Re: Index doesn't get output

2013-12-08 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sun, 08 Dec 2013 22:51:48 +1300
Andrew Parsloe apars...@clear.net.nz wrote:

 
 
 On 8/12/2013 5:27 p.m., Richard Opheim wrote:
  Why doesn't the index in the attached minimal ex. output?
  Using LyX 2.0.6. on WIN8
  --
  Richard Opheim
  Skype name: richard.opheim
 
  Self-publishing Consultant
  Editing---Layout---Musical Scores---Images---Ebooks
  https://sites.google.com/site/opheimrichard/home
  https://sites.google.com/site/opheimrichard/home
 
  blog:
  http://foliocirculaire.blogspot.com
  http://foliocirculaire.blogspot.com/
 
 I think this is because you are using the memoir class. It has its
 own indexing commands -- see section 17.2 of the memoir manual,
 memman.pdf. However I haven't tried to prepare an index with memoir.

LOL, Troubleshooters.Com has a policy against using Memoir. It can be
convenient, and it has the best book layout documentation on the
planet, but it's too different, and it conflicts with hyperref, and
just requires a hell of a lot of tweaking.

To my way of thinking, either you should ALWAYS use Memoir or NEVER use
it, and I've chosen the latter. Because you need to be a Memoir expert
to use it. Out of self defense, every book I've written in the past
five years was made with a document class I personally derived directly
from plain old Book. Not too snazzy, but it works, and I know
everything under the hood.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: pleading paper

2013-12-08 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sun, 8 Dec 2013 10:31:12 +
Ingar Pareliussen ingar.parelius...@dmmh.no wrote:

 Hi
 
 Indexes is often very fragile, and the pleading paper template are
 quite crude. The problem is that an index pages are very different to
 a normal page (two columns etc). However, by moving the numbering to
 after the index I were able to get it working.
 
 If you need the numbering on the index pages as well, it would be
 more tricky... And you probably either need to find another way, or
 ask someone with more LaTeX-index knowledge than me. 
 
 Ingar

I've also found that indexes often require multiple runs of latex or
makeindex, and if you really want it to work right, it's often best to
set up a shellscript to export LyX to LaTeX, then compile that, run
makeindex, compile again, then convert to ps and then pdf. This has the
added benefit of leaving behind all sorts of temp files that you can
use to troubleshoot the issue.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: pleading paper

2013-12-08 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sun, 08 Dec 2013 11:13:48 -0800
John White j...@whitelawchartered.com wrote:

 Thanks Steve,
 
 A bit above my pay-grade, I fear.  My secretary uses libreoffice, for 
 which she has a pleading paper template (perhaps she made it). She
 has no problem getting .odt files onto searchable pdfs. I think she
 just does up the document and then adds the pleading template. Not
 sure.  I am sure that she thinks I am silly to insist on using lyx
 when searchable pleading paper with indexes is required.  On the
 other hand, to the extent that what I do can be called
 thinking, (some wouldn't call it that) I think in lyx, not .odt.
 
 John

Hi John,

Point of clarification: I wouldn't be caught dead using LyX for any
document under 10K words. For short docs, LibreOffice is just fine. Or
straight TeX, which is dead bang simple. If the pleadings are less than
10K words, why fight city hall: Use LibreOffice. LibreOffice, whose
styles suck, still takes 1/10 the time to make styles that LaTeX based
formats like LyX do. An hour or a day to make a style is no problem if
you allocate it over the two months it took you to bang out 100K words,
but it's a tragedy if you allocate it over the two days a 10K document
took to write.


NOTE: I stop here to give a chance to those who will come in to tell me
that styles in LyX/LaTeX would be easy if only I were good at them, or
to claim that various packages solve all problems, or to claim that
LyX/LaTeX doc classes are so wonderful you can simply use their
existing styles.


It's very possible, and I think advisable, to use LyX for some things
and LibreOffice for others.

If you often write big documents, like over 20K words, I'd recommend
you learn a little bit more about LyX, the latex executable,
shellscripts, index internals, LaTeX commands and environments, and the
like. Long run, you'll have more aesthetic output, and save time.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Index doesn't get output

2013-12-08 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sun, 08 Dec 2013 22:51:48 +1300
Andrew Parsloe <apars...@clear.net.nz> wrote:

> 
> 
> On 8/12/2013 5:27 p.m., Richard Opheim wrote:
> > Why doesn't the index in the attached minimal ex. output?
> > Using LyX 2.0.6. on WIN8
> > --
> > Richard Opheim
> > Skype name: richard.opheim
> >
> > Self-publishing Consultant
> > Editing---Layout---Musical Scores---Images---Ebooks
> > https://sites.google.com/site/opheimrichard/home
> > <https://sites.google.com/site/opheimrichard/home>
> >
> > blog:
> > http://foliocirculaire.blogspot.com
> > <http://foliocirculaire.blogspot.com/>
> 
> I think this is because you are using the memoir class. It has its
> own indexing commands -- see section 17.2 of the memoir manual,
> memman.pdf. However I haven't tried to prepare an index with memoir.

LOL, Troubleshooters.Com has a policy against using Memoir. It can be
convenient, and it has the best book layout documentation on the
planet, but it's too different, and it conflicts with hyperref, and
just requires a hell of a lot of tweaking.

To my way of thinking, either you should ALWAYS use Memoir or NEVER use
it, and I've chosen the latter. Because you need to be a Memoir expert
to use it. Out of self defense, every book I've written in the past
five years was made with a document class I personally derived directly
from plain old Book. Not too snazzy, but it works, and I know
everything under the hood.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: pleading paper

2013-12-08 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sun, 8 Dec 2013 10:31:12 +
Ingar Pareliussen <ingar.parelius...@dmmh.no> wrote:

> Hi
> 
> Indexes is often very fragile, and the pleading paper template are
> quite crude. The problem is that an index pages are very different to
> a normal page (two columns etc). However, by moving the numbering to
> after the index I were able to get it working.
> 
> If you need the numbering on the index pages as well, it would be
> more tricky... And you probably either need to find another way, or
> ask someone with more LaTeX-index knowledge than me. 
> 
> Ingar

I've also found that indexes often require multiple runs of latex or
makeindex, and if you really want it to work right, it's often best to
set up a shellscript to export LyX to LaTeX, then compile that, run
makeindex, compile again, then convert to ps and then pdf. This has the
added benefit of leaving behind all sorts of temp files that you can
use to troubleshoot the issue.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: pleading paper

2013-12-08 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sun, 08 Dec 2013 11:13:48 -0800
John White <j...@whitelawchartered.com> wrote:

> Thanks Steve,
> 
> A bit above my pay-grade, I fear.  My secretary uses libreoffice, for 
> which she has a pleading paper template (perhaps she made it). She
> has no problem getting .odt files onto searchable pdfs. I think she
> just does up the document and then adds the pleading template. Not
> sure.  I am sure that she thinks I am silly to insist on using lyx
> when searchable pleading paper with indexes is required.  On the
> other hand, to the extent that what I do can be called
> "thinking," (some wouldn't call it that) I think in lyx, not .odt.
> 
> John

Hi John,

Point of clarification: I wouldn't be caught dead using LyX for any
document under 10K words. For short docs, LibreOffice is just fine. Or
straight TeX, which is dead bang simple. If the pleadings are less than
10K words, why fight city hall: Use LibreOffice. LibreOffice, whose
styles suck, still takes 1/10 the time to make styles that LaTeX based
formats like LyX do. An hour or a day to make a style is no problem if
you allocate it over the two months it took you to bang out 100K words,
but it's a tragedy if you allocate it over the two days a 10K document
took to write.


NOTE: I stop here to give a chance to those who will come in to tell me
that styles in LyX/LaTeX would be easy if only I were good at them, or
to claim that various packages solve all problems, or to claim that
LyX/LaTeX doc classes are so wonderful you can simply use their
existing styles.


It's very possible, and I think advisable, to use LyX for some things
and LibreOffice for others.

If you often write big documents, like over 20K words, I'd recommend
you learn a little bit more about LyX, the latex executable,
shellscripts, index internals, LaTeX commands and environments, and the
like. Long run, you'll have more aesthetic output, and save time.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Fancy cover page?

2013-12-04 Thread Steve Litt 
On Wed, 4 Dec 2013 11:43:31 -0500
Ignacio Martinez igna...@virginia.edu wrote:

 Hi,
 
 This time I need to do a fancy cover page, like
 http://curry.virginia.edu/uploads/resourceLibrary/17_Castleman_All_or_Nothing.pdf
 Can somebody help me do this in LyX? I have the logo as a svg and png.
 
 Thanks a lot!
 
 Ignacio
 
 PS: They are pushing me to use MS Word, which is a problem because I
 use linux...

Why not simply not declare it's a cover page, and let it have a header
and footer like every other page that doesn't begin a chapter?

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Fancy cover page?

2013-12-04 Thread Steve Litt 
On Wed, 4 Dec 2013 11:43:31 -0500
Ignacio Martinez igna...@virginia.edu wrote:

 Hi,
 
 This time I need to do a fancy cover page, like
 http://curry.virginia.edu/uploads/resourceLibrary/17_Castleman_All_or_Nothing.pdf
 Can somebody help me do this in LyX? I have the logo as a svg and png.
 
 Thanks a lot!
 
 Ignacio
 
 PS: They are pushing me to use MS Word, which is a problem because I
 use linux...

Why not simply not declare it's a cover page, and let it have a header
and footer like every other page that doesn't begin a chapter?

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Fancy cover page?

2013-12-04 Thread Steve Litt 
On Wed, 4 Dec 2013 11:43:31 -0500
Ignacio Martinez <igna...@virginia.edu> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> This time I need to do a fancy cover page, like
> http://curry.virginia.edu/uploads/resourceLibrary/17_Castleman_All_or_Nothing.pdf
> Can somebody help me do this in LyX? I have the logo as a svg and png.
> 
> Thanks a lot!
> 
> Ignacio
> 
> PS: They are pushing me to use MS Word, which is a problem because I
> use linux...

Why not simply not declare it's a cover page, and let it have a header
and footer like every other page that doesn't begin a chapter?

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Paragraph Spacing

2013-11-30 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sat, 30 Nov 2013 16:31:07 + (UTC)
Martin Hooper marti...@blueyonder.co.uk wrote:

 How do I change the spacing between paragraphs in Lyx...?
 
 I want the line spacing to be single as it is the default but to add
 more space between the last line of the previous paragraph and the
 first line of the next one.
 
 Cheers
 Martin

Ooh, ooh, ooh, I know that. Call on me!

This list has five million questions I can't answer, so it's great to
get one I can. Here's the answer:

Document-settings-Text_layout-Vertical_space-Bigskip.

You can use custom instead of Bigskip to set the exact value.

If you want to have both indentation and interparagraph spacing
(everyone I talk to says that's horrible and the mark of an amateur),
you can do it with LaTeX, but I leave that as your own exercise and
advise you not to do it.


SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Paragraph Spacing

2013-11-30 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sat, 30 Nov 2013 16:31:07 + (UTC)
Martin Hooper marti...@blueyonder.co.uk wrote:

 How do I change the spacing between paragraphs in Lyx...?
 
 I want the line spacing to be single as it is the default but to add
 more space between the last line of the previous paragraph and the
 first line of the next one.
 
 Cheers
 Martin

Ooh, ooh, ooh, I know that. Call on me!

This list has five million questions I can't answer, so it's great to
get one I can. Here's the answer:

Document-settings-Text_layout-Vertical_space-Bigskip.

You can use custom instead of Bigskip to set the exact value.

If you want to have both indentation and interparagraph spacing
(everyone I talk to says that's horrible and the mark of an amateur),
you can do it with LaTeX, but I leave that as your own exercise and
advise you not to do it.


SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Paragraph Spacing

2013-11-30 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sat, 30 Nov 2013 16:31:07 + (UTC)
Martin Hooper <marti...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

> How do I change the spacing between paragraphs in Lyx...?
> 
> I want the line spacing to be single as it is the default but to add
> more space between the last line of the previous paragraph and the
> first line of the next one.
> 
> Cheers
> Martin

Ooh, ooh, ooh, I know that. Call on me!

This list has five million questions I can't answer, so it's great to
get one I can. Here's the answer:

Document->settings->Text_layout->Vertical_space->Bigskip.

You can use custom instead of Bigskip to set the exact value.

If you want to have both indentation and interparagraph spacing
(everyone I talk to says that's horrible and the mark of an amateur),
you can do it with LaTeX, but I leave that as your own exercise and
advise you not to do it.


SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Multi-documents

2013-11-29 Thread Steve Litt 
On Fri, 29 Nov 2013 12:46:23 + (UTC)
Ben mike1...@icloud.com wrote:

 Hello,
 I use Lyx to write novels and factual books (some of which contain
 photos). I have a query regarding the use of child documents and a
 master document.
 
 What characteristics of the master document are given to a child
 document associated with it? 

Hi Ben,

Lots of people have given you good answers to your exact question, so
I'm giving some info not responsive to your question, but something
which you might (or might not) find helpful.

I regularly write 100K word books with several images, and I author
them as a single file, not master/children. My 5 year old, 4GB RAM
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E7200  @ 2.53GHz computer has absolutely
no problem handling such books as one file, either while editing or
while compiling. I just tested compile on this computer, for my
Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist, over 100K
words with several images, and it compiled and displayed in the Evince
PDF viewer in 26 seconds, which I find perfectly practical for my
authoring duties.

I've been on the LyX-Users list for 12 years now, and the whole time
I've seen regular questions about why some aspect of master/child
didn't work. I even tried it once back around 2002, and it failed in
several ways I didn't feel like troubleshooting, because even with the
computers back then, LyX handled Troubleshooting Techniques of the
Successful Technologist quickly and well.

Obviously, if you're splitting the book up between several authors, you
have to master/child it. And if the book were 500K words with
commensurate graphics and you weren't running on a 3+Ghz 4 core with
16GB of RAM, you might have to master/child it. But LyX is amazingly
efficient with big documents, and, speaking for myself, I've found it
easier to edit the whole book as one file. Of course, YMMV.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Multi-documents

2013-11-29 Thread Steve Litt 
On Fri, 29 Nov 2013 12:46:23 + (UTC)
Ben mike1...@icloud.com wrote:

 Hello,
 I use Lyx to write novels and factual books (some of which contain
 photos). I have a query regarding the use of child documents and a
 master document.
 
 What characteristics of the master document are given to a child
 document associated with it? 

Hi Ben,

Lots of people have given you good answers to your exact question, so
I'm giving some info not responsive to your question, but something
which you might (or might not) find helpful.

I regularly write 100K word books with several images, and I author
them as a single file, not master/children. My 5 year old, 4GB RAM
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E7200  @ 2.53GHz computer has absolutely
no problem handling such books as one file, either while editing or
while compiling. I just tested compile on this computer, for my
Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist, over 100K
words with several images, and it compiled and displayed in the Evince
PDF viewer in 26 seconds, which I find perfectly practical for my
authoring duties.

I've been on the LyX-Users list for 12 years now, and the whole time
I've seen regular questions about why some aspect of master/child
didn't work. I even tried it once back around 2002, and it failed in
several ways I didn't feel like troubleshooting, because even with the
computers back then, LyX handled Troubleshooting Techniques of the
Successful Technologist quickly and well.

