default 
typeface.  And I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea that such an 
important decision is apparently left up to the packagers of the LaTeX 
distribution.  (With the assumption that Computer Modern will be right in 
nearly all instances.)

In most publishing houses, that decision is made at the level of design 
template (which would be roughly analogous to document class).  If you told a 
publication designer that there is a default typeface that is right for all 
documents, I think most would look at you like you were crazy.  (That would be 
the response of most I've known, at least.)

 KOMA-script doesn't hardcode things. When you create a KOMA-script document 
 and set in LyX the fonts to default you get usually computer modern for the 
 fonts.

This I was aware of, but I still assumed that all document classes provided a 
recommendation of font, in addition to paper size, margins, spacing and all the 
rest.  After all, they all build on themselves.  A document that has been 
carefully designed to use CM or LM won't necessarily look good when typeset 
with Palatino.  Changing a font is a big modification to the document's design, 
and usually requires that you adjust several others so that things look right.

Because of my previous experience, I just assumed that LaTeX functioned 
according to similar principles.  I knew that CM was the default for LaTeX in 
general, but I had thought that class/package authors also made individual 
design choices based upon the goals of their class.

Are you aware of anyplace where the design conventions are more explicitly 
described?  I checked the LaTeX2e for class and package writers in addition 
to The LaTeX companion, but I haven't been able to find someplace where it is 
spelled out.  (I don't currently have access to Lamport's original book.)

(The request for references is mostly so that I can describe the conventions 
correctly.  I'm probably going to need to re-write a major section.)

Again, thanks for responding.  I appreciate that the information is only 
tangentially related to LyX (and of only marginal interest to most), but I'd 
really like to get things right.

Cheers,

Rob

New PDF Conversions on Windows

[Rob Oakes]

 Dear LyX Users,

I've run into a bit of a problem and I am wondering if anyone else has
seen it before.  I'm trying to compile test documents on Windows with
LyX 2.0 and MikTeX 2.8.  The documents all compile without trouble, but
I'm having a devil of a time with PDF images.

The document converter is being tremendously finicky with any PDF that
is greater than version 1.4.  Versions 1.5 and 1.6 (which are created by
most applications by default) are simply not included in the output. 
When I look at the output (from LyX debug window), it says that it is
unable to find a compatible converter.  In the final PDF, there is a
space for the graphic that is the right size, but the actual graphic
does not appear.  It's just a big white rectangle.

Does anyone know what the root of the problem is?  Is this is LyX issue,
or a MikTeX issue, or a Ghostscript issue?  Or do I need to add a
converter somewhere?  (Converting all of the offending PDFs to version
1.4 really isn't an option, there are several hundred of them.)

This problem only appears on Windows.  Compiling the exact same document
in Ubuntu or Mac OS X works just fine.  (Which makes me believe its a
MikTeX problem.)

Anyone seen something similar and come up with a way to remedy the
problem?  Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: OT: should learning materials be hard to read?

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Liviu,

I can't help but weigh in on this one.  I think it really depends on who the 
audience is, how much they are motivated, and the medium through which you are 
delivering the message.

 My personal experience from the bench suggests something similar.
 Whenever I spend too much time trying to figure out what was written
 (say, on the blackboard) I have much less time to focus on what was
 meant.

This is my experience as well.

Making a lecture or presentation difficult to understand is a terrible, 
terrible idea.  Verbal communication is already inefficient (people speak much 
slower than they read) and our working memory for speech is smaller than it 
is for written text.  Combine it with the fact that people can only focus on 
one thing at a time and you have disaster.  If you become distracted reading 
text and miss what the speaker is saying, , you might miss something important. 
 If that something important is part of the logical chain of the argument (say 
you missed an important step in the derivation of a formula), it can greatly 
change how you understand everything that comes afterward.  These limitations 
are mitigated by the fact that presentations are interactive, which means that 
a good presenter can repeat and gauge the understanding of the audience in real 
time.

With written text, there is the advantage that you can deliver much more 
information and provide it at much higher resolution than you ever could in a 
presentation.  If there is a point of confusion, the reader simply returns to 
re-read earlier passages.

But density can also have its problems.  If the words on the page appear too 
dense, people will refrain from reading them unless there is some motivation to 
do otherwise.  It's important to note that it doesn't actually matter what the 
words say, if the line length is too long, or the word forms appear convoluted, 
or the layout is poor, it all has the same effect.  This paper does a pretty 
good job of discussing the ways that different layout features influence letter 
detection and readability.

Denis G. Pelli et al., “Feature detection and letter identification,” Vision 
Research 46, no. 28 (December 2006): 4646-4674.  

if you can't access the message of the article, it doesn't really matter what 
it says.

I agree with one point in the economist article, it is good to make people 
think deeply about things.  Challenging the mind and forcing it to process 
information will result in long-term retention.  All of the study's observation 
can probably be explained by one thing: the slightly more difficult text caused 
people to slow down as they read, taking more time to digest  But isn't that 
the point of  exercises, engaging stories and other rhetorical devices?

But the tolerances for making the text harder to read are probably so narrow, 
that the technique may as well be worthless.  At what point does effective 
become convoluted?  In all of his books, Tufte makes the point that dense 
does not mean well designed.

I think it better to achieve the same result through other means.  Striking 
examples, well drawn illustrations, anecdotes, intelligent graphs can all 
accomplish exactly the same thing while keeping the text clean and readable.  
The goal should be to focus attention, not create additional work.

Just my two cents, though.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: Linking

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Edward, 

I don't believe that LyX has this built-in, but you can use the package 
directly from within LyX, exactly as you would use it in LaTeX.  Add the 
package name to the LaTeX preamble (Documet  Settings  LaTeX preamble):

\usepackage{...}

Then, you can create links by inserting code with the TeX Code Inset (Insert  
TeX Code).  I've never really used this particular package, so I don't know how 
complicated it is. If it's somewhat ugly, I could possibly help create a module 
to simplify things.

Cheers,

Rob Oakes

LyX and LuaTeX

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX Users, 

I am currently slogging my way through a book chapter on advanced methods in 
LyX/LaTeX and just had a quick question.  Does anyone know if there is 
documentation on how to use LyX with luaTeX?  

I know that it isn't officially supported, and things would probably break 
terribly, and that it might corrupt my mind and force me to sacrifice my first 
born.  But I'm kind of curious to experiment.  Has anyone spent any time using 
luaTeX from within LyX?  Care to comment on just how broken things were?

Cheers,

Rob

Re: Understanding Lyx

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Frederick,

This is a very large question.  To narrow the scope (and provide better 
references), what specifically are you looking to do?  

When you say, sharable templates, what do you mean by that (templates are just 
LyX documents)?

What do you mean, convert a design from the drawingboard to a lyx template?  
Are you talking about using a LaTeX document class that already exists, or 
writing your own classes and styles?

Ditto for installing templates, as they are just documents, you mostly need to 
select a folder to keep them all together.  There is a templates folder 
included with LyX, but I would advise having a user templates folder and 
copying the best/most used items there.

When you say, bring two comps together, what are you looking to do?  If you 
mean syncing documents between the computers, have a look at dropbox.  Version 
control also works nicely (Subversion is best supported in LyX).

As far as examples, I would take a look at the TeX showcase 
(http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/).  That will give you an idea of what can be 
accomplished with LaTeX (and by extension, LyX).

There are many resources.  The first and most significant are the LyX manuals 
(available from the help menu).  Start with the Tutorial, and then take a 
gander at the User's Guide, Additional Features and any Specific manuals that 
look interesting.

Then, wander by the LyX wiki: wiki.lyx.org.  The wiki is a treasure trove of 
information about how to better mesh LyX with LaTeX, and by extension, how to 
create documents which bring a childlike sense of wonder to the world.

From there, you might consider wandering over to Steve Litt's LyX Library 
(http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/).  It includes some marvelous 
information, though some is a bit dated.

I've also written information about customizing LyX and how to use/create 
custom document classes.  You can find the links to those articles, and a brief 
summary of them at http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/writing/latex.

Finally, I happen to be working on a book that covers this exact subject.  (I 
happen to be working through the advanced LyX/LaTeX chapter right now and hope 
to finish it today, actually)  If you would be willing to provide feedback on 
the chapters, I would be happy to make the LyX/LaTeX chapters/appendix 
available for your review.

If you can be more specific with your earlier questions, i will also try and 
provide additional help for those as well.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: LyX and LuaTeX

[Rob Oakes]

Thanks for the link.

I was able to get LuaTeX working with normal pdfTeX documents via following the 
instructions on the wiki (using the MacTeX 2010 distribution and LyX 2.0).  I'm 
running into problems using fontspec, though.  I think that is due to the lack 
of a fontspec database.  (Described in the fontspec2010 docs.)  To generate the 
database, you need to download and run a script.  I'll have to experiment with 
it when I have a bit more time.

But, initial experiments show that it was easy to get up and running, and that 
it works with LyX 2.0 very well.  Take care with UTF characters, though.  I 
probably could have gotten it sorted out, but didn't really want to fuss with 
it.

I will update the wiki when I get a moment.  (I'm also going to have a go with 
fontspec and see if I can get the problems sorted).

Cheers,

Rob

XeTeX Updates in TeX Live 2010/MacTeX

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX Users,

Not sure if this is of interest to many LyX users, but I think I'll post it 
anyway.  TeX Live 2010/MacTeX were released a few weeks ago (maybe months ago, 
I haven't really been paying attention).  Anyway, I updated this morning and 
wanted to send a general report for Mac users.

Here's my report: if you are thinking about upgrading, do it.  Now.

MacTeX 2010 is a big improvement over MacTeX 2009.  Particularly if you're a 
XeTeX user.  The feature that has me *really* jazzed is that XeTeX has added 
support for margin kerning.  This means that several microtypographical 
goodies, like hanging punctuation 
(https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hanging_punctuation), finally 
work right.

The new default version of PDF is also now 1.5, which means that it no longer 
mangles my illustrations.  Yay!

When I compiled several of my test documents this morning, they looked 
noticeably better.  (Which isn't to say they looked poor last night.)

Also, it seems to work very well with LyX.  I have not yet had any trouble, 
even when compiling absurdly complicated things (like my book draft).

Anyway, I thought I would let you know.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: Understanding Lyx

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Frederick, 

 My apologies for not explaining myself adequately -- I'm a content
 person, not technical and hence the handicap.

Please don't apologize.  It would probably be a better world if content people 
forced technical people to explain themselves.

 I know what I want the first pages of my chapters to look like, but
 don't have a clue as to how to convert that into Lyx. 

Okay, it sounds like you are asking about chapter headings and styles.  Do I 
understand correctly? 

Here is what I would recommend, rather than try and code chapter headings on 
your own, try taking a look at a few of the packages/document classes that 
provide them.

For starters, check out out the memoir class.  It includes a very large number 
of well defined chapter styles.  (This PDF provides a good overview 
www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/MemoirChapStyles/MemoirChapStyles.pdf).  It will 
be likely that you can find one that matches your needs.  If not, all of the 
memoir examples include the source code, which you might be able to modify.

 This is a technical job no doubt, but is there some way to translate from
 sketchpage to Lyx formatting?

Short answer, yes.  But it can be ugly and there is no automated tool that 
allows you to do this.  You will need to write code.

Creating a new chapter heading in LyX requires writing style definitions and 
formatting instructions in LaTeX and base TeX.  Due to the work involved, these 
are then usually packaged as document classes or stand-alone modules.  The PDF 
I link provides several (five or six) examples.  There are even more on CTAN 
(the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network).

I notice that you are a publisher or editor.  If you need to produce a large 
number of unique document styles, here is a word of advice. I would recommend 
hiring a programmer to create the chapter headings for you.  Adjusting fonts, 
spacing, margins, etc. is relatively simple and you could likely do it without 
too much trouble on your own.

Chapter headings are not normally simple.  Especially if you will be using 
ornamentation.  Package writing (where this is invariably going) is a different 
beast than than using LyX or LaTeX to craft your text.