Obviously, if you're splitting the book up between several authors, you
have to master/child it. And if the book were 500K words with
commensurate graphics and you weren't running on a 3+Ghz 4 core with
16GB of RAM, you might have to master/child it. But LyX is amazingly
efficient with big documents, and, speaking for myself, I've found it
easier to edit the whole book as one file. Of course, YMMV.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Multi-documents

2013-11-29 Thread Steve Litt 
On Fri, 29 Nov 2013 12:46:23 + (UTC)
Ben <mike1...@icloud.com> wrote:

> Hello,
> I use Lyx to write novels and factual books (some of which contain
> photos). I have a query regarding the use of child documents and a
> master document.
> 
> What characteristics of the master document are given to a child
> document associated with it? 

Hi Ben,

Lots of people have given you good answers to your exact question, so
I'm giving some info not responsive to your question, but something
which you might (or might not) find helpful.

I regularly write 100K word books with several images, and I author
them as a single file, not master/children. My 5 year old, 4GB RAM
"Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E7200  @ 2.53GHz" computer has absolutely
no problem handling such books as one file, either while editing or
while compiling. I just tested compile on this computer, for my
"Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist", over 100K
words with several images, and it compiled and displayed in the Evince
PDF viewer in 26 seconds, which I find perfectly practical for my
authoring duties.

I've been on the LyX-Users list for 12 years now, and the whole time
I've seen regular questions about why some aspect of master/child
didn't work. I even tried it once back around 2002, and it failed in
several ways I didn't feel like troubleshooting, because even with the
computers back then, LyX handled "Troubleshooting Techniques of the
Successful Technologist" quickly and well.

Obviously, if you're splitting the book up between several authors, you
have to master/child it. And if the book were 500K words with
commensurate graphics and you weren't running on a 3+Ghz 4 core with
16GB of RAM, you might have to master/child it. But LyX is amazingly
efficient with big documents, and, speaking for myself, I've found it
easier to edit the whole book as one file. Of course, YMMV.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Beginners need to tweak layout

2013-10-29 Thread Steve Litt 
On Tue, 29 Oct 2013 16:43:02 + (UTC)
Mark Horton mark.horton...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:

 Hi I am a beginner in Lyx and understand a bit about the principles
 of Latex. I understand the advantages of a fixed layout and have
 seen some code to create a simple one. However it looks like a very
 steep learning curve. 

Hi Mark,

You're exactly right. LaTeX, and therefore layouts, have a steep
learning curve. I'd recommend you make your first one in the same
directory as your document, but test it with a tiny test document.

 
 All I would like to do is 2 little adjustments to the standard book
 layout. It looks fine on A4 paper but when dropping down to A5 paper
 the space around the Chapter heading text is too big and the Chapter
 heading text is too big.
 
 I believe there are two possible routes, something about a local
 module to override current settings which would be best. Or if
 possible get the original source for the book layout and create my
 own local layout from it. (But I wouldn't know where to find that..
 or if it is available)

That's a last resort, Mark. It's best just to specify only the changes,
if possible, rather than rewriting the whole environment and modifying
it.

Here's the idiomatic way people specify the changes:

\let\oldmiscstyle=\miscstyle
\let\endoldmiscstyle=\endmiscstyle
\renewenvironment{miscstyle}{
%%% Stuff to do before invoking original environment
\begin{oldmiscstyle}
 Stuff to do after invoking original, but before the text
}{
 Stuff to do before ending original, but after text
\end{oldmiscstyle}
 Stuff to do after original environment ends
}


Mark, if you've been a software developer in the past, the line with
\endoldmiscstyle probably looks like Voodoo, especially given that
neither \endoldmiscstyle nor \endmiscstyle is ever mentioned again. Do
it anyway: Somehow, when an environment \whatever is made, LaTeX seems
to make a corresponding \endwhatever that gets executed upon
\whatever's completion. I've personally had situations where this idiom
didn't work unless I put in the line:

\let\endoldmiscstyle=\endmiscstyle

It's best not to give too much thought to such thing as it could screw
up your brain --- just do it.

 
 So much for the principle. Any advice on where to find out about the
 practice (at beginner level) would be appreciated.

I gave a beginners-eye view of making your own layout here:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/200210/200210.htm#_MakingYourOwnLayout

If I were you, I'd read the entire document, in order. 

http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/200210/200210.htm

I'd estimate it would be about a day to assimilate all the information,
and you'll get back your day after writing 200 pages of LyX-authored
content, and from then on you'll benefit from the knowledge.

WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING

My document was written before LyX had a great facility for placing the
layout file in the local directory. Unless you have a reason to believe
that you'll use the same layout for lots of books (I never have), then
use current directory layouts, like this:

Document-Settings-Document_class-Local_layout_button


WARNING: DEFINITION ALERT

LyX now has two different definitions for Local Layout. Definition 1:
Document-Settings-Document_class-Local_layout_button

Definition 2: 
Document-Settings-Local_layout

Definition 1 refers to a layout file in the same directory as the
document. Definition 2 refers to putting the text you would normally
put in a layout file, into the document itself.

I personally always do it with Definition 1 because I can use my editor
of choice (which of course is Vim), and because I don't have to deal
with the hassles of the Validate button.

When you use a Definition 1 layout file, be sure to Tools-Reconfigure
and then restart LyX after every change to the layout file. This hassle
is one reason I recommend a small test document while building and
fine-tuning your layout. I often put everything in a shellscript that
loops. There are people on this list who know how to do a reconfigure
from the command line: Ask them how to do that --- makes it easier, but
be careful, you need to be in the right directory when you issue that
command.

Lastly, I'd like to congratulate you. There are people in this world
who say Oh, LyX is trivially easy, anyone can use it!. Those people
have no credibility with me, because they've obviously always used
LyX defaults and have never made layout files. In making your layout
file, you become a LyX journeyman, with its attendant credibility.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Beginners need to tweak layout

2013-10-29 Thread Steve Litt 
On Tue, 29 Oct 2013 09:55:08 -0700 (PDT)
Rich Shepard rshep...@appl-ecosys.com wrote:

 On Tue, 29 Oct 2013, Mark Horton wrote:
 
  All I would like to do is 2 little adjustments to the standard
  book layout. It looks fine on A4 paper but when dropping down to
  A5 paper the space around the Chapter heading text is too big and
  the Chapter heading text is too big.
 
 Mark,
 
Look in Documents - Settings. You can adjust margins, text
 layout, and other aspects of the page right there. You can also alter
 font attributes by specifying a different size using ERT (i.e.,
 insert the LaTeX code for that word or phrase). 

Whoops, don't do this in the mainmatter. For consistency and easy
modification, you want all appearances in your mainmatter to be styles
based (environments and character styles in LyX lingo). If you suspect
your doc will ever be converted to anything other than LaTeX-derived
output (HTML, ePub, etc), use styles in the frontmatter and backmatter
also.


Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Beginners need to tweak layout

2013-10-29 Thread Steve Litt 
On Tue, 29 Oct 2013 16:43:02 + (UTC)
Mark Horton mark.horton...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:

 Hi I am a beginner in Lyx and understand a bit about the principles
 of Latex. I understand the advantages of a fixed layout and have
 seen some code to create a simple one. However it looks like a very
 steep learning curve. 

Hi Mark,

You're exactly right. LaTeX, and therefore layouts, have a steep
learning curve. I'd recommend you make your first one in the same
directory as your document, but test it with a tiny test document.

 
 All I would like to do is 2 little adjustments to the standard book
 layout. It looks fine on A4 paper but when dropping down to A5 paper
 the space around the Chapter heading text is too big and the Chapter
 heading text is too big.
 
 I believe there are two possible routes, something about a local
 module to override current settings which would be best. Or if
 possible get the original source for the book layout and create my
 own local layout from it. (But I wouldn't know where to find that..
 or if it is available)

That's a last resort, Mark. It's best just to specify only the changes,
if possible, rather than rewriting the whole environment and modifying
it.

Here's the idiomatic way people specify the changes:

\let\oldmiscstyle=\miscstyle
\let\endoldmiscstyle=\endmiscstyle
\renewenvironment{miscstyle}{
%%% Stuff to do before invoking original environment
\begin{oldmiscstyle}
 Stuff to do after invoking original, but before the text
}{
 Stuff to do before ending original, but after text
\end{oldmiscstyle}
 Stuff to do after original environment ends
}


Mark, if you've been a software developer in the past, the line with
\endoldmiscstyle probably looks like Voodoo, especially given that
neither \endoldmiscstyle nor \endmiscstyle is ever mentioned again. Do
it anyway: Somehow, when an environment \whatever is made, LaTeX seems
to make a corresponding \endwhatever that gets executed upon
\whatever's completion. I've personally had situations where this idiom
didn't work unless I put in the line:

\let\endoldmiscstyle=\endmiscstyle

It's best not to give too much thought to such thing as it could screw
up your brain --- just do it.

 
 So much for the principle. Any advice on where to find out about the
 practice (at beginner level) would be appreciated.

I gave a beginners-eye view of making your own layout here:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/200210/200210.htm#_MakingYourOwnLayout

If I were you, I'd read the entire document, in order. 

http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/200210/200210.htm

I'd estimate it would be about a day to assimilate all the information,
and you'll get back your day after writing 200 pages of LyX-authored
content, and from then on you'll benefit from the knowledge.

WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING

My document was written before LyX had a great facility for placing the
layout file in the local directory. Unless you have a reason to believe
that you'll use the same layout for lots of books (I never have), then
use current directory layouts, like this:

Document-Settings-Document_class-Local_layout_button


WARNING: DEFINITION ALERT

LyX now has two different definitions for Local Layout. Definition 1:
Document-Settings-Document_class-Local_layout_button

Definition 2: 
Document-Settings-Local_layout

Definition 1 refers to a layout file in the same directory as the
document. Definition 2 refers to putting the text you would normally
put in a layout file, into the document itself.

I personally always do it with Definition 1 because I can use my editor
of choice (which of course is Vim), and because I don't have to deal
with the hassles of the Validate button.

When you use a Definition 1 layout file, be sure to Tools-Reconfigure
and then restart LyX after every change to the layout file. This hassle
is one reason I recommend a small test document while building and
fine-tuning your layout. I often put everything in a shellscript that
loops. There are people on this list who know how to do a reconfigure
from the command line: Ask them how to do that --- makes it easier, but
be careful, you need to be in the right directory when you issue that
command.

Lastly, I'd like to congratulate you. There are people in this world
who say Oh, LyX is trivially easy, anyone can use it!. Those people
have no credibility with me, because they've obviously always used
LyX defaults and have never made layout files. In making your layout
file, you become a LyX journeyman, with its attendant credibility.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Beginners need to tweak layout

2013-10-29 Thread Steve Litt 
On Tue, 29 Oct 2013 09:55:08 -0700 (PDT)
Rich Shepard rshep...@appl-ecosys.com wrote:

 On Tue, 29 Oct 2013, Mark Horton wrote:
 
  All I would like to do is 2 little adjustments to the standard
  book layout. It looks fine on A4 paper but when dropping down to
  A5 paper the space around the Chapter heading text is too big and
  the Chapter heading text is too big.
 
 Mark,
 
Look in Documents - Settings. You can adjust margins, text
 layout, and other aspects of the page right there. You can also alter
 font attributes by specifying a different size using ERT (i.e.,
 insert the LaTeX code for that word or phrase). 

Whoops, don't do this in the mainmatter. For consistency and easy
modification, you want all appearances in your mainmatter to be styles
based (environments and character styles in LyX lingo). If you suspect
your doc will ever be converted to anything other than LaTeX-derived
output (HTML, ePub, etc), use styles in the frontmatter and backmatter
also.


Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Beginners need to tweak layout

2013-10-29 Thread Steve Litt 
On Tue, 29 Oct 2013 16:43:02 + (UTC)
Mark Horton <mark.horton...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi I am a beginner in Lyx and understand a bit about the principles
> of Latex. I understand the advantages of a "fixed" layout and have
> seen some code to create a simple one. However it looks like a very
> steep learning curve. 

Hi Mark,

You're exactly right. LaTeX, and therefore layouts, have a steep
learning curve. I'd recommend you make your first one in the same
directory as your document, but test it with a tiny test document.

> 
> All I would like to do is 2 little adjustments to the standard "book"
> layout. It looks fine on A4 paper but when dropping down to A5 paper
> the space around the Chapter heading text is too big and the Chapter
> heading text is too big.
> 
> I believe there are two possible routes, something about a "local"
> module to override current settings which would be best. Or if
> possible get the original source for the book layout and create my
> own local layout from it. (But I wouldn't know where to find that..
> or if it is available)

That's a last resort, Mark. It's best just to specify only the changes,
if possible, rather than rewriting the whole environment and modifying
it.

Here's the idiomatic way people specify the changes:

\let\oldmiscstyle=\miscstyle
\let\endoldmiscstyle=\endmiscstyle
\renewenvironment{miscstyle}{
%%% Stuff to do before invoking original environment
\begin{oldmiscstyle}
 Stuff to do after invoking original, but before the text
}{
 Stuff to do before ending original, but after text
\end{oldmiscstyle}
 Stuff to do after original environment ends
}


Mark, if you've been a software developer in the past, the line with
\endoldmiscstyle probably looks like Voodoo, especially given that
neither \endoldmiscstyle nor \endmiscstyle is ever mentioned again. Do
it anyway: Somehow, when an environment \whatever is made, LaTeX seems
to make a corresponding \endwhatever that gets executed upon
\whatever's completion. I've personally had situations where this idiom
didn't work unless I put in the line:

\let\endoldmiscstyle=\endmiscstyle

It's best not to give too much thought to such thing as it could screw
up your brain --- just do it.

> 
> So much for the principle. Any advice on where to find out about the
> practice (at beginner level) would be appreciated.

I gave a beginners-eye view of making your own layout here:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/200210/200210.htm#_MakingYourOwnLayout

If I were you, I'd read the entire document, in order. 

http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/200210/200210.htm

I'd estimate it would be about a day to assimilate all the information,
and you'll get back your day after writing 200 pages of LyX-authored
content, and from then on you'll benefit from the knowledge.

WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING

My document was written before LyX had a great facility for placing the
layout file in the local directory. Unless you have a reason to believe
that you'll use the same layout for lots of books (I never have), then
use current directory layouts, like this:

Document->Settings->Document_class->Local_layout_button


WARNING: DEFINITION ALERT

LyX now has two different definitions for "Local Layout". Definition 1:
Document->Settings->Document_class->Local_layout_button

Definition 2: 
Document->Settings->Local_layout

Definition 1 refers to a layout file in the same directory as the
document. Definition 2 refers to putting the text you would normally
put in a layout file, into the document itself.

I personally always do it with Definition 1 because I can use my editor
of choice (which of course is Vim), and because I don't have to deal
with the hassles of the Validate button.

When you use a Definition 1 layout file, be sure to Tools->Reconfigure
and then restart LyX after every change to the layout file. This hassle
is one reason I recommend a small test document while building and
fine-tuning your layout. I often put everything in a shellscript that
loops. There are people on this list who know how to do a reconfigure
from the command line: Ask them how to do that --- makes it easier, but
be careful, you need to be in the right directory when you issue that
command.

Lastly, I'd like to congratulate you. There are people in this world
who say "Oh, LyX is trivially easy, anyone can use it!". Those people
have no credibility with me, because they've obviously always used
LyX defaults and have never made layout files. In making your layout
file, you become a LyX journeyman, with its attendant credibility.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Beginners need to tweak layout

2013-10-29 Thread Steve Litt 
On Tue, 29 Oct 2013 09:55:08 -0700 (PDT)
Rich Shepard <rshep...@appl-ecosys.com> wrote:

> On Tue, 29 Oct 2013, Mark Horton wrote:
> 
> > All I would like to do is 2 little adjustments to the standard
> > "book" layout. It looks fine on A4 paper but when dropping down to
> > A5 paper the space around the Chapter heading text is too big and
> > the Chapter heading text is too big.
> 
> Mark,
> 
>Look in Documents -> Settings. You can adjust margins, text
> layout, and other aspects of the page right there. You can also alter
> font attributes by specifying a different size using ERT (i.e.,
> insert the LaTeX code for that word or phrase). 

Whoops, don't do this in the mainmatter. For consistency and easy
modification, you want all appearances in your mainmatter to be styles
based (environments and character styles in LyX lingo). If you suspect
your doc will ever be converted to anything other than LaTeX-derived
output (HTML, ePub, etc), use styles in the frontmatter and backmatter
also.


Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: why people give up on open source software

2013-10-26 Thread Steve Litt 
On Thu, 24 Oct 2013 17:53:35 -0600
Ken Springer snowsh...@q.com wrote:

 I'm not a programmer, learned many years ago that is not for me.  But
 I did contribute, for free, to writing the help files of a commercial 
 program for a platform now long gone.
 
 But, as I wrote in
 news://news.gmane.org:119/l4bi37$vh$1...@ger.gmane.org, if I help by
 reporting bugs I find in a program, assuming that reporting is
 requested by developers, shouldn't there be some thanks shown by
 fixing the bug?

Depends.

Imagine a buddy, who is a skateboarder, asking you for a critique of
his style while doing tricks. Both of the following could be considered
reporting a bug:

1) I think you need to bend your knees more.

2) No wonder you're always losing contests, falling down, and just
   generally screwing up. Your knees are straight. How unprofessional.

#1 garners a thank you. #2 garners what a douchebag!

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: why people give up on open source software

2013-10-26 Thread Steve Litt 
On Fri, 25 Oct 2013 09:49:13 +0200
Jean-Marc Lasgouttes lasgout...@lyx.org wrote:

 25/10/2013 02:37, Ken Springer:
  Just a question, does viable equate something that will be
  successful in the long run?
 
 It is already successful. We have users, LyX continues to advance, 
 although at a frustratingly slow pace these days. 

LOL, how can you expect fast advances when the LyX pretty much became
perfect in 2004? I mean, really, name me one serious thing it's
missing. At this point we're down to more efficient hotkeys and a more
complete outline mode.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: why people give up on open source software

2013-10-26 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sat, 26 Oct 2013 11:28:44 +1300
Bryan Baldwin br...@katofiad.co.nz wrote:

 On 10/26/2013 02:08 AM, Wolfgang Keller wrote:
  And that may be the origin of the problem, SINCE IN ALL CAPS IT IS
  PLAIN UNREADABLE AND THUS NO ONE WILL ACTUALLY READ IT.
 
 That's backwards. Its part of the solution. It doesn't matter if you
 read it or not, because it applies whether you read it or not.

It's also in upper case in the GPL2, so he was pretty much quoting it
(inexactly).

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: why people give up on open source software

2013-10-26 Thread Steve Litt 
On Thu, 24 Oct 2013 17:53:35 -0600
Ken Springer snowsh...@q.com wrote:

 I'm not a programmer, learned many years ago that is not for me.  But
 I did contribute, for free, to writing the help files of a commercial 
 program for a platform now long gone.
 
 But, as I wrote in
 news://news.gmane.org:119/l4bi37$vh$1...@ger.gmane.org, if I help by
 reporting bugs I find in a program, assuming that reporting is
 requested by developers, shouldn't there be some thanks shown by
 fixing the bug?

Depends.

Imagine a buddy, who is a skateboarder, asking you for a critique of
his style while doing tricks. Both of the following could be considered
reporting a bug:

1) I think you need to bend your knees more.

2) No wonder you're always losing contests, falling down, and just
   generally screwing up. Your knees are straight. How unprofessional.

#1 garners a thank you. #2 garners what a douchebag!

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: why people give up on open source software

2013-10-26 Thread Steve Litt 
On Fri, 25 Oct 2013 09:49:13 +0200
Jean-Marc Lasgouttes lasgout...@lyx.org wrote:

 25/10/2013 02:37, Ken Springer:
  Just a question, does viable equate something that will be
  successful in the long run?
 
 It is already successful. We have users, LyX continues to advance, 
 although at a frustratingly slow pace these days. 

LOL, how can you expect fast advances when the LyX pretty much became
perfect in 2004? I mean, really, name me one serious thing it's
missing. At this point we're down to more efficient hotkeys and a more
complete outline mode.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: why people give up on open source software

2013-10-26 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sat, 26 Oct 2013 11:28:44 +1300
Bryan Baldwin br...@katofiad.co.nz wrote:

 On 10/26/2013 02:08 AM, Wolfgang Keller wrote:
  And that may be the origin of the problem, SINCE IN ALL CAPS IT IS
  PLAIN UNREADABLE AND THUS NO ONE WILL ACTUALLY READ IT.
 
 That's backwards. Its part of the solution. It doesn't matter if you
 read it or not, because it applies whether you read it or not.

It's also in upper case in the GPL2, so he was pretty much quoting it
(inexactly).

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: why people give up on open source software

2013-10-26 Thread Steve Litt 
On Thu, 24 Oct 2013 17:53:35 -0600
Ken Springer <snowsh...@q.com> wrote:

> I'm not a programmer, learned many years ago that is not for me.  But
> I did contribute, for free, to writing the help files of a commercial 
> program for a platform now long gone.
> 
> But, as I wrote in
> news://news.gmane.org:119/l4bi37$vh$1...@ger.gmane.org, if I help by
> reporting bugs I find in a program, assuming that reporting is
> requested by developers, shouldn't there be some thanks shown by
> fixing the bug?

Depends.

Imagine a buddy, who is a skateboarder, asking you for a critique of
his style while doing tricks. Both of the following could be considered
"reporting a bug":

1) I think you need to bend your knees more.

2) No wonder you're always losing contests, falling down, and just
   generally screwing up. Your knees are straight. How unprofessional.

#1 garners a "thank you." #2 garners "what a douchebag!"

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: why people give up on open source software

2013-10-26 Thread Steve Litt 
On Fri, 25 Oct 2013 09:49:13 +0200
Jean-Marc Lasgouttes <lasgout...@lyx.org> wrote:

> 25/10/2013 02:37, Ken Springer:
> > Just a question, does viable equate something that will be
> > successful in the long run?
> 
> It is already successful. We have users, LyX continues to advance, 
> although at a frustratingly slow pace these days. 

LOL, how can you expect fast advances when the LyX pretty much became
perfect in 2004? I mean, really, name me one serious thing it's
missing. At this point we're down to more efficient hotkeys and a more
complete outline mode.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: why people give up on open source software

2013-10-26 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sat, 26 Oct 2013 11:28:44 +1300
Bryan Baldwin <br...@katofiad.co.nz> wrote:

> On 10/26/2013 02:08 AM, Wolfgang Keller wrote:
> > And that may be the origin of the problem, SINCE IN ALL CAPS IT IS
> > PLAIN UNREADABLE AND THUS NO ONE WILL ACTUALLY READ IT.
> 
> That's backwards. Its part of the solution. It doesn't matter if you
> read it or not, because it applies whether you read it or not.

It's also in upper case in the GPL2, so he was pretty much quoting it
(inexactly).

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: why people give up on open source software

2013-10-25 Thread Steve Litt 
 the repairman, and maybe he's late or
cancels, and, well, my time's pretty valuable. Of course, some go so
far as to get a new fridge when anything goes wrong with the old one.
But that involves evaluation of a new fridge, and then an appointment
from the installers. Personally, I like my way better --- all things
told it burns up less of my time.

Now let's discuss cars. Few of us do major repairs on our cars anymore,
we don't have the tools or the manuals. But does that mean that when
something breaks, we throw up our hands and declare it to be the
repairman's problems? As head of Troubleshooters.Com, I hear from
people who want to just drive the damn thing all the time. And their
stories are usually horror stories. Here's a fictional example: for
obvious reasons I cannot reveal real ones:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/tpromag/200105/200105.htm#_editors_desk

You can take this to the bank: The I just want it to work crowd
refusing to learn the fundamentals of cars are the ones who end up
like Ursula Unlucky, because they have insufficient knowledge of both
the functioning of cars and the process of troubleshooting to recognize
whether a mechanic is giving them the real story as opposed to a song
and dance.

Cars, especially modern cars, are appliances loaded with features, but
compared to the average web surfing, Youtube watching, document writing
computer, they're not much more than a toaster. If you want your
computer to be a new kind of machine, all you do is install new
software.

A computer isn't an appliance. The most appliance-like thing that could
be said for it is it's a bunch of appliances in one box. As a guy who
used to repair stereo gear, I can tell you that often all-in-one means
everything-busts. Remember those audio albatrosses that had turntable,
tapedeck, radio, amplifier, and speakers in a single box? There was
always *something* busted on those, and repairing them was a convoluted
walk down the street of sorrows. Kind of like the DLL-hell, registry
failure, dependency difficulty, and whatever all-in-one brings to the
Mac. I upgraded to Windows 8.1, and now nothing works! I installed a
drawing program, and now my MS Word doesn't work!

Because I have a reputation as a computer guy, guess whose shoulder
the I want it just to work guys cry on when they get a phone call
from Microsoft a minute after their computer stops functioning, and
the Microsoft guy says they have a virus and have to buy this new
antivirus software to restore their computer, and yes, they gave the
guy their credit card number and password, and oh by the way they never
learned to back up, and the photos of their long lost family members
are gone.

Wanting to separate yourself from knowledge of your appliances works
great with toasters, but with computers, it can be the avenue to
anquish. Wanting just works is a nice thought, and of course the
industry is working toward it, but at this point it's merely an
approachable ideal, like an ideal engine or a frictionless puck.


 Apple seems to understand this better
 than the rest of the industry; it's striking to watch toddlers pick
 up iPads and just get to it.

I've logged less than 25 hours on Macs in 29 years, but I do hear this
all the time. It probably helps that they hold an iron grip on both the
hardware, operating system, and to some degree software. But I will
tell you, personally, every time I get on a Mac, I feel lost.

Anyway, the bottom line is that people insisting on treating their
computers as appliances that just work often end up the unhappiest of
all, whether they're using Free Software or proprietary.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: why people give up on open source software

2013-10-25 Thread Steve Litt 
 the repairman, and maybe he's late or
cancels, and, well, my time's pretty valuable. Of course, some go so
far as to get a new fridge when anything goes wrong with the old one.
But that involves evaluation of a new fridge, and then an appointment
from the installers. Personally, I like my way better --- all things
told it burns up less of my time.

Now let's discuss cars. Few of us do major repairs on our cars anymore,
we don't have the tools or the manuals. But does that mean that when
something breaks, we throw up our hands and declare it to be the
repairman's problems? As head of Troubleshooters.Com, I hear from
people who want to just drive the damn thing all the time. And their
stories are usually horror stories. Here's a fictional example: for
obvious reasons I cannot reveal real ones:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/tpromag/200105/200105.htm#_editors_desk

You can take this to the bank: The I just want it to work crowd
refusing to learn the fundamentals of cars are the ones who end up
like Ursula Unlucky, because they have insufficient knowledge of both
the functioning of cars and the process of troubleshooting to recognize
whether a mechanic is giving them the real story as opposed to a song
and dance.

Cars, especially modern cars, are appliances loaded with features, but
compared to the average web surfing, Youtube watching, document writing
computer, they're not much more than a toaster. If you want your
computer to be a new kind of machine, all you do is install new
software.

A computer isn't an appliance. The most appliance-like thing that could
be said for it is it's a bunch of appliances in one box. As a guy who
used to repair stereo gear, I can tell you that often all-in-one means
everything-busts. Remember those audio albatrosses that had turntable,
tapedeck, radio, amplifier, and speakers in a single box? There was
always *something* busted on those, and repairing them was a convoluted
walk down the street of sorrows. Kind of like the DLL-hell, registry
failure, dependency difficulty, and whatever all-in-one brings to the
Mac. I upgraded to Windows 8.1, and now nothing works! I installed a
drawing program, and now my MS Word doesn't work!

Because I have a reputation as a computer guy, guess whose shoulder
the I want it just to work guys cry on when they get a phone call
from Microsoft a minute after their computer stops functioning, and
the Microsoft guy says they have a virus and have to buy this new
antivirus software to restore their computer, and yes, they gave the
guy their credit card number and password, and oh by the way they never
learned to back up, and the photos of their long lost family members
are gone.

Wanting to separate yourself from knowledge of your appliances works
great with toasters, but with computers, it can be the avenue to
anquish. Wanting just works is a nice thought, and of course the
industry is working toward it, but at this point it's merely an
approachable ideal, like an ideal engine or a frictionless puck.


 Apple seems to understand this better
 than the rest of the industry; it's striking to watch toddlers pick
 up iPads and just get to it.

I've logged less than 25 hours on Macs in 29 years, but I do hear this
all the time. It probably helps that they hold an iron grip on both the
hardware, operating system, and to some degree software. But I will
tell you, personally, every time I get on a Mac, I feel lost.

Anyway, the bottom line is that people insisting on treating their
computers as appliances that just work often end up the unhappiest of
all, whether they're using Free Software or proprietary.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: why people give up on open source software

2013-10-25 Thread Steve Litt 
uot;, but they seldom "just work" well for very long, so in self
defense I vacuum, close tight, de-ice the ice collector, don't fill the
thing too tight, and change the water filter when necessary.

That way I have a lot less visits from the repairman than the "it's
gotta work and I don't want to lift a finger" crowd. And those guys
have to put up with scheduling the repairman, and maybe he's late or
cancels, and, well, my time's pretty valuable. Of course, some go so
far as to get a new fridge when anything goes wrong with the old one.
But that involves evaluation of a new fridge, and then an appointment
from the installers. Personally, I like my way better --- all things
told it burns up less of my time.

Now let's discuss cars. Few of us do major repairs on our cars anymore,
we don't have the tools or the manuals. But does that mean that when
something breaks, we throw up our hands and declare it to be the
repairman's problems? As head of Troubleshooters.Com, I hear from
people who want to "just drive the damn thing" all the time. And their
stories are usually horror stories. Here's a fictional example: for
obvious reasons I cannot reveal real ones:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/tpromag/200105/200105.htm#_editors_desk

You can take this to the bank: The "I just want it to work" crowd
refusing to learn the fundamentals of cars are the ones who end up
like Ursula Unlucky, because they have insufficient knowledge of both
the functioning of cars and the process of troubleshooting to recognize
whether a mechanic is giving them the real story as opposed to a song
and dance.

Cars, especially modern cars, are appliances loaded with features, but
compared to the average web surfing, Youtube watching, document writing
computer, they're not much more than a toaster. If you want your
computer to be a new kind of machine, all you do is install new
software.

A computer isn't an appliance. The most appliance-like thing that could
be said for it is it's a bunch of appliances in one box. As a guy who
used to repair stereo gear, I can tell you that often all-in-one means
everything-busts. Remember those audio albatrosses that had turntable,
tapedeck, radio, amplifier, and speakers in a single box? There was
always *something* busted on those, and repairing them was a convoluted
walk down the street of sorrows. Kind of like the DLL-hell, registry
failure, dependency difficulty, and whatever all-in-one brings to the
Mac. "I upgraded to Windows 8.1, and now nothing works!" "I installed a
drawing program, and now my MS Word doesn't work!"