And while a programmer can produce a layout in a few hours, if you try and do 
it yourself, it will likely require *days* of work.  Therefore, my 
recommendation is to develop a style guide and price it out on eLance.  The $30 
or $40 you will spend on programming time will be saved many times over in 
frustration, time and productivity.  Please note that this advice only applies 
to chapter headings.

For your book cover, the title page, and other front-matter, I would recommend 
that you use a visual program called Scribus to design them.  You can then add 
them to the body through a package called pdfpages.  In LyX, this is done via 
the Insert  File  External material link in the menu.  When the dialog opens, 
select PDF from the available options and locate your file.

If you look at the archives of this list, you will find that the subject has 
been discussed multiple times.  There are many good suggestions in those 
threads.  (If you have trouble finding a specific thread, just search for Steve 
Litt as a contributor.  He preaches frontmatter design in a layout tool -- 
fingerpainting -- as gospel.)

Hope this is of some help.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: Fonts in LyX (and LaTeX and TeX)

[Rob Oakes]

On Nov 9, 2010, at 1:33 PM, Guenter Milde wrote:

 There is preliminary XeTeX support in the development version. Not
 ready for the masses.

On this point, I have to disagree.

Preliminary as it might be, I've found it very stable.  I've been using LyX 2 
for nearly a year, and have transitioned to using XeTeX for everything.  And 
quite frankly, I have fewer problems with LyX 2 than I do with LyX 1.6.

The entire text for my book and innumerable articles and reports have come out 
of LyX 2, and while development versions some four or five months ago left much 
to be desired, the most recent codebase is very stable.  I quite literally 
cannot tell you the last time it crashed on me.  I so much prefer it that I 
will never go back to LyX 1.6.  (And the copy I use has my outline bits in it, 
which presumably destabilize it even more.)

I'm not trying to be disagreeable here, but I think you underestimate the 
quality of your own work.  When LyX 2 is finally released, you deserve a party. 
LyX has gone from being a good program to being an exceptional one and I, for 
one, applaud you for that.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: Fonts in LyX (and LaTeX and TeX)

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Stefano,

 do you have any advice or pointers to sites explaining how to use margin 
 kerning in XeTeX? The notes posted by J Kew on the mailing list and on the 
 XeTeX wiki are way too cryptic for me.

Short answer, yes.  As far as I know, it hasn't yet been discussed much in the 
Interwebs, but there are several resources you can find on it.  The place to 
probably start is the XeTeX Microtypography website:

http://xetex.tk/mediawiki/index.php/Microtype_package_%28preliminary_version%29

There, you can download the latest version of the microtype package that 
enables margin kerning with XeTeX. To get things working correctly, you must 
use version 2.5 (or newer) of the package.  If the manual isn't dated 
11/5/2010, then you have the wrong one.

The microtype distributed with TeXLive 2010 *will not work.*  (And at the 
moment, xetex microtype is pretty limited.  It's only margin kerning.  Font 
expansion doesn't work.  Yet.)

After download, process the microtype.ins file with xelatex which will create 
the .sty files you need.

xelatex microtype.ins

Copy the entire directory to somewhere in your LaTeX path.  Run texhash.

Once you've installed the newest version of the package, you can enable 
microtype support by adding:

\usepackage{microtype}

to your preamble (see the attached sample doc).  While it is possible to tweak 
things, it shouldn't be necessary.  In fact, don't. microtype should detect 
which version of XeTeX you are using and enable the appropriate options.  The 
only time I ran into problems is when I tried to tweak the settings.

After that, put together a simple test document (or use mine).  To see if 
things are working correctly, you might want to turn on the showframes option 
of geometry.  (Test document also shows how to do this. PDF output also 
attached.)

Please keep in mind, you must have XeTeX 0.9997.4 or higher installed for 
margin kerning to work.  This version of XeTeX comes with TeX Live 2010.  I've 
been playing with it on my Mac, and it's been pretty stable.  As of yet, I have 
not looked at how hard it would be to get things up and running on Linux or 
Windows.

On another note, in my exuberance yesterday, I might have overstated the 
stability of LyX, the new version of XeLaTeX and microtype.  In my personal 
experience, it has been very, very stable.   But I should probably include the 
requisite disclaimer: your mileage may vary.

If you have any troubles or if something isn't clear, let me know.  I'm off 
work this week to try and get the book done and will be watching the list.

Cheers,

Rob

Attached:

1.) Sample LyX document, showing XeTeX microtype features.  Requires TeX Live 
2010, beta version of microtype package and beta1 of LyX to compile.
2.) Sample PDF output.


TestDoc-XeTeX.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document


TestDoc-XeTeX.lyx
Description: Binary data

RE: Custom Title Page in Articles

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Tim,

I want to make myself an article template that's otherwise normal, but
with a custom title page.

Good for you!

It wasn't until I started creating custom document classes and LyX modules
that I really started to think, Wow, this whole LyX thing is cool.  With a
little bit of effort, you can literally do anything.

 Basically, I want something that goes

(Nifty graphics with my company logo)

title
author
abstract

(More nifty graphics) 

In short, no, this shouldn't be too bad (or, it wouldn't be too bad for me;
I have since learned that my pain threshold is rather high).  It will,
however, involve some programming in LaTeX.  You will need to redefine a few
things and modify how the title page macro works.  I would also suggest that
you create both sets of nifty graphics in either Scribus or Inkscape and
export them as a single graphical element.  This will get added with
\includegraphics.  Getting the positioning and layout exactly right in LaTeX
can be excruciating.

(sermon/ Not merely bad, but excruciatingly painful. Yesterday, I spent
nearly an hour and a half modifying the spacing between different graphics
so that they would line up correctly in a grid.   The fill macros weren't
working right, and I didn't want to troubleshoot them.  So, I did it
manually, instead.  Now, I know better techniques for doing this sort of
thing.  But I kept thinking, it won't take that long.  Wrong.  It always
takes 5 times longer than expected.  Avoid this situation, if at all
possible.  Get it right in Inkscape, which takes about 2 seconds, and then
export the vector graphic and include  it that way. /sermon)

 Where do I start? 

By becoming informed.  Read the Customization Manual, and the Advanced
Topics manual.  Then proceed to the articles below.

 Is this something that can be done fairly easily? 

No, but it is worth the effort.

 Do I need a template in LaTeX? 

Yes.

For a couple of example documents I've created, see here:

http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/writing/latex

You may be specifically interested in this series (especially article 2),
which walks through a (somewhat complicated) CV class.

http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2009/11/25/latex-cv-part1
http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2009/11/30/latex-cv-part2

It might be worth taking a look at this, as well:

http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/08/02/texmemo

Both cover custom document classes I've created and some of the missteps I
made along the way.  You can also download the full source code.  If you'd
like it, I also have several other examples that I use for personal things
and I would be happy to send the .cls files.  I just haven't gotten around
to writing them up and posting them yet.

 [H]ow do I bind/import/convert/whatever it to work with LyX? 

You need a layout file.  It's different than a document class, and much
easier to put together.  For an overview on how the whole LaTeX/LyX thing
works, see here:

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

More about layouts can be found here:

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

and 

http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/07/13/custom-lyx-modules

The first LaTeX link at the top includes other relevant stuff.

I hope that helps.

One last thing.  I am writing a pair of book chapters about LyX
customization that covers the topic in (probably painful) detail.  It's not
quite finished, but will be soon.  (I really, really hope that it's done
today.)  If you think that they would be helpful, I would be happy to send
them.  The flip side of this particular bargain, though, is that I need
feedback on their content (cue diabolical music).  It would be wonderful to
get that from someone in the target audience.  If interested, please email
me privately and I'll send a download link.

Cheers,

Rob

PS (okay, this will be it) ... as you get a little further along, the list
can be a wonderful resource.  If you have specific questions about how to
implement a particular feature, or accomplish something specific, there are
many helpful people who are willing to help you tweak things.  Thus, don't
feel like you have to mount the learning curve all by yourself.  This may
not apply to you, but I tend to wait too long before asking questions.  It's
a very costly and obnoxious habit.  (Ask any one of my previous employers.)

Re: I just lost a footnote in a table

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Tim,

Footnotes in floats are weird.  Floats can migrate from page to page in an 
effort to balance the page layout.  This causes their footnotes to get left 
behind (or cut out completely). 

Try placing the table inside a minipage (box) within the float.  This will make 
sure that it stays on the same page.  It will also use a different numbering 
scheme (a,b,c ... if using the standard classes) and not screw up your document 
footnote numbering.

Cheers,

Rob Oakes

New Page Breaks

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX-Users,

Does anyone know if it is possible to create new types of breaks in LyX?  I've 
just discovered the \clearoddpage and \cleareven page commands in the lhelp 
package.  As I'm currently working on a project which uses illustrations on the 
even pages opposite chapter heads (e.g. Illustration Here | Chapter Heading), 
this command is something of a godsend.  It would be awesome if I could create 
an Even Page break, in much the same way that the Clear Double Page break 
works now.

Anyone have ideas?  I didn't see anything on it in the advanced manual.

Cheers,

Rob

RE: Font choices.

[Rob Oakes]

Hi John,

Are you looking to use them throughout the entire document, or as character
styles?  If you want to use them in the entire document, you can simply add
the LaTeX code to the preamble (Document  Settings).  If you want to create
custom character styles, you can create insets which include the needed
code.

This webpage has a bit more on the latter technique:

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

If you don't have font definition files, you could also make use of them
using XeLaTeX.  The process for doing this in LyX 2.0 is pretty
straightforward, but requires a bit of additional work in LyX 1.6.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: Problem

[Rob Oakes]

This is a stupid question, but I'll go ahead and ask it anyway.  What happens 
when you to export to PDF?  Is there any particular reason you need a DVI file? 
 (It's an old format and not very well supported.  PDF is a much better 
alternative.)

Cheers,

Rob

Exporting to a Custom Path

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX Users,

Does anyone know how to export a document to a custom URL with LyX? I've been 
playing with the creation of e-books using the XHTML export in LyX 2.0 (and it 
works really well), but would like to export to a directory different than the 
one which holds my files.

I can't seem to find an option in the Document Settings, Preferences or Menus.

Cheers,

Rob

Resizing Images During XHTML Export

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX Developers and Users,

I've been playing with using LyX as a way to create both print PDFs and ePub 
documents from a single source document. So far, everything works very, very 
well. (The XHMTL is extremely clean and easy to modify by tweaking the CSS.) 
What is not easy, however, is the management of images.  For print, it is 
necessary to have high resolution images (300 dpi +), but for eReaders, the 
images should be sized for screen (72 dpi).

Does anyone know if it is possible to resize JPEG and PNG images at the time of 
HTML export?

If there is no way to resize images, then would it be possible to specify the 
height and width dimensions in the IMG tag? This data is already present in 
the document (as it is being fed as LaTeX parameters). Could it be translated 
to HTML equivalents? Most browsers know how to respect the same units as LaTeX.

If not currently supported, would this be a very complicated addition to the 
existing code, might it be possible to submit a patch (now that we're in beta 
testing)? If not too complicated, I would be happy to take a stab at 
implementing a patch. (Unfortunately, I'm not very familiar with the HTML code.)

Cheers,

Rob

Separate CSS stylesheet and HTML into separate files

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX Users and Developers,

Does anyone know if LyX's current XHTML export allows for the HTML to be output 
in one file and for the CSS to be output to another? If this isn't currently 
possible, does anyone know how hard it might be to implement?

I've been working with a non-profit to create eBooks and print volumes from 
LyX, and so far, it's working very well. (BTW, thanks Richard for adding my 
little hack to the XHTML image code.) However, I've run into a snag with large 
documents that have their CSS included with the HTML file. To process these and 
get them packaged with Sigil is a little onerous. Being able to tell LyX to 
create a separate stylesheet to which we link would be a much better solution.

Cheers,

Rob

SageTeX and LyX

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX Users,

I've just started playing around with SAGE (www.sagemath.org) and was
very happy to see that there is a module which can be used with LyX.