Because I have a reputation as a "computer guy", guess whose shoulder
the "I want it just to work" guys cry on when they get a phone call
from Microsoft a minute after their computer stops functioning, and
the Microsoft guy says they have a virus and have to buy this new
antivirus software to restore their computer, and yes, they gave the
guy their credit card number and password, and oh by the way they never
learned to back up, and the photos of their long lost family members
are gone.

Wanting to separate yourself from knowledge of your appliances works
great with toasters, but with computers, it can be the avenue to
anquish. Wanting "just works" is a nice thought, and of course the
industry is working toward it, but at this point it's merely an
approachable ideal, like an ideal engine or a frictionless puck.


> Apple seems to understand this better
> than the rest of the industry; it's striking to watch toddlers pick
> up iPads and just get to it.

I've logged less than 25 hours on Macs in 29 years, but I do hear this
all the time. It probably helps that they hold an iron grip on both the
hardware, operating system, and to some degree software. But I will
tell you, personally, every time I get on a Mac, I feel lost.

Anyway, the bottom line is that people insisting on treating their
computers as appliances that "just work" often end up the unhappiest of
all, whether they're using Free Software or proprietary.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: why people give up on open source software

2013-10-24 Thread Steve Litt 
On Wed, 23 Oct 2013 18:31:48 -0600
Ken Springer snowsh...@q.com wrote:

 On 10/23/13 2:31 PM, Richard Talley wrote:
  Interesting comments. I too have found small vendors to be much more
  helpful. Often the developers help with or even do all of the tech
  support at small vendors. And they actually read my emails, instead
  of replying with canned responses.
 
 Most of the time, you can't get help from the big guys, really pisses
 me off.

If it pisses you off, then as Vincent van Ravesteijn said, don't use
it. Use proprietary software, with their official support channels
(often for limited time or costing money) full of script-reading ignos
escalating to other script reading ignos.

Earlier in this thread someone implied that some Open Source projects
are unprofessional. Well yeah, surprise surprise, Open Source isn't
most developers' profession: It doesn't pay the rent. You want
professional, go to those who make their money by charging you for
software. If you want good software with excellent support for those who
know how to ask questions and behave on a mailing list, stay with Open
Source.

It's funny. In February 2008 I got royally pissed at what I considered
bad support from the LyX community, so I started designing a
book-writing software alternative to LyX, using VimOutliner, LaTeX, and
a few other things. There's a long, rich tradition in free software that
if you don't like their support or their progress adding features, you
fork their project. But you know what never occurred to me? Going with
Page Plus, Microsoft Publisher, or InDesign. Here are just a few
reasons these alternatives never occurred to me:

* http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html

* http://www.troubleshooters.com/tpromag/200104/200104.htm#_editors_desk

* http://www.zdnet.com/windows-8-continues-to-fail-716222/

*http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240185097/Microsofts-Windows-81-update-fails-to-deliver

There's something that doesn't make sense to me: Why does someone go on
the mailing list of an Open Source project and diss Open Source? I diss
Windows all the time, but I don't do it on ##windows. I diss Apple all
the time, but I don't do it in Apple User Groups. I diss OpenOffice all
the time, but not on an OpenOffice mailing list. 

Another puzzler: someone has a problem with a single LaTeX package,
generalizes it to all Open Source (except LyX), and then somehow turns
that into why people give up on open source software, as if there's
some kind of mass exodus from Open Source. How does THAT work? My
observation is that Open Source is gaining mindshare and usage pretty
much continuously.

I leave you with one more article I often think of when reading threads
like this:

http://articles.latimes.com/2001/aug/23/news/mn-37472

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Getting Support: was: why people give up on open source software

2013-10-24 Thread Steve Litt 
On Thu, 24 Oct 2013 10:32:55 -0600
Ken Springer snowsh...@q.com wrote:

 Product support, customer service, in general, sucks.  Online,
 offline, commercial, open source, just about everywhere.  For
 software these days, you are supposed to join a forum.  If I went
 back through all my forum posts asking for help, I think I'd be lucky
 to find 10% of them have had answers to my questions.

I changed the subject line because the old subject line infuriated me...

Getting support is difficult, but luckily there are things you can do
to make solution more likely. Certainly the first step if you're
asking for tech support is to read this and live by it:

http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Speaking for myself, when somebody majorly violates the tenants of the
preceding link, I never provide an answer, even if I know the answer by
heart. Life's too short, I'm too busy, and answering questions doesn't
pay the rent, so I have no need to be nice to the vast hoards of
unthinkers.

Next, and this is very pertinent to the LyX list, when submitting an
example of a bug, submit a minimal example. I mean continue to remove
things until anything else you remove makes the symptom disappear. This
accomplishes two things:

1) It probably solves your problem without help. If you can flip a
   symptom on and off by adding or removing one sentence, you're
   probably in a position to understand the mechanism of the problem.
2) It makes it much easier for anyone responding to you to reproduce
   your problem, and to quickly understand what's going on, and either
   tell you the answer or tell you where to look next.

Sometimes, when submitting a Minimum Example for a problem that seems
to be a LaTeX problem (actually my misuse of LaTeX would be more
accurate), I'll go so far as to code it in LaTeX, not LyX, and then
post the question. This rules out LyX, making it easier for the list
inhabitants to 1) Know whether the solution is within their area of
expertise, and 2) Rule out LyX right away. LyX-List inhabitants are
nice enough that they'll answer LaTeX questions, even though
technically LaTeX is not their product.

Having been on the LyX-Users list since 2001, I've seen a lot of help
requests come with giant LyX files. Does the submitter really expect
*me* to carve up his gigantic document in order to make a Minimum
Example? Well, that's not going to happen, because if it's too much
work for the guy who needs a solution, it's certainly too much work for
me.

Next, if you have an error message, put it in a search engine. You
might find a lot of valuable information.

I've found that the guy who answers a lot of questions for others gets
a lot of detailed and devoted help when he needs it. I've found this on
the LyX list the past 12 years. I help newbies with layouts and light
LaTeX and the like, and then the *big brains* on the list help me when I
have a showstopper problem. Pay it forward, and you'll get lots of
support.

Sometimes you post a concise symptom description and minimal example
and do everything right, and you know *someone* on the list has info,
but you're met with deafening silence. It's time for the patented,
can't miss, Steve Litt Answer-Getting Method (SLAGM). What you do is
make some sort of kludge to fix your symptom. For instance, with LyX it
might be to change your View-PDF (ps2pdf) so that it runs some sort of
awk script that copies your LyX file to a dummy, modifies the dummy, and
compiles *that*. You then get on the list and brag about your kludge,
except you don't call it a kludge, you call it a solution, and in a
subdued, low key way you make it obvious that you think you've displayed
cleverness in the solution. In less than 24 hours, all those people who
didn't have the time to answer your question will leapfrog each other
telling you how stupid your solution is, and providing better
solutions. You mix and match those better solutions to make your real
solution for yourself. Or, if nobody responds, or if people respond
hey man, that's a cool solution, then you actually use your kludge on
an ongoing basis. Either way, you have it solved, and you know your
solution is the best available.

And please, please, *PLEASE*, when your problem is finally solved, end
the thread with the solution, and mark the subject SOLVED, so other
people can benefit from what you learned. It costs nothing to do, and
makes the world a better place to live.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: why people give up on open source software

2013-10-24 Thread Steve Litt 
On Wed, 23 Oct 2013 18:31:48 -0600
Ken Springer snowsh...@q.com wrote:

 On 10/23/13 2:31 PM, Richard Talley wrote:
  Interesting comments. I too have found small vendors to be much more
  helpful. Often the developers help with or even do all of the tech
  support at small vendors. And they actually read my emails, instead
  of replying with canned responses.
 
 Most of the time, you can't get help from the big guys, really pisses
 me off.

If it pisses you off, then as Vincent van Ravesteijn said, don't use
it. Use proprietary software, with their official support channels
(often for limited time or costing money) full of script-reading ignos
escalating to other script reading ignos.

Earlier in this thread someone implied that some Open Source projects
are unprofessional. Well yeah, surprise surprise, Open Source isn't
most developers' profession: It doesn't pay the rent. You want
professional, go to those who make their money by charging you for
software. If you want good software with excellent support for those who
know how to ask questions and behave on a mailing list, stay with Open
Source.

It's funny. In February 2008 I got royally pissed at what I considered
bad support from the LyX community, so I started designing a
book-writing software alternative to LyX, using VimOutliner, LaTeX, and
a few other things. There's a long, rich tradition in free software that
if you don't like their support or their progress adding features, you
fork their project. But you know what never occurred to me? Going with
Page Plus, Microsoft Publisher, or InDesign. Here are just a few
reasons these alternatives never occurred to me:

* http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html

* http://www.troubleshooters.com/tpromag/200104/200104.htm#_editors_desk

* http://www.zdnet.com/windows-8-continues-to-fail-716222/

*http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240185097/Microsofts-Windows-81-update-fails-to-deliver

There's something that doesn't make sense to me: Why does someone go on
the mailing list of an Open Source project and diss Open Source? I diss
Windows all the time, but I don't do it on ##windows. I diss Apple all
the time, but I don't do it in Apple User Groups. I diss OpenOffice all
the time, but not on an OpenOffice mailing list. 

Another puzzler: someone has a problem with a single LaTeX package,
generalizes it to all Open Source (except LyX), and then somehow turns
that into why people give up on open source software, as if there's
some kind of mass exodus from Open Source. How does THAT work? My
observation is that Open Source is gaining mindshare and usage pretty
much continuously.

I leave you with one more article I often think of when reading threads
like this:

http://articles.latimes.com/2001/aug/23/news/mn-37472

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Getting Support: was: why people give up on open source software

2013-10-24 Thread Steve Litt 
On Thu, 24 Oct 2013 10:32:55 -0600
Ken Springer snowsh...@q.com wrote:

 Product support, customer service, in general, sucks.  Online,
 offline, commercial, open source, just about everywhere.  For
 software these days, you are supposed to join a forum.  If I went
 back through all my forum posts asking for help, I think I'd be lucky
 to find 10% of them have had answers to my questions.

I changed the subject line because the old subject line infuriated me...

Getting support is difficult, but luckily there are things you can do
to make solution more likely. Certainly the first step if you're
asking for tech support is to read this and live by it:

http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Speaking for myself, when somebody majorly violates the tenants of the
preceding link, I never provide an answer, even if I know the answer by
heart. Life's too short, I'm too busy, and answering questions doesn't
pay the rent, so I have no need to be nice to the vast hoards of
unthinkers.

Next, and this is very pertinent to the LyX list, when submitting an
example of a bug, submit a minimal example. I mean continue to remove
things until anything else you remove makes the symptom disappear. This
accomplishes two things:

1) It probably solves your problem without help. If you can flip a
   symptom on and off by adding or removing one sentence, you're
   probably in a position to understand the mechanism of the problem.
2) It makes it much easier for anyone responding to you to reproduce
   your problem, and to quickly understand what's going on, and either
   tell you the answer or tell you where to look next.

Sometimes, when submitting a Minimum Example for a problem that seems
to be a LaTeX problem (actually my misuse of LaTeX would be more
accurate), I'll go so far as to code it in LaTeX, not LyX, and then
post the question. This rules out LyX, making it easier for the list
inhabitants to 1) Know whether the solution is within their area of
expertise, and 2) Rule out LyX right away. LyX-List inhabitants are
nice enough that they'll answer LaTeX questions, even though
technically LaTeX is not their product.

Having been on the LyX-Users list since 2001, I've seen a lot of help
requests come with giant LyX files. Does the submitter really expect
*me* to carve up his gigantic document in order to make a Minimum
Example? Well, that's not going to happen, because if it's too much
work for the guy who needs a solution, it's certainly too much work for
me.

Next, if you have an error message, put it in a search engine. You
might find a lot of valuable information.

I've found that the guy who answers a lot of questions for others gets
a lot of detailed and devoted help when he needs it. I've found this on
the LyX list the past 12 years. I help newbies with layouts and light
LaTeX and the like, and then the *big brains* on the list help me when I
have a showstopper problem. Pay it forward, and you'll get lots of
support.

Sometimes you post a concise symptom description and minimal example
and do everything right, and you know *someone* on the list has info,
but you're met with deafening silence. It's time for the patented,
can't miss, Steve Litt Answer-Getting Method (SLAGM). What you do is
make some sort of kludge to fix your symptom. For instance, with LyX it
might be to change your View-PDF (ps2pdf) so that it runs some sort of
awk script that copies your LyX file to a dummy, modifies the dummy, and
compiles *that*. You then get on the list and brag about your kludge,
except you don't call it a kludge, you call it a solution, and in a
subdued, low key way you make it obvious that you think you've displayed
cleverness in the solution. In less than 24 hours, all those people who
didn't have the time to answer your question will leapfrog each other
telling you how stupid your solution is, and providing better
solutions. You mix and match those better solutions to make your real
solution for yourself. Or, if nobody responds, or if people respond
hey man, that's a cool solution, then you actually use your kludge on
an ongoing basis. Either way, you have it solved, and you know your
solution is the best available.

And please, please, *PLEASE*, when your problem is finally solved, end
the thread with the solution, and mark the subject SOLVED, so other
people can benefit from what you learned. It costs nothing to do, and
makes the world a better place to live.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: why people give up on open source software

2013-10-24 Thread Steve Litt 
On Wed, 23 Oct 2013 18:31:48 -0600
Ken Springer <snowsh...@q.com> wrote:

> On 10/23/13 2:31 PM, Richard Talley wrote:
> > Interesting comments. I too have found small vendors to be much more
> > helpful. Often the developers help with or even do all of the tech
> > support at small vendors. And they actually read my emails, instead
> > of replying with canned responses.
> 
> Most of the time, you can't get help from the big guys, really pisses
> me off.

If it pisses you off, then as Vincent van Ravesteijn said, don't use
it. Use proprietary software, with their official support channels
(often for limited time or costing money) full of script-reading ignos
escalating to other script reading ignos.

Earlier in this thread someone implied that some Open Source projects
are "unprofessional". Well yeah, surprise surprise, Open Source isn't
most developers' profession: It doesn't pay the rent. You want
professional, go to those who make their money by charging you for
software. If you want good software with excellent support for those who
know how to ask questions and behave on a mailing list, stay with Open
Source.

It's funny. In February 2008 I got royally pissed at what I considered
bad support from the LyX community, so I started designing a
book-writing software alternative to LyX, using VimOutliner, LaTeX, and
a few other things. There's a long, rich tradition in free software that
if you don't like their support or their progress adding features, you
fork their project. But you know what never occurred to me? Going with
Page Plus, Microsoft Publisher, or InDesign. Here are just a few
reasons these alternatives never occurred to me:

* http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html

* http://www.troubleshooters.com/tpromag/200104/200104.htm#_editors_desk

* http://www.zdnet.com/windows-8-continues-to-fail-716222/

*http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240185097/Microsofts-Windows-81-update-fails-to-deliver

There's something that doesn't make sense to me: Why does someone go on
the mailing list of an Open Source project and diss Open Source? I diss
Windows all the time, but I don't do it on ##windows. I diss Apple all
the time, but I don't do it in Apple User Groups. I diss OpenOffice all
the time, but not on an OpenOffice mailing list. 

Another puzzler: someone has a problem with a single LaTeX package,
generalizes it to all Open Source (except LyX), and then somehow turns
that into "why people give up on open source software", as if there's
some kind of mass exodus from Open Source. How does THAT work? My
observation is that Open Source is gaining mindshare and usage pretty
much continuously.

I leave you with one more article I often think of when reading threads
like this:

http://articles.latimes.com/2001/aug/23/news/mn-37472

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Getting Support: was: why people give up on open source software

2013-10-24 Thread Steve Litt 
On Thu, 24 Oct 2013 10:32:55 -0600
Ken Springer <snowsh...@q.com> wrote:

> Product support, customer service, in general, sucks.  Online,
> offline, commercial, open source, just about everywhere.  For
> software these days, you are supposed to join a forum.  If I went
> back through all my forum posts asking for help, I think I'd be lucky
> to find 10% of them have had answers to my questions.

I changed the subject line because the old subject line infuriated me...

Getting support is difficult, but luckily there are things you can do
to make solution more likely. Certainly the first step if you're
asking for tech support is to read this and live by it:

http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Speaking for myself, when somebody majorly violates the tenants of the
preceding link, I never provide an answer, even if I know the answer by
heart. Life's too short, I'm too busy, and answering questions doesn't
pay the rent, so I have no need to be nice to the vast hoards of
unthinkers.

Next, and this is very pertinent to the LyX list, when submitting an
example of a bug, submit a minimal example. I mean continue to remove
things until anything else you remove makes the symptom disappear. This
accomplishes two things:

1) It probably solves your problem without help. If you can flip a
   symptom on and off by adding or removing one sentence, you're
   probably in a position to understand the mechanism of the problem.
2) It makes it much easier for anyone responding to you to reproduce
   your problem, and to quickly understand what's going on, and either
   tell you the answer or tell you where to look next.

Sometimes, when submitting a Minimum Example for a problem that seems
to be a LaTeX problem (actually my misuse of LaTeX would be more
accurate), I'll go so far as to code it in LaTeX, not LyX, and then
post the question. This rules out LyX, making it easier for the list
inhabitants to 1) Know whether the solution is within their area of
expertise, and 2) Rule out LyX right away. LyX-List inhabitants are
nice enough that they'll answer LaTeX questions, even though
technically LaTeX is not their product.

Having been on the LyX-Users list since 2001, I've seen a lot of help
requests come with giant LyX files. Does the submitter really expect
*me* to carve up his gigantic document in order to make a Minimum
Example? Well, that's not going to happen, because if it's too much
work for the guy who needs a solution, it's certainly too much work for
me.

Next, if you have an error message, put it in a search engine. You
might find a lot of valuable information.

I've found that the guy who answers a lot of questions for others gets
a lot of detailed and devoted help when he needs it. I've found this on
the LyX list the past 12 years. I help newbies with layouts and light
LaTeX and the like, and then the *big brains* on the list help me when I
have a showstopper problem. Pay it forward, and you'll get lots of
support.

Sometimes you post a concise symptom description and minimal example
and do everything right, and you know *someone* on the list has info,
but you're met with deafening silence. It's time for the patented,
can't miss, Steve Litt Answer-Getting Method (SLAGM). What you do is
make some sort of kludge to fix your symptom. For instance, with LyX it
might be to change your View->PDF (ps2pdf) so that it runs some sort of
awk script that copies your LyX file to a dummy, modifies the dummy, and
compiles *that*. You then get on the list and brag about your kludge,
except you don't call it a kludge, you call it a solution, and in a
subdued, low key way you make it obvious that you think you've displayed
cleverness in the solution. In less than 24 hours, all those people who
didn't have the time to answer your question will leapfrog each other
telling you how stupid your solution is, and providing better
solutions. You mix and match those better solutions to make your real
solution for yourself. Or, if nobody responds, or if people respond
"hey man, that's a cool solution", then you actually use your kludge on
an ongoing basis. Either way, you have it solved, and you know your
solution is the best available.

And please, please, *PLEASE*, when your problem is finally solved, end
the thread with the solution, and mark the subject , so other
people can benefit from what you learned. It costs nothing to do, and
makes the world a better place to live.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: 304-page book, but PDF cuts short at Page 236

2013-10-17 Thread Steve Litt 
On Fri, 18 Oct 2013 00:48:50 +0530
 Frederick FN Noronha फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या *فريدريك نورونيا
fredericknoro...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Is it due to a lack of space on my hard disk? Ive' tried clearing some
 files.

If either your drive or the partition is over 85% full, or has less
than 10GB free, I'd say it's time to do something about that, whether
or not it's the cause of this. Modern drives are way too cheap to go
through the hassle of playing musical files. If getting the new drive
or redistributing partitions fixes the LyX problems, great. If not,
getting enough disk space will certainly prevent other frustrating
problems down the road.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: 304-page book, but PDF cuts short at Page 236

2013-10-17 Thread Steve Litt 
On Fri, 18 Oct 2013 00:48:50 +0530
 Frederick FN Noronha फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या *فريدريك نورونيا
fredericknoro...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Is it due to a lack of space on my hard disk? Ive' tried clearing some
 files.

If either your drive or the partition is over 85% full, or has less
than 10GB free, I'd say it's time to do something about that, whether
or not it's the cause of this. Modern drives are way too cheap to go
through the hassle of playing musical files. If getting the new drive
or redistributing partitions fixes the LyX problems, great. If not,
getting enough disk space will certainly prevent other frustrating
problems down the road.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: 304-page book, but PDF cuts short at Page 236

2013-10-17 Thread Steve Litt 
On Fri, 18 Oct 2013 00:48:50 +0530
 Frederick FN Noronha फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या *فريدريك نورونيا
<fredericknoro...@gmail.com> wrote:
 
> Is it due to a lack of space on my hard disk? Ive' tried clearing some
> files.

If either your drive or the partition is over 85% full, or has less
than 10GB free, I'd say it's time to do something about that, whether
or not it's the cause of this. Modern drives are way too cheap to go
through the hassle of playing musical files. If getting the new drive
or redistributing partitions fixes the LyX problems, great. If not,
getting enough disk space will certainly prevent other frustrating
problems down the road.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: different watermarks for branches

2013-10-14 Thread Steve Litt 
On Mon, 14 Oct 2013 20:18:05 +0200
Uwe Ade uwe@gmx.de wrote:

 Hello 
 
 i have a document witch different Branches. Are there a way to put
 different Watermarks in each branch? The idea is
 branche1 (no watermark)
 branche 2 (supplement)
 branche 3 (informations
 
 So students can see on the watermark to which category the slide he
 actually sees belong to.
 
 
 Thanks 
 
 uwe 


I don't know how to insert a watermark at all, but assuming you do, all
you need to do is put a token where the watermark graphic filename
belongs, and then run the proper sed command against the file to print
it or make it into a PDF.

There are other methods involving LaTeX ifthen, but it's necessary that
there's some way to deduce which branch.

HTH

SteveT

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: different watermarks for branches

2013-10-14 Thread Steve Litt 
On Mon, 14 Oct 2013 20:18:05 +0200
Uwe Ade uwe@gmx.de wrote:

 Hello 
 
 i have a document witch different Branches. Are there a way to put
 different Watermarks in each branch? The idea is
 branche1 (no watermark)
 branche 2 (supplement)
 branche 3 (informations
 
 So students can see on the watermark to which category the slide he
 actually sees belong to.
 
 
 Thanks 
 
 uwe 


I don't know how to insert a watermark at all, but assuming you do, all
you need to do is put a token where the watermark graphic filename
belongs, and then run the proper sed command against the file to print
it or make it into a PDF.

There are other methods involving LaTeX ifthen, but it's necessary that
there's some way to deduce which branch.

HTH

SteveT

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: different watermarks for branches

2013-10-14 Thread Steve Litt 
On Mon, 14 Oct 2013 20:18:05 +0200
Uwe Ade <uwe@gmx.de> wrote:

> Hello 
> 
> i have a document witch different Branches. Are there a way to put
> different Watermarks in each branch? The idea is
> branche1 (no watermark)
> branche 2 (supplement)
> branche 3 (informations
> 
> So students can see on the watermark to which category the slide he
> actually sees belong to.
> 
> 
> Thanks 
> 
> uwe 


I don't know how to insert a watermark at all, but assuming you do, all
you need to do is put a token where the watermark graphic filename
belongs, and then run the proper sed command against the file to print
it or make it into a PDF.

There are other methods involving LaTeX ifthen, but it's necessary that
there's some way to deduce which branch.

HTH

SteveT

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: For Lyx Users: index

2013-10-05 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sat, 05 Oct 2013 09:28:35 +0200
Jürgen Spitzmüller sp...@lyx.org wrote:

 Am Freitag 04 Oktober 2013, 15:27:54 schrieb stefano franchi:
   I would write:
  resorts|seeERT{ beach resortsERT}
 
 I would even write:
 resortsERT|see{/ERTbeach resortsERT}/ERT
 
 With some font encodings, the | will be output as \textbar outside
 ERT, and this will break the index.
 
 Jürgen

Oh, geez, this junk again!

Original Poster: Somewhere in 2006 or early 2007, a LyX version change
started tampering with the contents of ERT, and stuff was converted
between | and \textbar, etc, completely breaking sees and seealsos
that had worked perfectly up until that time.

See this thread:

http://www.mail-archive.com/lyx-users@lists.lyx.org/msg54381.html

My solution was, and remains to this day, to put all my sees and
seealsos into an include file called seealso.inc, and then put the
following in the layout file that comprised my document class:

\input{./seealso.inc}

Here's my seealso.inc for my book The Key to Everyday Excellence, and
note that the last command wraps due to email:

==
\index{UTP|see{Universal Troubleshooting Process}}
\index{Jim Barber|see{Barber (Jim)}}
\index{Scan and Exploit!To teach calculus|see{Calculus}}
\index{Justice Coalition!Design discussions|seealso{Skill Transfer
Process-Targeted-Derivation of the Justice Coalition}}
==

If you want to be happy like I am, do what I do: Put all your sees and
seealsos in a separate text file: Never in the LyX file, as ERT or
anything else.

HTH,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: For Lyx Users: index

2013-10-05 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sat, 05 Oct 2013 15:46:53 +0200
Jürgen Spitzmüller sp...@lyx.org wrote:

 Am Samstag 05 Oktober 2013, 09:03:54 schrieb Steve Litt:
  If you want to be happy like I am, do what I do: Put all your sees
  and seealsos in a separate text file: Never in the LyX file, as ERT
  or anything else.
 
 Why? ERT works just fine.
 
 Jürgen

2 reasons:

1) ERT didn't work for me:
http://www.mail-archive.com/lyx-users@lists.lyx.org/msg54381.html
2) Lot easier to type 10 or 20 items in a text file than into ERT.

Let the guy try the external file. It just might work for him.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: For Lyx Users: index

2013-10-05 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sat, 05 Oct 2013 09:28:35 +0200
Jürgen Spitzmüller sp...@lyx.org wrote:

 Am Freitag 04 Oktober 2013, 15:27:54 schrieb stefano franchi:
   I would write:
  resorts|seeERT{ beach resortsERT}
 
 I would even write:
 resortsERT|see{/ERTbeach resortsERT}/ERT
 
 With some font encodings, the | will be output as \textbar outside
 ERT, and this will break the index.
 
 Jürgen

Oh, geez, this junk again!

Original Poster: Somewhere in 2006 or early 2007, a LyX version change
started tampering with the contents of ERT, and stuff was converted
between | and \textbar, etc, completely breaking sees and seealsos
that had worked perfectly up until that time.

See this thread:

http://www.mail-archive.com/lyx-users@lists.lyx.org/msg54381.html

My solution was, and remains to this day, to put all my sees and
seealsos into an include file called seealso.inc, and then put the
following in the layout file that comprised my document class:

\input{./seealso.inc}

Here's my seealso.inc for my book The Key to Everyday Excellence, and
note that the last command wraps due to email:

==
\index{UTP|see{Universal Troubleshooting Process}}
\index{Jim Barber|see{Barber (Jim)}}
\index{Scan and Exploit!To teach calculus|see{Calculus}}
\index{Justice Coalition!Design discussions|seealso{Skill Transfer
Process-Targeted-Derivation of the Justice Coalition}}
==

If you want to be happy like I am, do what I do: Put all your sees and
seealsos in a separate text file: Never in the LyX file, as ERT or
anything else.

HTH,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: For Lyx Users: index

2013-10-05 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sat, 05 Oct 2013 15:46:53 +0200
Jürgen Spitzmüller sp...@lyx.org wrote:

 Am Samstag 05 Oktober 2013, 09:03:54 schrieb Steve Litt:
  If you want to be happy like I am, do what I do: Put all your sees
  and seealsos in a separate text file: Never in the LyX file, as ERT
  or anything else.
 
 Why? ERT works just fine.
 
 Jürgen

2 reasons:

1) ERT didn't work for me:
http://www.mail-archive.com/lyx-users@lists.lyx.org/msg54381.html
2) Lot easier to type 10 or 20 items in a text file than into ERT.

Let the guy try the external file. It just might work for him.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: For Lyx Users: index

2013-10-05 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sat, 05 Oct 2013 09:28:35 +0200
Jürgen Spitzmüller <sp...@lyx.org> wrote:

> Am Freitag 04 Oktober 2013, 15:27:54 schrieb stefano franchi:
> >  I would write:
> > resorts|seeERT{ beach resortsERT}
> 
> I would even write:
> resorts|see{beach resorts}
> 
> With some font encodings, the "|" will be output as \textbar outside
> ERT, and this will break the index.
> 
> Jürgen

Oh, geez, this junk again!

Original Poster: Somewhere in 2006 or early 2007, a LyX version change
started tampering with the contents of ERT, and stuff was converted
between | and \textbar, etc, completely breaking sees and seealsos
that had worked perfectly up until that time.

See this thread:

http://www.mail-archive.com/lyx-users@lists.lyx.org/msg54381.html

My solution was, and remains to this day, to put all my sees and
seealsos into an include file called seealso.inc, and then put the
following in the layout file that comprised my document class:

\input{./seealso.inc}

Here's my seealso.inc for my book "The Key to Everyday Excellence", and
note that the last command wraps due to email:

==
\index{UTP|see{Universal Troubleshooting Process}}
\index{Jim Barber|see{Barber (Jim)}}
\index{Scan and Exploit!To teach calculus|see{Calculus}}
\index{Justice Coalition!Design discussions|seealso{Skill Transfer
Process->Targeted->Derivation of the Justice Coalition}}
==

If you want to be happy like I am, do what I do: Put all your sees and
seealsos in a separate text file: Never in the LyX file, as ERT or
anything else.

HTH,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: For Lyx Users: index

2013-10-05 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sat, 05 Oct 2013 15:46:53 +0200
Jürgen Spitzmüller <sp...@lyx.org> wrote:

> Am Samstag 05 Oktober 2013, 09:03:54 schrieb Steve Litt:
> > If you want to be happy like I am, do what I do: Put all your sees
> > and seealsos in a separate text file: Never in the LyX file, as ERT
> > or anything else.
> 
> Why? ERT works just fine.
> 
> Jürgen

2 reasons:

1) ERT didn't work for me:
http://www.mail-archive.com/lyx-users@lists.lyx.org/msg54381.html
2) Lot easier to type 10 or 20 items in a text file than into ERT.