However, in trying to get the module to work, I've run into a snag. I
have it installed, and I can even successfully compile the example
document from the Wiki. However, when I try and create my own documents,
it appears as though I'm not getting any output back from SAGE.

Other than adding the module to a new LyX document, is there some
configuration step that I am missing? Also, any explanation as to why
the example would appear to compile, but new documents might not?

I'm using LyX 2.1 (SVN) on Ubuntu 12.04, with a custom TeX Live 2011
install.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: SageTeX and LyX

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Scott, 

On Wed, 2012-10-03 at 06:16 -0400, Scott Kostyshak wrote:

 I've been meaning to checkout SAGE + LyX so if no one comes along to
 help you I might take a look.

I appreciate the offer. After some quality time looking into how the
module works and how SageTeX processes documents, I was able to get it
up and running. I found this page to be extremely helpful:
http://www.sagemath.org/doc/tutorial/sagetex.html

Of course, like all things, I was hoping to get a quick response via the
list. I decided last year that I wanted to go back to school to improve
my mechanical engineering skills and was hoping to get Sage working for
a lab report.

(Why I decided more education would be desirable is completely beyond
me. I've forgotten how thoroughly miserable it is to be a student. While
I frequently have to work late, it's been years since I've had to pull
an all-night session to finish homework. It's every bit as bad as I
remember. It might even be worse, if you factor in age.)

 How did you install SAGE? In the past
 I've compiled from source which was very smooth but took a while.
 There is also a PPA: https://launchpad.net/~aims/+archive/sagemath

To get Sage installed, I used the PPA. I thought about compiling from
source so that I could integrate it with the system Python, and then
thought better of it. The installation from the PPA was quick and I
haven't had any issues, so far.

To install the SageTeX module (which has to be done separately from
installing Sage), I copied the sagetex folder into my LaTeX path and ran
texhash.

 Which version do you have installed?

I'm running version 5.1.

 Does the terminal output or View Messages toolbar give any useful
 output that you could share?

The output was helpful, but didn't make much sense until I read more
about how SageTeX works.

Sage processes files in two steps. You write your document, then you run
LaTeX (pdflatex, xelatex, lualatex, or regular latex) on it. This
creates a second file, with the Sage processing instructions in it. This
has a *.sagetex.sage file extension.

At this point, you have to run Sage on this secondary file, which
generates your equations, plots and other elements so that they can be
incorporated into your original LaTeX file. At that point, you run LaTeX
on the original file a second time to produce the typeset document.

The problem I was having is that I was only running LaTeX on my new
documents. The converters I set up didn't follow the appropriate pathway
of LaTeX - Sage - LaTeX. Once I added in the Sage processing step,
everything started to work.

 Do you have a minimum working example that you could send or link to?

Absolutely, attached is a simple example that I'm working up into a
template.

I'm just getting started with Sage, but now that it's working, I'm quite
impressed with what I've seen. For the past 10 years or so, I've been
using aging copies of Maple for symbolic computation, and this looks
like it will allow me to modernize. (I don't actually have to do much
symbolic math, so it hasn't been that big of a deal.)

Being able to work from within LyX, in a manner very similar to the way
I work with R code via Knitr/Sweave, is going to be very nice. Knowing
that it's all open is even better.

Cheers,

Rob

PS, when I get time, I'm going to try and update the instructions on the
Wiki to make a couple of things clearer. I'll also probably write a blog
post about it, just so I've got a record of how I got things working. If
you'd like, I'll send you a link when it's finished.


Sage Report.lyx
Description: application/lyx

LaTeX Question

[Rob Oakes]

Dear Group,

This is more of a LaTeX question rather than a LyX question, but I know
there are many LaTeX experts here, too, so here goes.

I'm currently working with a set of fluids equations which have both
velocity and volume terms. Given how frequently the variable v appears
in both (by convention), I would like to somehow distinguish them in my
notes. (Right now, I've been using an uppercase V for volume and
lowercase v for velocity.) 

I've seen several texts use a variant of the V character, however, to
make the distinction more clear. Any idea how this might be done? What
is the best way to use a variant character in a math expression, or is
there a standard LaTeX symbol for volume? (Regular V appears to be used
for velocity, variant V for volume.)

I've already looked through the general LaTeX symbols list and the LyX
menus, but wasn't able to find the symbols used in the text.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: Getting rid of You cannot type two spaces this way message?

[Rob Oakes]

On Wed, 2012-11-21 at 16:36 +0100, Liviu Andronic wrote:
 On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 4:08 PM, Alan R. Bleier ar...@cornell.edu wrote:
  I agree completely with Trevor.
 
 I completely disagree with Trevor. Hitting double space [to get a full
 stop] is as unnatural and unhelpful as it gets. This may make some
 sense for a mobile platform, but is utterly unneeded on the desktop. I
 very much hope that LyX doesn't go the way of the iThingies.

It isn't just unhelpful, it's also wrong. From a typographical,
stylistic, and grammatical point of view (see Grammar girl's take, who
also cites the Chicago Manual of Style, the AP stylebook, and MLA to
back herself up [1]).

One of the things I particularly like about LyX is that it forces me
into structure. I've invested enough time to create templates, modules,
and classes for my work. LyX makes my writing fit into those classes,
which saves me lots and lots of time. Little things, like not typing two
spaces, are a feature as far as I'm concerned.

If I need the ability to type multiple spaces, this can be created via a
special style. LyX code, for example, allows control over white space;
which means it's there when I need it.

I would much prefer that LyX default to the stylistically accepted way
of things, with other methods available via styles. Which is to say, I
like how it works now.

[1]
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/spaces-period-end-of-sentence.aspx

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?

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Wolfgang,

I'm glad they were helpful:

On Tue, 2012-12-11 at 10:36 +0100, Wolfgang Engelmann wrote:
 Am Montag, 10. Dezember 2012, 21:31:25 schrieben Sie:
 
 Hi, Rob, 
 
 has this been done already:
 
 TeXLive 2009 is included with Ubuntu 10.04, if you are able to update your 
 Linux distribution. If not, it is possible to install newer versions of 
 TeXLive alongside an existing install. I am currently working on a blog 
 post that explains how this is done and I will post it when finished.