Let the guy try the external file. It just might work for him.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Instructions on including fonts?

2013-09-29 Thread Steve Litt 
Hi all,

Where can I find instructions telling me how to use Liberation Mono,
Liberation Sans, and Liberation Serif in LaTeX and LyX? These are
completely free software equivalents of Courier New, Ariel, and Times
New Roman respectively, and I use them a lot to limit legal
entanglements.

Also, does anyone know a free and open equivalent of Century
Schoolbook, and how to install it for LaTeX and LyX?

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Instructions on including fonts?

2013-09-29 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 12:51:39 -0400
Steve Litt sl...@troubleshooters.com wrote:

 Hi all,
 
 Where can I find instructions telling me how to use Liberation Mono,
 Liberation Sans, and Liberation Serif in LaTeX and LyX? These are
 completely free software equivalents of Courier New, Ariel, and Times
 New Roman respectively, and I use them a lot to limit legal
 entanglements.

The instructions are at http://wiki.lyx.org/FAQ/Fonts. Basically, all
you do is Document-Settings-Fonts-Use_Non_TeX_Fonts.

 
 Also, does anyone know a free and open equivalent of Century
 Schoolbook, and how to install it for LaTeX and LyX?

I'd still like to know this.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Instructions on including fonts?

2013-09-29 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 19:06:21 +0200
Jürgen Spitzmüller sp...@lyx.org wrote:

 Am Sonntag 29 September 2013, 12:51:39 schrieb Steve Litt:
  Where can I find instructions telling me how to use Liberation Mono,
  Liberation Sans, and Liberation Serif in LaTeX and LyX? These are
  completely free software equivalents of Courier New, Ariel, and
  Times New Roman respectively, and I use them a lot to limit legal
  entanglements.
 
 I suppose you need to use XeTeX or LuaTeX (i.e., non-TeX fonts) in
 order to use Liberation fonts with LaTeX.
 
 If you are looking for good, free alternatives for the mentioned
 commercial fonts, have a look at the TeX Gyre fonts
 
 http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/tgtermes/
 http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/tgheros/
 http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/tgcursor/
 
  Also, does anyone know a free and open equivalent of Century
  Schoolbook, and how to install it for LaTeX and LyX?
 
 http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/newcent/
 
 Bot the TeXGyre fonts and newcent will be natively supported by LyX
 (via Document  Settings  Fonts)
 
 Jürgen

After an hour of searching, I'm having a little trouble here. I
download a font. Now...

* Where do I put the downloaded file?
* By what procedure do I install it so LyX/LaTeX sees it when I check
  non-TeX and open the dropdown?
* Where can I find detailed info on exactly how to use fontinst? The
  man page is useless, and I found little on the Internet.
* I'm supposed to use fonttool, and I installed it on my Ubuntu 12.10
  box, but there's no program called fonttool, and no indication
  anywhere as how to use fonttool.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Instructions on including fonts?

2013-09-29 Thread Steve Litt 
Hi all,

Where can I find instructions telling me how to use Liberation Mono,
Liberation Sans, and Liberation Serif in LaTeX and LyX? These are
completely free software equivalents of Courier New, Ariel, and Times
New Roman respectively, and I use them a lot to limit legal
entanglements.

Also, does anyone know a free and open equivalent of Century
Schoolbook, and how to install it for LaTeX and LyX?

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Instructions on including fonts?

2013-09-29 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 12:51:39 -0400
Steve Litt sl...@troubleshooters.com wrote:

 Hi all,
 
 Where can I find instructions telling me how to use Liberation Mono,
 Liberation Sans, and Liberation Serif in LaTeX and LyX? These are
 completely free software equivalents of Courier New, Ariel, and Times
 New Roman respectively, and I use them a lot to limit legal
 entanglements.

The instructions are at http://wiki.lyx.org/FAQ/Fonts. Basically, all
you do is Document-Settings-Fonts-Use_Non_TeX_Fonts.

 
 Also, does anyone know a free and open equivalent of Century
 Schoolbook, and how to install it for LaTeX and LyX?

I'd still like to know this.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Instructions on including fonts?

2013-09-29 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 19:06:21 +0200
Jürgen Spitzmüller sp...@lyx.org wrote:

 Am Sonntag 29 September 2013, 12:51:39 schrieb Steve Litt:
  Where can I find instructions telling me how to use Liberation Mono,
  Liberation Sans, and Liberation Serif in LaTeX and LyX? These are
  completely free software equivalents of Courier New, Ariel, and
  Times New Roman respectively, and I use them a lot to limit legal
  entanglements.
 
 I suppose you need to use XeTeX or LuaTeX (i.e., non-TeX fonts) in
 order to use Liberation fonts with LaTeX.
 
 If you are looking for good, free alternatives for the mentioned
 commercial fonts, have a look at the TeX Gyre fonts
 
 http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/tgtermes/
 http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/tgheros/
 http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/tgcursor/
 
  Also, does anyone know a free and open equivalent of Century
  Schoolbook, and how to install it for LaTeX and LyX?
 
 http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/newcent/
 
 Bot the TeXGyre fonts and newcent will be natively supported by LyX
 (via Document  Settings  Fonts)
 
 Jürgen

After an hour of searching, I'm having a little trouble here. I
download a font. Now...

* Where do I put the downloaded file?
* By what procedure do I install it so LyX/LaTeX sees it when I check
  non-TeX and open the dropdown?
* Where can I find detailed info on exactly how to use fontinst? The
  man page is useless, and I found little on the Internet.
* I'm supposed to use fonttool, and I installed it on my Ubuntu 12.10
  box, but there's no program called fonttool, and no indication
  anywhere as how to use fonttool.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Instructions on including fonts?

2013-09-29 Thread Steve Litt 
Hi all,

Where can I find instructions telling me how to use Liberation Mono,
Liberation Sans, and Liberation Serif in LaTeX and LyX? These are
completely free software equivalents of Courier New, Ariel, and Times
New Roman respectively, and I use them a lot to limit legal
entanglements.

Also, does anyone know a free and open equivalent of Century
Schoolbook, and how to install it for LaTeX and LyX?

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Instructions on including fonts?

2013-09-29 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 12:51:39 -0400
Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> Where can I find instructions telling me how to use Liberation Mono,
> Liberation Sans, and Liberation Serif in LaTeX and LyX? These are
> completely free software equivalents of Courier New, Ariel, and Times
> New Roman respectively, and I use them a lot to limit legal
> entanglements.

The instructions are at http://wiki.lyx.org/FAQ/Fonts. Basically, all
you do is Document->Settings->Fonts->Use_Non_TeX_Fonts.

> 
> Also, does anyone know a free and open equivalent of Century
> Schoolbook, and how to install it for LaTeX and LyX?

I'd still like to know this.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Instructions on including fonts?

2013-09-29 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 19:06:21 +0200
Jürgen Spitzmüller <sp...@lyx.org> wrote:

> Am Sonntag 29 September 2013, 12:51:39 schrieb Steve Litt:
> > Where can I find instructions telling me how to use Liberation Mono,
> > Liberation Sans, and Liberation Serif in LaTeX and LyX? These are
> > completely free software equivalents of Courier New, Ariel, and
> > Times New Roman respectively, and I use them a lot to limit legal
> > entanglements.
> 
> I suppose you need to use XeTeX or LuaTeX (i.e., "non-TeX fonts") in
> order to use Liberation fonts with LaTeX.
> 
> If you are looking for good, free alternatives for the mentioned
> commercial fonts, have a look at the TeX Gyre fonts
> 
> http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/tgtermes/
> http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/tgheros/
> http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/tgcursor/
> 
> > Also, does anyone know a free and open equivalent of Century
> > Schoolbook, and how to install it for LaTeX and LyX?
> 
> http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/newcent/
> 
> Bot the TeXGyre fonts and newcent will be natively supported by LyX
> (via Document > Settings > Fonts)
> 
> Jürgen

After an hour of searching, I'm having a little trouble here. I
download a font. Now...

* Where do I put the downloaded file?
* By what procedure do I install it so LyX/LaTeX sees it when I check
  non-TeX and open the dropdown?
* Where can I find detailed info on exactly how to use fontinst? The
  man page is useless, and I found little on the Internet.
* I'm supposed to use fonttool, and I installed it on my Ubuntu 12.10
  box, but there's no program called fonttool, and no indication
  anywhere as how to use fonttool.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: exporting tex for newbies

2013-09-17 Thread Steve Litt 
On Tue, 17 Sep 2013 12:23:10 -0700
Bob Alvarez cobol...@gmail.com wrote:

 I recently had a paper accepted by an American Institute of Physics 
 journal. The paper was reviewed from pdf documents created by Lyx but 
 now the AIP emails: Please upload your article file as a Word or Tex 
 file. AIP production cannot use a PDF as the article source file. I 
 assume they want to reformat the article for the standard of the
 journal.

Bob,

If they really mean TeX, as opposed to LaTeX, then I don't think LyX
can do that. LyX produces LaTeX, not TeX.

If LaTeX is acceptable, then I think it's as simple as:

lyx --export latex

I know there's also a way to do it from LyX's menu system, but I don't
have it open right now. I think it's File-Export.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: exporting tex for newbies

2013-09-17 Thread Steve Litt 
On Tue, 17 Sep 2013 12:23:10 -0700
Bob Alvarez cobol...@gmail.com wrote:

 I recently had a paper accepted by an American Institute of Physics 
 journal. The paper was reviewed from pdf documents created by Lyx but 
 now the AIP emails: Please upload your article file as a Word or Tex 
 file. AIP production cannot use a PDF as the article source file. I 
 assume they want to reformat the article for the standard of the
 journal.

Bob,

If they really mean TeX, as opposed to LaTeX, then I don't think LyX
can do that. LyX produces LaTeX, not TeX.

If LaTeX is acceptable, then I think it's as simple as:

lyx --export latex

I know there's also a way to do it from LyX's menu system, but I don't
have it open right now. I think it's File-Export.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: exporting tex for newbies

2013-09-17 Thread Steve Litt 
On Tue, 17 Sep 2013 12:23:10 -0700
Bob Alvarez <cobol...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I recently had a paper accepted by an American Institute of Physics 
> journal. The paper was reviewed from pdf documents created by Lyx but 
> now the AIP emails: "Please upload your article file as a Word or Tex 
> file. AIP production cannot use a PDF as the article source file." I 
> assume they want to reformat the article for the standard of the
> journal.

Bob,

If they really mean TeX, as opposed to LaTeX, then I don't think LyX
can do that. LyX produces LaTeX, not TeX.

If LaTeX is acceptable, then I think it's as simple as:

lyx --export latex

I know there's also a way to do it from LyX's menu system, but I don't
have it open right now. I think it's File->Export.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Page numbers use fonts of surrounding environments

2013-09-12 Thread Steve Litt 
On Thu, 12 Sep 2013 11:52:59 +0300
Itai Shaked itai.sha...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:

 Hello,
 I'm having a problem, which I'm not sure is due to LyX, but I would
 appreciate it if any one here could help me.
 
 When writing a document in LyX and using XeTeX and polyglossia I have
 noticed some of the page numbers were in different font than others.
 Upon further investigation I have found out that whenever an
 environment (e.g. Theorem, Lemma, etc.) spans a page break, the page
 number within would use the font used in that environment (so - the
 specific number would be italic, like a text of a Theorem
 environment).
 
 This only happens when using non-English language.
 
 Would this be a bug in LyX or polyglossia?
 How would you go further investigating or repairing it?

If I were having this problem, my first step would be to back up the
LyX file for safe keeping, and troubleshoot on copies. My second step
would be to remove all but the first five pages, and see if the problem
persists.

Then I'd remove polyglossia and see if the problem persists. If not,
report it to Polyglossia at
http://github.com/reutenauer/polyglossia/issues

Just keep experimenting til you find the root cause, and then use
search engines to see if others have solved that problem. But right now
you don't know if the problem is in LyX, Polyglossia, your TeX/LaTeX
setup, your LyX to PDF conversion, or even your PDF reader. You can
quickly narrow it down.

And remember, when dealing with LyX, never underestimate the power of
the Minimal Example That Reproduces The Problem.

HTH,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Page numbers use fonts of surrounding environments

2013-09-12 Thread Steve Litt 
On Thu, 12 Sep 2013 11:52:59 +0300
Itai Shaked itai.sha...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:

 Hello,
 I'm having a problem, which I'm not sure is due to LyX, but I would
 appreciate it if any one here could help me.
 
 When writing a document in LyX and using XeTeX and polyglossia I have
 noticed some of the page numbers were in different font than others.
 Upon further investigation I have found out that whenever an
 environment (e.g. Theorem, Lemma, etc.) spans a page break, the page
 number within would use the font used in that environment (so - the
 specific number would be italic, like a text of a Theorem
 environment).
 
 This only happens when using non-English language.
 
 Would this be a bug in LyX or polyglossia?
 How would you go further investigating or repairing it?

If I were having this problem, my first step would be to back up the
LyX file for safe keeping, and troubleshoot on copies. My second step
would be to remove all but the first five pages, and see if the problem
persists.

Then I'd remove polyglossia and see if the problem persists. If not,
report it to Polyglossia at
http://github.com/reutenauer/polyglossia/issues

Just keep experimenting til you find the root cause, and then use
search engines to see if others have solved that problem. But right now
you don't know if the problem is in LyX, Polyglossia, your TeX/LaTeX
setup, your LyX to PDF conversion, or even your PDF reader. You can
quickly narrow it down.

And remember, when dealing with LyX, never underestimate the power of
the Minimal Example That Reproduces The Problem.

HTH,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Page numbers use fonts of surrounding environments

2013-09-12 Thread Steve Litt 
On Thu, 12 Sep 2013 11:52:59 +0300
Itai Shaked <itai.sha...@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:

> Hello,
> I'm having a problem, which I'm not sure is due to LyX, but I would
> appreciate it if any one here could help me.
> 
> When writing a document in LyX and using XeTeX and polyglossia I have
> noticed some of the page numbers were in different font than others.
> Upon further investigation I have found out that whenever an
> environment (e.g. Theorem, Lemma, etc.) spans a page break, the page
> number within would use the font used in that environment (so - the
> specific number would be italic, like a text of a Theorem
> environment).
> 
> This only happens when using non-English language.
> 
> Would this be a bug in LyX or polyglossia?
> How would you go further investigating or repairing it?

If I were having this problem, my first step would be to back up the
LyX file for safe keeping, and troubleshoot on copies. My second step
would be to remove all but the first five pages, and see if the problem
persists.

Then I'd remove polyglossia and see if the problem persists. If not,
report it to Polyglossia at
http://github.com/reutenauer/polyglossia/issues

Just keep experimenting til you find the root cause, and then use
search engines to see if others have solved that problem. But right now
you don't know if the problem is in LyX, Polyglossia, your TeX/LaTeX
setup, your LyX to PDF conversion, or even your PDF reader. You can
quickly narrow it down.

And remember, when dealing with LyX, never underestimate the power of
the "Minimal Example That Reproduces The Problem".

HTH,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Thank you for View-Update

2013-09-05 Thread Steve Litt 
Hi Developers,

Thank you very much for View-Update (Ctrl+Shift+R). It's been in LyX
for many, many versions, but now it works, and it's a great help in
keeping the PDF I'm proofreading in sync with the file I'm modifying.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Thank you for View-Update

2013-09-05 Thread Steve Litt 
Hi Developers,

Thank you very much for View-Update (Ctrl+Shift+R). It's been in LyX
for many, many versions, but now it works, and it's a great help in
keeping the PDF I'm proofreading in sync with the file I'm modifying.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Thank you for View->Update

2013-09-05 Thread Steve Litt 
Hi Developers,

Thank you very much for View->Update (Ctrl+Shift+R). It's been in LyX
for many, many versions, but now it works, and it's a great help in
keeping the PDF I'm proofreading in sync with the file I'm modifying.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question #3: LyX and LaTeX and TeX

2013-09-03 Thread Steve Litt 
On Tue, 3 Sep 2013 14:46:20 +0200
Wolfgang Keller felip...@gmx.net wrote:

  LyX strives to offer an authoring environment that requires no (or
  truly minimal) knowledge of LaTeX. 
 
 And this feature is pretty foolproof.
 
 As proven by this fool. ;-
 
  In practice, however, rudimentary LaTeX knowledge is always required
  when working with LyX,
 
 You can learn all that from the manuals while authoring your first
 document with LyX. I did it exactly that way myself.

And when you do it that way, my strong suggestion is that when, while
writing, you find need for a new environment, you spend minimal time
creating that environment (maybe a Copystyle plus margin change plus a
semi-distinctive font on both LyX environment and PDF output), and
then, when you have several consecutive hours to do nothing but LaTeX,
tweak your environments to be how you want them to be.

My experience tells me it's better to wear one hat at a time: Either
you're a writer or a LaTeX (wannabe) expert, and when you wear one of
these hats you should be able to devote several consecutive hours to
it, because they don't mix well.

HTH,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question #3: LyX and LaTeX and TeX

2013-09-03 Thread Steve Litt 
On Tue, 3 Sep 2013 14:46:20 +0200
Wolfgang Keller felip...@gmx.net wrote:

  LyX strives to offer an authoring environment that requires no (or
  truly minimal) knowledge of LaTeX. 
 
 And this feature is pretty foolproof.
 
 As proven by this fool. ;-
 
  In practice, however, rudimentary LaTeX knowledge is always required
  when working with LyX,
 
 You can learn all that from the manuals while authoring your first
 document with LyX. I did it exactly that way myself.

And when you do it that way, my strong suggestion is that when, while
writing, you find need for a new environment, you spend minimal time
creating that environment (maybe a Copystyle plus margin change plus a
semi-distinctive font on both LyX environment and PDF output), and
then, when you have several consecutive hours to do nothing but LaTeX,
tweak your environments to be how you want them to be.

My experience tells me it's better to wear one hat at a time: Either
you're a writer or a LaTeX (wannabe) expert, and when you wear one of
these hats you should be able to devote several consecutive hours to
it, because they don't mix well.

HTH,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question #3: LyX and LaTeX and TeX

2013-09-03 Thread Steve Litt 
On Tue, 3 Sep 2013 14:46:20 +0200
Wolfgang Keller <felip...@gmx.net> wrote:

> > LyX strives to offer an authoring environment that requires no (or
> > truly minimal) knowledge of LaTeX. 
> 
> And this feature is pretty foolproof.
> 
> As proven by this fool. >;->
> 
> > In practice, however, rudimentary LaTeX knowledge is always required
> > when working with LyX,
> 
> You can learn all that from the manuals while authoring your first
> document with LyX. I did it exactly that way myself.

And when you do it that way, my strong suggestion is that when, while
writing, you find need for a new environment, you spend minimal time
creating that environment (maybe a Copystyle plus margin change plus a
semi-distinctive font on both LyX environment and PDF output), and
then, when you have several consecutive hours to do nothing but LaTeX,
tweak your environments to be how you want them to be.

My experience tells me it's better to wear one hat at a time: Either
you're a writer or a LaTeX (wannabe) expert, and when you wear one of
these hats you should be able to devote several consecutive hours to
it, because they don't mix well.

HTH,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question #3: LyX and LaTeX and TeX

2013-09-01 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sun, 1 Sep 2013 08:29:23 +0200
Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Sun, Sep 1, 2013 at 5:10 AM, Ken Springer snowsh...@q.com wrote:
  If I'm going to try out LyX in the end, would it be of any value to
  me to do a little experimenting with LaTeX and Tex first, or just
  jump in the pool?
 
 LyX strives to offer an authoring environment that requires no (or
 truly minimal) knowledge of LaTeX. In practice, however, rudimentary
 LaTeX knowledge is always required when working with LyX, be it when
 setting up your bibliography, understanding the UI structures,
 inserting appropriate symbols or when dealing with unexpected
 compilation errors.

I'd add that if you want to add your own environments and make them
look a certain way, LyX requires a *huge* knowledge of LaTeX. This fact
doesn't materially contradict anything you write in the rest of this
document.

The way I work is, when finding a need for a new environment or
character style, I immediately put it in, perhaps with a CopyStyle,
using just enough LaTeX to make it look different from surrounding
text, even if it's nothing like my desires for the finished product.
Ellapsed time, 3 to 5 minutes, and I'm back to banging out verbiage.

Then, on a day when I'm not whomping out content, I'll search-engine
all over the place finding out what I need in order to achieve my
desired look, experiment, and code it.

Sometimes, when it's super-challenging, I do the whole thing in LaTeX
first, and only after the LaTeX is perfect do I port it to LyX. Doing
it this way limits the number of variables involved, increases
understanding, and *greatly* reduces the time consumed by each
change/compile/view cycle.

And this discussion wouldn't be complete without adding that a lot of
people have outstanding memories and ability to search CTAN, and can
find package solutions so they need no LaTeX knowledge at all (though a
lot of those same people have a lot more LaTeX knowledge than I do.) If
you want to become one of these people, I'd highly recommend starting
with the LaTeX Configuration manual available under Help. It lists a
whole lot of handy packages. The more packages you know and can use,
the less LaTeX you need to know.

 
 I'd say that LyX works very well for novices to learn the basics of
 LaTeX. Work on your document and see in View  Source how LyX prepares
 the LaTeX code for you. So best would be not to worry about LaTeX too
 much in the beginning; you'll pick it up on the way.
 
 The most time-consuming part of learning LyX is making your first
 document. 

Which isn't very time consuming. You run LyX, say File-New, and start
typing. Paragraph styles, which we call Environments, are available
from a dropdown on the toolbar. Character styles are available from
Edit-Text_Style on the menu.

 So a good way to proceed would be to make your way through
 the Introduction and the Tutorial (and maybe the LyX Essentials:
 https://sites.google.com/site/tsewiki/resources/latex ), and then
 start creating some not-very-important document. In the process you'll
 start learning a lot of things LaTeX (and LyX).

Pre-Cisely! I didn't read the tutorial first, and was sorry about that
later. Also, the User's Guide is a vital part of your every day lookups.

Actually, every document listed under LyX's Help menu is very useful,
but these are especially so. And once you're using styles (environments
and character styles), be sure to look at the Customization manual
under Paragraph styles (search is the easiest way to find it), and
search Flex Insets to find the section about character styles.

When you DO need LaTeX, I've written some easy to read stuff here:

* http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/200210/200210.htm
* http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/lyx_latex_tex.htm
* http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/ownlists.htm

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question #3: LyX and LaTeX and TeX

2013-09-01 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sun, 1 Sep 2013 08:29:23 +0200
Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Sun, Sep 1, 2013 at 5:10 AM, Ken Springer snowsh...@q.com wrote:
  If I'm going to try out LyX in the end, would it be of any value to
  me to do a little experimenting with LaTeX and Tex first, or just
  jump in the pool?
 
 LyX strives to offer an authoring environment that requires no (or
 truly minimal) knowledge of LaTeX. In practice, however, rudimentary
 LaTeX knowledge is always required when working with LyX, be it when
 setting up your bibliography, understanding the UI structures,
 inserting appropriate symbols or when dealing with unexpected
 compilation errors.

I'd add that if you want to add your own environments and make them
look a certain way, LyX requires a *huge* knowledge of LaTeX. This fact
doesn't materially contradict anything you write in the rest of this
document.

The way I work is, when finding a need for a new environment or
character style, I immediately put it in, perhaps with a CopyStyle,
using just enough LaTeX to make it look different from surrounding
text, even if it's nothing like my desires for the finished product.
Ellapsed time, 3 to 5 minutes, and I'm back to banging out verbiage.

Then, on a day when I'm not whomping out content, I'll search-engine
all over the place finding out what I need in order to achieve my
desired look, experiment, and code it.

Sometimes, when it's super-challenging, I do the whole thing in LaTeX
first, and only after the LaTeX is perfect do I port it to LyX. Doing
it this way limits the number of variables involved, increases
understanding, and *greatly* reduces the time consumed by each
change/compile/view cycle.

And this discussion wouldn't be complete without adding that a lot of
people have outstanding memories and ability to search CTAN, and can
find package solutions so they need no LaTeX knowledge at all (though a
lot of those same people have a lot more LaTeX knowledge than I do.) If
you want to become one of these people, I'd highly recommend starting
with the LaTeX Configuration manual available under Help. It lists a
whole lot of handy packages. The more packages you know and can use,
the less LaTeX you need to know.

 
 I'd say that LyX works very well for novices to learn the basics of
 LaTeX. Work on your document and see in View  Source how LyX prepares
 the LaTeX code for you. So best would be not to worry about LaTeX too
 much in the beginning; you'll pick it up on the way.
 
 The most time-consuming part of learning LyX is making your first
 document. 

Which isn't very time consuming. You run LyX, say File-New, and start
typing. Paragraph styles, which we call Environments, are available
from a dropdown on the toolbar. Character styles are available from
Edit-Text_Style on the menu.

 So a good way to proceed would be to make your way through
 the Introduction and the Tutorial (and maybe the LyX Essentials:
 https://sites.google.com/site/tsewiki/resources/latex ), and then
 start creating some not-very-important document. In the process you'll
 start learning a lot of things LaTeX (and LyX).

Pre-Cisely! I didn't read the tutorial first, and was sorry about that
later. Also, the User's Guide is a vital part of your every day lookups.

Actually, every document listed under LyX's Help menu is very useful,
but these are especially so. And once you're using styles (environments
and character styles), be sure to look at the Customization manual
under Paragraph styles (search is the easiest way to find it), and
search Flex Insets to find the section about character styles.

When you DO need LaTeX, I've written some easy to read stuff here:

* http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/200210/200210.htm
* http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/lyx_latex_tex.htm
* http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/ownlists.htm

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question #3: LyX and LaTeX and TeX

2013-09-01 Thread Steve Litt 
On Sun, 1 Sep 2013 08:29:23 +0200
Liviu Andronic <landronim...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Sep 1, 2013 at 5:10 AM, Ken Springer <snowsh...@q.com> wrote:
> > If I'm going to try out LyX in the end, would it be of any value to
> > me to do a little experimenting with LaTeX and Tex first, or just
> > jump in the pool?
> >
> LyX strives to offer an authoring environment that requires no (or
> truly minimal) knowledge of LaTeX. In practice, however, rudimentary
> LaTeX knowledge is always required when working with LyX, be it when
> setting up your bibliography, understanding the UI structures,
> inserting appropriate symbols or when dealing with unexpected
> compilation errors.

I'd add that if you want to add your own environments and make them
look a certain way, LyX requires a *huge* knowledge of LaTeX. This fact
doesn't materially contradict anything you write in the rest of this
document.

The way I work is, when finding a need for a new environment or
character style, I immediately put it in, perhaps with a CopyStyle,
using just enough LaTeX to make it look different from surrounding
text, even if it's nothing like my desires for the finished product.
Ellapsed time, 3 to 5 minutes, and I'm back to banging out verbiage.

Then, on a day when I'm not whomping out content, I'll search-engine
all over the place finding out what I need in order to achieve my
desired look, experiment, and code it.

Sometimes, when it's super-challenging, I do the whole thing in LaTeX
first, and only after the LaTeX is perfect do I port it to LyX. Doing
it this way limits the number of variables involved, increases
understanding, and *greatly* reduces the time consumed by each
change/compile/view cycle.

And this discussion wouldn't be complete without adding that a lot of
people have outstanding memories and ability to search CTAN, and can
find package solutions so they need no LaTeX knowledge at all (though a
lot of those same people have a lot more LaTeX knowledge than I do.) If
you want to become one of these people, I'd highly recommend starting
with the LaTeX Configuration manual available under Help. It lists a
whole lot of handy packages. The more packages you know and can use,
the less LaTeX you need to know.

> 
> I'd say that LyX works very well for novices to learn the basics of
> LaTeX. Work on your document and see in View > Source how LyX prepares
> the LaTeX code for you. So best would be not to worry about LaTeX too
> much in the beginning; you'll pick it up on the way.
> 
> The most time-consuming part of learning LyX is making your first
> document. 

Which isn't very time consuming. You run LyX, say File->New, and start
typing. Paragraph styles, which we call "Environments", are available
from a dropdown on the toolbar. Character styles are available from
Edit->Text_Style on the menu.

> So a good way to proceed would be to make your way through
> the Introduction and the Tutorial (and maybe the LyX Essentials:
> https://sites.google.com/site/tsewiki/resources/latex ), and then
> start creating some not-very-important document. In the process you'll
> start learning a lot of things LaTeX (and LyX).

Pre-Cisely! I didn't read the tutorial first, and was sorry about that
later. Also, the User's Guide is a vital part of your every day lookups.

Actually, every document listed under LyX's Help menu is very useful,
but these are especially so. And once you're using styles (environments
and character styles), be sure to look at the Customization manual
under Paragraph styles (search is the easiest way to find it), and
search Flex Insets to find the section about character styles.

When you DO need LaTeX, I've written some easy to read stuff here:

* http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/200210/200210.htm
* http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/lyx_latex_tex.htm
* http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/ownlists.htm

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question #2: Printed results from LyX

2013-08-29 Thread Steve Litt 
On Thu, 29 Aug 2013 10:19:34 -0400
Richard Heck rgh...@lyx.org wrote:

 On 08/29/2013 03:59 AM, Liviu Andronic wrote:
  On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 3:28 AM, Ken Springer snowsh...@q.com
  wrote:
  Much like the speakers in a sound system, it occurs to me the
  actual quality of the printed output from a LyX document will
  depend on the quality of the printer being used.
 
  Right or wrong?  If wrong, why?
 
  Well, kind of. Of course the printing quality will depend on the
  quality of the printer and the paper that you use. But once exported
  to PDF, the typesetting quality of your document should be
  rock-solid, whichever printer you use.
 
 Obviously, a low resolution printer will give worse printed output.
 This is especially true since the fonts used are (usually) vector
 fonts.
 
 That said, my two books /Frege's Theorem/ and /Reading Frege's 
 _Grundgesetze_/ were both printed, by the publisher, from a PDF I 
 provided. And they look great, if I do say so myself. I assume they
 used very good printers!
 
 Richard

Sort of on topic: After becoming dissatisfied with the 26 minute print
time, on my new Brother MFC-8810dw 40ppm printer, of my book Manager's
Guide to Technical Troubleshooting
(http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/mg.htm), I set the print
resolution down from 1200x1200dpi to 600x600dpi (11 minutes, yeah!), my
admittedly old eyes could find no appreciable difference in the print,
except for an almost imperceptable lightening at 600dpi. But the images
were another matter: They looked better at 600 because 1200 showcased
the mistakes and pixellations of the artwork itself.