A lot of those entries have gotten a bit long in the tooth (though I
think everything is still applicable, one of the really nice thing about
TeX and LyX, it never feels like there is a system of planned
obsolescence).

Regarding how to upgrade TeX Live, I did write a post describing how to
do it: http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/07/15/latex-custom

Though it talks about LaTeX 2010, the instructions can be adapted to
nearly any LaTeX distribution, as far as I know. I used the same
procedure recently to install TeXLive 2012.

(Speaking of which, if you use TeXLive 2012 and luaTeX, be very careful.
They've made some big changes, and it's caused a bunch of things to
break. Or, at least none of my luaTeX documents will compile anymore;
both from LyX and pure TeX. I haven't yet had time to sort out where the
problem is.)

I'd love to link to a more updated set of instructions. When you finish
your post, let me know, I'll to post a link.

Cheers,

Rob

Exporting to a Custom Path

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX Users,

Does anyone know how to export a document to a custom URL with LyX? I've been 
playing with the creation of e-books using the XHTML export in LyX 2.0 (and it 
works really well), but would like to export to a directory different than the 
one which holds my files.

I can't seem to find an option in the Document Settings, Preferences or Menus.

Cheers,

Rob

Resizing Images During XHTML Export

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX Developers and Users,

I've been playing with using LyX as a way to create both print PDFs and ePub 
documents from a single source document. So far, everything works very, very 
well. (The XHMTL is extremely clean and easy to modify by tweaking the CSS.) 
What is not easy, however, is the management of images.  For print, it is 
necessary to have high resolution images (300 dpi +), but for eReaders, the 
images should be sized for screen (72 dpi).

Does anyone know if it is possible to resize JPEG and PNG images at the time of 
HTML export?

If there is no way to resize images, then would it be possible to specify the 
height and width dimensions in the  tag? This data is already present in 
the document (as it is being fed as LaTeX parameters). Could it be translated 
to HTML equivalents? Most browsers know how to respect the same units as LaTeX.

If not currently supported, would this be a very complicated addition to the 
existing code, might it be possible to submit a patch (now that we're in beta 
testing)? If not too complicated, I would be happy to take a stab at 
implementing a patch. (Unfortunately, I'm not very familiar with the HTML code.)

Cheers,

Rob

Separate CSS stylesheet and HTML into separate files

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX Users and Developers,

Does anyone know if LyX's current XHTML export allows for the HTML to be output 
in one file and for the CSS to be output to another? If this isn't currently 
possible, does anyone know how hard it might be to implement?

I've been working with a non-profit to create eBooks and print volumes from 
LyX, and so far, it's working very well. (BTW, thanks Richard for adding my 
little hack to the XHTML image code.) However, I've run into a snag with large 
documents that have their CSS included with the HTML file. To process these and 
get them packaged with Sigil is a little onerous. Being able to tell LyX to 
create a separate stylesheet to which we link would be a much better solution.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: .odt -> .lyx

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Tomaso,

You may be able to modify this to suit your purposes.

http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/05/14/msword-lyx-import

You obviously wouldn't need to mess about with the Word step, but the script 
might be useful for converting from ODF to LaTeX?  There are links to the other 
tools as well so that you can automate the entire process.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: .odt -> .lyx

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Tommaso,

Sorry to hear about the difficulties. I actually had better luck creating my 
own import path.

ODF -> HTML -> Run tidy on HTML -> HTML2LaTeX-> LyX

This made sure that the markup coming into LyX was as clean as possible with no 
strange ERT or other data that couldn't be converted. I also had good luck with 
the conversion detailed in the article link that I sent. Again, it produced 
very clean input, though there were some limitations.

Any thoughts on how we might make it more approachable for the casual LyX user?

Cheers,

Rob

Side Caption Insets for Memoir

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX Developers and Users,

For the past couple of days, I've been working on a custom LaTeX document class 
for a non-profit. It is based on memoir, and while it is still a work in 
progress, I'd like to think that it is rather awesome.

Because the final goal is to use this document class in LyX (version 2.0, they 
have already downloaded and started using the release candidate), I'm trying to 
create custom insets and environments for the document class features. One 
environment that has me stumped though, is how to create an inset for the 
memoir "sidecaption" feature.

The sidecaption environment allows you to typeset the caption of your figure in 
the margin (similar to the way that the Tufte handout and book classes work), 
and the style guide for this class calls for their use. This is how an example 
in LaTeX would work.

\begin{figure}
\begin{sidecaption}{A typical learning center in Mexico City.}
\resizebox*{\textwidth}{!}{\includegraphics{learning1.jpg}}
\end{sidecaption}
\end{figure}

Does anyone have any ideas on how I could create an inset that captures all of 
this information? The tricky bit seems to be that the caption is specified in 
the \begin{sidecaption} statement, rather than as a \caption command. I know 
that LyX 2 now supports creating insets for optional arguments, but I'm not 
entirely sure how I could use that to solve this difficulty.

I'd greatly appreciate any thoughts. (Also, if it works, this would be a very 
nice addition to the memoir layout that currently ships with LyX 2. Would it be 
too late to incorporate it?)

Cheers,

Rob

Re: Side Caption Insets for Memoir

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX Developers and Users,

> I'm trying to create custom insets and environments for the document class 
> features. One environment that has me stumped though, is how to create an 
> inset for the memoir "sidecaption" feature.
> 
> The sidecaption environment allows you to typeset the caption of your figure 
> in the margin (similar to the way that the Tufte handout and book classes 
> work), and the style guide for this class calls for their use. This is how an 
> example in LaTeX would work.

So I need to RTFM a little more often. After a bit of head scratching, I've 
been able to create a workable Side Caption style. You simply place it inside 
of the figure or table float and then use the Opt inset to add the caption. 
Very smooth and easy to use, and I'm quite happy.

Here's the definition I used:

Style Side_Caption
CategorySpecial_Commands
Margin  Static
LatexType   Environment
LatexName   sidecaption
NextNoIndent1
TopSep  0.5
ParSep  0.5
BottomSep   0.5
Align   Block
AlignPossible   Block, Left, Right, Center
LabelType   No_Label
HTMLTag sidecaption
HTMLItemp
RequiredArgs1
End

I've had a questions come up, though:

I'm not very happy telling a user to go to "Insert > Short Title" in order to 
add a caption. This seems confusing, from a usability standpoint. I would 
prefer to have a custom inset that they can add that says 
"Custom:Side_Caption". Is there any way to create a custom "opt" inset? Even 
after RTFMing, I was not able to find one.

Thoughts would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Rob

Epigraph for Memoir

[Rob Oakes]

Dear LyX-Developers,

So, after working on the Side Caption style, I got excited and thought that I 
would try and make an "epigraph" style for memoir and my custom class.

The epigraph command allows the enterprising author to add a quotation to their 
document prior to the start of the chapter (see page 249 of the memoir manual). 
It takes arguments:

\epigraph{text}{source}

Here is my layout definition that would enable this for the memoir class:

Style Epigraph
CategorySpecial_Commands
Margin  Static
LatexType   command
LatexName   lyxepigraph
RequiredArgs1
NextNoIndent1
LeftMargin  MMM
RightMargin MMM
TopSep  0.5
ParSep  0.5
BottomSep   0.5
Align   Block
AlignPossible   Block, Left, Right, Center
LabelType   No_Label
HTMLTag epigraph
HTMLItemp
Font
Family  Roman
Shape   Italic
EndFont
Preamble
\newcommand{\lyxepigraph}[2]{\epigraph{#2}{#1}}
End Preamble
End

The preamble line is necessary because LyX places required arguments added 
through the "opt" inset before paragraph text. The memoir epigraph command 
takes first the paragraph text and then the source.

Like in the case of the last example, is there a way to create a custom "opt" 
inset that could have "Epigraph Source" for the label and could be added from 
"Insert > Custom > Epgraph Source". I wasn't able to find a readily obvious 
answer.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: Title placement and font size

[Rob Oakes]

> 
> This is just one man's opinion, but I never use the document class's features 
> for the front matter. I just use custom environments and ERT (embedded LaTeX) 
> to place all elements of the front matter -- the title, the author, the cover 
> image, the copyright page, the dedication and acknowledgements, the "here's 
> how you use this book", the "about the author", etc. The way I see it, every 
> element of the frontmatter is a one-off thing, and one-off things are ideal 
> for fingerpainting.

I actually go one step further. I crate all of the frontmatter using a matching 
stylesheet in Scribs. I then add the material using PDFpages.

To that end, I also disable the \maketitle macro so that I can still use 
\author, \title, etc. and have all of my headers and footers look correct.

\renewcommand{\maketitle}{}

LyX Promotion

[Rob Oakes]

Dear Users and Developers,

Thank you to both Pavel and Stefano for ollowing up with Google about why the 
GSoC application was turned down. Is there any way that I could help in that 
review? Stefano, will you be attending the IRC meeting to be held later today? 
I think it's very important that we understand why LyX was rejected as a 
mentoring organization, and I'd be willing to hep in any way necessary.

While I have some ideas about why it may have happened, I think that Pavel hit 
the nail on the head. When I talk to people about LyX, they seem to think of it 
as a specialized academic writing tool. Basically, a program which helps 
professors and students write a thesis or articles. (To be even more narrow, it 
seems like many think it is for math and physics people to write a thesis or 
article.) Which is to say, a specialized program with an incredibly small user 
base and use.

While that stereotype may be somewhat true (I don't think anyone would argue 
that many of the developers and users are within academics), it significantly 
understates LyX's appeal, especially if you consider the enhancements available 
in the upcoming version. From my own personal experience, I've found LyX to be 
the most capable pre-press/writing tool I've ever come across. If I were a 
publishing company or involved in the creation of any type of documentation, I 
would be looking  at LyX very carefully. It's the only tool that I know that 
allows you to manage collaboration, typesetting the final output, and target 
both electronic and print from the same source. With the recent explosion of 
electronic publishing and eBooks, I think that makes it *highly* relevant.

Yet, I'm not sure that the wider community appreciates that. (Hearing Google's 
rationale for rejecting the GSoC application will help somewhat in clarifying 
how LyX is perceived.) Which really brings me to the reason I'm writing.

Would it be worth trying to promote LyX to people who might find it helpful? 

We've talked for a long time about writing a LyX book, which is an excellent 
and wonderful project. But what if we first tested those waters by tackling 
some smaller projects first?

For example:

1.) I just learned about a new open design magazine this morning, called 
LibreGraphics magazine (http://libregraphicsmag.com/). The goal of the 
publication is to help designers find tools for their work. It seems like an 
article about using LyX for book design would be a natural fit for their target 
audience. 

2.) In similar vein, the LibreGraphics meeting is also coming up. This year, it 
will be held in Montreal. LibreGraphics targets a similar demographic, and it 
seems like such a presentation would be a natural fit. Even better, they pay 
the travel expenses of presenters (http://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2011/). 
Might anyone be interested in talking about using LyX to talk about book 
design, typography, or writing?

3.) It's been some time since Linux magazine or one of the other trade 
publications published a general purpose article on LyX. Might it be worth 
creating and submitting one? We might try and target Linux users magazine 
(http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/), ZdNet, or one of the large Linux blogs (like 
OMG!Ubuntu, http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/).

4.) It seems that there are people willing to help promote/evangelize LyX, but 
I'm not sure we offer much in the way of promotional materials to help. Would 
it be worthwhile to create a limited number of tutorials for people, like 
Venom, who will be holding seminars or workshops? (I've also thought about 
teaching a design workshop through my local library, and these materials would 
help provide a curriculum.)

The tutorials could address some of the finer points of using LyX that are not 
covered in the manuals. For example, how do you collaborate using version 
control? What is the process for creating custom, typeset publications with LyX 
and LaTeX? We could publish cohesive examples and then walk through how the 
code works. They might describe principles of design, or typographical effects, 
and how they can be accomplished using LyX. Maybe we could create a writeup on 
how to prepare files for multiple output formats (print, web, eBook) using a 
single source. I'm sure that there are other tutorials that I'm overlooking.

Which really brings me to the point I want to make: if we target the right 
groups and create nice looking materials, it could go a long ways to clarifying 
LyX's position in the free-softare world. It's also likely that we might find 
developers to contribute time and code, businesses who would be willing to 
support future development, and others who could help grow the LyX user base.

Many of the other projects who were accepted seem to have dedicated 
marketing/promotion teams. Would it be worth trying to organize such an 
endeavor for LyX? It might provide a great way for less code savvy types to 
contribute to the project.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: LyX Promotion

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Steve,

> I'm not quite sure what you guys mean by "semantic import/export", but if you 
> mean exporting the text marked up with (empty) styles and the (empty) style 
> definitions so all I have to do with the MSWord file is fill in the styles, 
> then I'm on it like a squirrel on a tree. Let me tell you why.
> 
> The (insert your own curse phrase here) fools controlling the various eBook 
> formats have made it almost necessary to use MSWord as the input to the eBook 
> conversion process. Saaayyy what??? So let me get this straight. I write 
> my book in a good software like LyX, and then have to rewrite it in (insert 
> your favorite phrase meaning "incompetent" here) MSWord in order to put it on 
> a Kindle? Really?

If you're using version 2.0 of LyX, you can also export to XHTML. Kindle and 
Barnes and Noble PubIt let you upload HTML files without first converting to 
Word. If you don't mind hacking the layout files, you can also get a huge 
degree of control over how your document appears.

For example, if you wanted to change the heading for chapter style so that it 
exports to  (right now, it exports to ), you could use the following in 
the local layout of your file.

Style Chapter
HTMLTag h2
End

If you wanted to modify how the CSS appears, you could then use the HTMLStyle 
tag to do something fancy.  For example, the CSS below would allow you to make 
an off-white headline example with small caps.

Style Chapter
HTML Tagh2
HTMLStyle   "font-family:Georgia,serif: color: #4#443C; 
font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: none; font-weight 100; margin-bottom: 
0;"
End

You can use this technique to override any of the of default CSS for any 
document class.

it's also a very good way to import a file into Word, since you can specify 
exactly what you would like for the styles to appear as, and Word will do its 
best to imitate them (as will OpenOffice). Generally, it does a pretty good job 
of getting both the styles and the appearance.

I've been using it to exchange chapters of the neverending book project with 
the editors. So far, no major mishaps. It may even be pretty easy to automate 
using either the Java tool I created for importing Word files or an external 
tool.

What I'm curious about, though, is if there is an HTML import script. That's a 
part of LyX I haven't played with at all.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: XeTeX (No Math!)

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Richard,

There is a known bug in older versions of XeTeX which can cause problems with 
math symbols in some fonts. The bug report for Ubuntu can be found here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/texlive-bin/+bug/364627

I was able to fix the problem by editing a configuration file:

/etc/texmf/dvipdfm/dvipdfmx.cfg

Comment out: "f pdftex.map"
Uncomment: "f dvipdfm.map" 

I haven't had any trouble with newer versions (either that shipped in TeX Live 
2009, or 2010).

Cheers,

Rob

Re: Timeline generation

[Rob Oakes]

There are two latext packages that can be used for timelines: timeslins and 
chronology. This links discusses both of them, they seem pretty straightforward 
to use and chronology creates a nicely drawn figure.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/217834/how-to-create-a-timeline-with-latex

If your'e feeling more daring, you can also use TKIZ or PGF, which are LaTeX 
drawing packages.. The same link provides an example of how you might choose to 
do so.

While it would be convenient if LyX provided this functionality, I think it is 
a more natural fit for Inkscape, gnuPlot, or one of the other plot figure 
programs. I would much prefer to use the limited development resources of LyX 
go toward improved XHTML support, easier customization of LaTeX document, a 
styles editor, or another feature which directly addresses the "customization 
learning curve."

Just my two cents, though.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: LyXHTML image resolution

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Ramin,

> I'm using 2.0 to export html which I can then convert to epub format
> with Calibre.

I've been playing with the same export. So far I've been really happy. Rather 
than using Calibre to do the conversion, you might take a look at Sigil. It 
creates a much cleaner ePub (though Calibre is more than an adequate solution).

> The images are horribly pixellated, and there seems to be no option to
> increase their resolution. Is it possible to adjust the image resolution?

Unfortunately, no. I'm in the process of working on some improvements for 
XHTML/ePub for LyX 2.1, this is going to be on the of the big ones. Ultimately, 
I'd like to be able to specify different resolutions for when exporting to 
print (PDF) versus Web (HTML).

For right now, the best work around I've seen is to create different branches. 
Entitle one "Print" and the other "Web." Then, do the PDF image conversion on 
your own using Photoshop, Inkscape, Illustrator, or Ghostscript. Put a PNG 
image in the Web branch and the PDF version in the Print branch. Then, activate 
the web when exporting to HTML and the print branch when exporting to PDF.

I understand this isn't perfect, but it will let you target both print and web 
with the same text. It also lets you add other components to your web branch 
that might not make sense in a print document or vice/versa.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: Most suitable image format

[Rob Oakes]

It actually depends on how you intend to use the resulting document. If you 
will be printing the resulting PDF on a professional press, then you will want 
to use a lossless format (most likely tiff), or a high quality jpeg.  

If the PDF is to be put on your website, you will probably want to use a lossy 
format of some type. It will give a better quality to file size ratio, even 
though it will introduce some artifacts into the image.  But unless your 
readers will be viewing the image at very high resolution (onscreen), they are 
not going to notice.

Hope that's of some help.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: Most suitable image format

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Sam,

You can use the same version of the document, just place the print image in one 
branch and the web version in another. (Branches may be LyX's single most 
awesome, never heard-of feature.)

When you want to compile for print, then activate that branch. When you want to 
compile for web, activate the other. Then you aren't having to maintain two 
copies of your document.

Generally, I prefer jpeg for photographs. If your using Photoshop or GIMP, you 
can specify the amount of compression you want applied to the picture. PNG 
would also work, but it's my opinion that it doesn't preserve color quite as 
well.

Cheers,

Rob