To bring this back to on-topicness, the print resulting from LyX looks
good at any resolution, always assuming you pick a good font for
printing (I like Century Schoolbook).

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question #2: Printed results from LyX

2013-08-29 Thread Steve Litt 
On Thu, 29 Aug 2013 18:51:24 -0600
Ken Springer snowsh...@q.com wrote:

 On 8/29/13 4:47 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
  On Thu, 29 Aug 2013 10:19:34 -0400
  Richard Heck rgh...@lyx.org wrote:
 
  On 08/29/2013 03:59 AM, Liviu Andronic wrote:
  On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 3:28 AM, Ken Springer snowsh...@q.com
  wrote:
  Much like the speakers in a sound system, it occurs to me the
  actual quality of the printed output from a LyX document will
  depend on the quality of the printer being used.
 
  Right or wrong?  If wrong, why?
 
  Well, kind of. Of course the printing quality will depend on the
  quality of the printer and the paper that you use. But once
  exported to PDF, the typesetting quality of your document should
  be rock-solid, whichever printer you use.
 
  Obviously, a low resolution printer will give worse printed output.
  This is especially true since the fonts used are (usually) vector
  fonts.
 
  That said, my two books /Frege's Theorem/ and /Reading Frege's
  _Grundgesetze_/ were both printed, by the publisher, from a PDF I
  provided. And they look great, if I do say so myself. I assume they
  used very good printers!
 
  Richard
 
  Sort of on topic: After becoming dissatisfied with the 26 minute
  print time, on my new Brother MFC-8810dw 40ppm printer, of my book
  Manager's Guide to Technical Troubleshooting
  (http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/mg.htm), I set the print
  resolution down from 1200x1200dpi to 600x600dpi (11 minutes,
  yeah!), my admittedly old eyes could find no appreciable difference
  in the print, except for an almost imperceptable lightening at
  600dpi. But the images were another matter: They looked better at
  600 because 1200 showcased the mistakes and pixellations of the
  artwork itself.
 
 
 What would have happened if you applied stochastic screening to the 
 images?  I'm assuming that would be retained in a PDF file.

Deeeud!

You're getting so tweak here I had to look up stochastic screening on
Wikipedia.

The graphics involved were:

1) A photo I took of a wrench

2) Various diagrams I did in Dia, Inkscape and Gimp.

Since I don't believe LaTeX can natively handle .svg, a lot of this
depends on the conversion LyX uses (which of course you can configure).
Keep in mind also that filesize goes way up with resolution, and that
makes it costly to email or download PDFs, and taxes printers in terms
of making the engine stop while loading the next big image.

I've known about stochastic screening for all of five minutes now
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_screening) so let me dazzle
you with my opinions...

Any laserprinter I ever used used, as far as I know, a certain number
of dots per inch, each dot being a certain shade (I use
monochrome/grayscale) or color (if you want each page to cost you a
dime or a quarter or whatever). The shades are made from dot size,
with dots being a whole bunch of dots from the dpi measurement. As far
as I know, they cannot vary placement of their dots, only shade or
color via size (AM). So even if the PDF looked great on the screen, I'd
imagine the printer would have limited ability to reproduce the (FM)
stochastic screening.

Indeed, the Wikipedia page talks of stochastic screening mainly in
terms of printing from plates (which I presume assumes print runs of at
least 100), and not from laser printers.

I just searched Inscape+stochastic screening and got a bunch of
useless stuff including an anti-Obama site (what, how'd Google do
that?). Then I did the same thing for LaTeX, nothing ontopic for us.
Same thing with Computer monitors. One site said most inkjet printers
use stochastic screening.

I don't think stochastic screening will come into your life unless
you're using a very unusual printer, or long-run print at a print
house. It won't help me, AFAIK, because today's monitors can't use it. 

If filesize is no object, just go 1200dpi, and make sure your .svg
to .eps conversions are high resolution. If filesize *is* an issue, you
appear to know a lot more than I about how to minimize pixelization,
moire, and all that stuff.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question #2: Printed results from LyX

2013-08-29 Thread Steve Litt 
On Thu, 29 Aug 2013 10:19:34 -0400
Richard Heck rgh...@lyx.org wrote:

 On 08/29/2013 03:59 AM, Liviu Andronic wrote:
  On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 3:28 AM, Ken Springer snowsh...@q.com
  wrote:
  Much like the speakers in a sound system, it occurs to me the
  actual quality of the printed output from a LyX document will
  depend on the quality of the printer being used.
 
  Right or wrong?  If wrong, why?
 
  Well, kind of. Of course the printing quality will depend on the
  quality of the printer and the paper that you use. But once exported
  to PDF, the typesetting quality of your document should be
  rock-solid, whichever printer you use.
 
 Obviously, a low resolution printer will give worse printed output.
 This is especially true since the fonts used are (usually) vector
 fonts.
 
 That said, my two books /Frege's Theorem/ and /Reading Frege's 
 _Grundgesetze_/ were both printed, by the publisher, from a PDF I 
 provided. And they look great, if I do say so myself. I assume they
 used very good printers!
 
 Richard

Sort of on topic: After becoming dissatisfied with the 26 minute print
time, on my new Brother MFC-8810dw 40ppm printer, of my book Manager's
Guide to Technical Troubleshooting
(http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/mg.htm), I set the print
resolution down from 1200x1200dpi to 600x600dpi (11 minutes, yeah!), my
admittedly old eyes could find no appreciable difference in the print,
except for an almost imperceptable lightening at 600dpi. But the images
were another matter: They looked better at 600 because 1200 showcased
the mistakes and pixellations of the artwork itself.

To bring this back to on-topicness, the print resulting from LyX looks
good at any resolution, always assuming you pick a good font for
printing (I like Century Schoolbook).

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question #2: Printed results from LyX

2013-08-29 Thread Steve Litt 
On Thu, 29 Aug 2013 18:51:24 -0600
Ken Springer snowsh...@q.com wrote:

 On 8/29/13 4:47 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
  On Thu, 29 Aug 2013 10:19:34 -0400
  Richard Heck rgh...@lyx.org wrote:
 
  On 08/29/2013 03:59 AM, Liviu Andronic wrote:
  On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 3:28 AM, Ken Springer snowsh...@q.com
  wrote:
  Much like the speakers in a sound system, it occurs to me the
  actual quality of the printed output from a LyX document will
  depend on the quality of the printer being used.
 
  Right or wrong?  If wrong, why?
 
  Well, kind of. Of course the printing quality will depend on the
  quality of the printer and the paper that you use. But once
  exported to PDF, the typesetting quality of your document should
  be rock-solid, whichever printer you use.
 
  Obviously, a low resolution printer will give worse printed output.
  This is especially true since the fonts used are (usually) vector
  fonts.
 
  That said, my two books /Frege's Theorem/ and /Reading Frege's
  _Grundgesetze_/ were both printed, by the publisher, from a PDF I
  provided. And they look great, if I do say so myself. I assume they
  used very good printers!
 
  Richard
 
  Sort of on topic: After becoming dissatisfied with the 26 minute
  print time, on my new Brother MFC-8810dw 40ppm printer, of my book
  Manager's Guide to Technical Troubleshooting
  (http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/mg.htm), I set the print
  resolution down from 1200x1200dpi to 600x600dpi (11 minutes,
  yeah!), my admittedly old eyes could find no appreciable difference
  in the print, except for an almost imperceptable lightening at
  600dpi. But the images were another matter: They looked better at
  600 because 1200 showcased the mistakes and pixellations of the
  artwork itself.
 
 
 What would have happened if you applied stochastic screening to the 
 images?  I'm assuming that would be retained in a PDF file.

Deeeud!

You're getting so tweak here I had to look up stochastic screening on
Wikipedia.

The graphics involved were:

1) A photo I took of a wrench

2) Various diagrams I did in Dia, Inkscape and Gimp.

Since I don't believe LaTeX can natively handle .svg, a lot of this
depends on the conversion LyX uses (which of course you can configure).
Keep in mind also that filesize goes way up with resolution, and that
makes it costly to email or download PDFs, and taxes printers in terms
of making the engine stop while loading the next big image.

I've known about stochastic screening for all of five minutes now
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_screening) so let me dazzle
you with my opinions...

Any laserprinter I ever used used, as far as I know, a certain number
of dots per inch, each dot being a certain shade (I use
monochrome/grayscale) or color (if you want each page to cost you a
dime or a quarter or whatever). The shades are made from dot size,
with dots being a whole bunch of dots from the dpi measurement. As far
as I know, they cannot vary placement of their dots, only shade or
color via size (AM). So even if the PDF looked great on the screen, I'd
imagine the printer would have limited ability to reproduce the (FM)
stochastic screening.

Indeed, the Wikipedia page talks of stochastic screening mainly in
terms of printing from plates (which I presume assumes print runs of at
least 100), and not from laser printers.

I just searched Inscape+stochastic screening and got a bunch of
useless stuff including an anti-Obama site (what, how'd Google do
that?). Then I did the same thing for LaTeX, nothing ontopic for us.
Same thing with Computer monitors. One site said most inkjet printers
use stochastic screening.

I don't think stochastic screening will come into your life unless
you're using a very unusual printer, or long-run print at a print
house. It won't help me, AFAIK, because today's monitors can't use it. 

If filesize is no object, just go 1200dpi, and make sure your .svg
to .eps conversions are high resolution. If filesize *is* an issue, you
appear to know a lot more than I about how to minimize pixelization,
moire, and all that stuff.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question #2: Printed results from LyX

2013-08-29 Thread Steve Litt 
On Thu, 29 Aug 2013 10:19:34 -0400
Richard Heck <rgh...@lyx.org> wrote:

> On 08/29/2013 03:59 AM, Liviu Andronic wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 3:28 AM, Ken Springer <snowsh...@q.com>
> > wrote:
> >> Much like the speakers in a sound system, it occurs to me the
> >> actual quality of the printed output from a LyX document will
> >> depend on the quality of the printer being used.
> >>
> >> Right or wrong?  If wrong, why?
> >>
> > Well, kind of. Of course the printing quality will depend on the
> > quality of the printer and the paper that you use. But once exported
> > to PDF, the typesetting quality of your document should be
> > rock-solid, whichever printer you use.
> 
> Obviously, a low resolution printer will give worse printed output.
> This is especially true since the fonts used are (usually) vector
> fonts.
> 
> That said, my two books /Frege's Theorem/ and /Reading Frege's 
> _Grundgesetze_/ were both printed, by the publisher, from a PDF I 
> provided. And they look great, if I do say so myself. I assume they
> used very good printers!
> 
> Richard

Sort of on topic: After becoming dissatisfied with the 26 minute print
time, on my new Brother MFC-8810dw 40ppm printer, of my book "Manager's
Guide to Technical Troubleshooting
(http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/mg.htm), I set the print
resolution down from 1200x1200dpi to 600x600dpi (11 minutes, yeah!), my
admittedly old eyes could find no appreciable difference in the print,
except for an almost imperceptable lightening at 600dpi. But the images
were another matter: They looked better at 600 because 1200 showcased
the mistakes and pixellations of the artwork itself.

To bring this back to on-topicness, the print resulting from LyX looks
good at any resolution, always assuming you pick a good font for
printing (I like Century Schoolbook).

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question #2: Printed results from LyX

2013-08-29 Thread Steve Litt 
On Thu, 29 Aug 2013 18:51:24 -0600
Ken Springer <snowsh...@q.com> wrote:

> On 8/29/13 4:47 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
> > On Thu, 29 Aug 2013 10:19:34 -0400
> > Richard Heck <rgh...@lyx.org> wrote:
> >
> >> On 08/29/2013 03:59 AM, Liviu Andronic wrote:
> >>> On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 3:28 AM, Ken Springer <snowsh...@q.com>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>> Much like the speakers in a sound system, it occurs to me the
> >>>> actual quality of the printed output from a LyX document will
> >>>> depend on the quality of the printer being used.
> >>>>
> >>>> Right or wrong?  If wrong, why?
> >>>>
> >>> Well, kind of. Of course the printing quality will depend on the
> >>> quality of the printer and the paper that you use. But once
> >>> exported to PDF, the typesetting quality of your document should
> >>> be rock-solid, whichever printer you use.
> >>
> >> Obviously, a low resolution printer will give worse printed output.
> >> This is especially true since the fonts used are (usually) vector
> >> fonts.
> >>
> >> That said, my two books /Frege's Theorem/ and /Reading Frege's
> >> _Grundgesetze_/ were both printed, by the publisher, from a PDF I
> >> provided. And they look great, if I do say so myself. I assume they
> >> used very good printers!
> >>
> >> Richard
> >
> > Sort of on topic: After becoming dissatisfied with the 26 minute
> > print time, on my new Brother MFC-8810dw 40ppm printer, of my book
> > "Manager's Guide to Technical Troubleshooting
> > (http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/mg.htm), I set the print
> > resolution down from 1200x1200dpi to 600x600dpi (11 minutes,
> > yeah!), my admittedly old eyes could find no appreciable difference
> > in the print, except for an almost imperceptable lightening at
> > 600dpi. But the images were another matter: They looked better at
> > 600 because 1200 showcased the mistakes and pixellations of the
> > artwork itself.
> 
> 
> What would have happened if you applied stochastic screening to the 
> images?  I'm assuming that would be retained in a PDF file.

Deeeud!

You're getting so tweak here I had to look up stochastic screening on
Wikipedia.

The graphics involved were:

1) A photo I took of a wrench

2) Various diagrams I did in Dia, Inkscape and Gimp.

Since I don't believe LaTeX can natively handle .svg, a lot of this
depends on the conversion LyX uses (which of course you can configure).
Keep in mind also that filesize goes way up with resolution, and that
makes it costly to email or download PDFs, and taxes printers in terms
of making the engine stop while loading the next big image.

I've known about stochastic screening for all of five minutes now
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_screening) so let me dazzle
you with my opinions...

Any laserprinter I ever used used, as far as I know, a certain number
of dots per inch, each dot being a certain shade (I use
monochrome/grayscale) or color (if you want each page to cost you a
dime or a quarter or whatever). The shades are made from dot size,
with "dots" being a whole bunch of dots from the dpi measurement. As far
as I know, they cannot vary placement of their dots, only shade or
color via size (AM). So even if the PDF looked great on the screen, I'd
imagine the printer would have limited ability to reproduce the (FM)
stochastic screening.

Indeed, the Wikipedia page talks of stochastic screening mainly in
terms of printing from plates (which I presume assumes print runs of at
least 100), and not from laser printers.

I just searched Inscape+"stochastic screening" and got a bunch of
useless stuff including an anti-Obama site (what, how'd Google do
that?). Then I did the same thing for LaTeX, nothing ontopic for us.
Same thing with "Computer monitors". One site said most inkjet printers
use stochastic screening.

I don't think stochastic screening will come into your life unless
you're using a very unusual printer, or long-run print at a print
house. It won't help me, AFAIK, because today's monitors can't use it. 

If filesize is no object, just go 1200dpi, and make sure your .svg
to .eps conversions are high resolution. If filesize *is* an issue, you
appear to know a lot more than I about how to minimize pixelization,
moire, and all that stuff.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: a problem with formatting acronyms in svmono class

2013-08-23 Thread Steve Litt 
On Wed, 21 Aug 2013 16:20:36 + (UTC)
Bieniasz nbbie...@cyf-kr.edu.pl wrote:

 Hello,
 
 I am using the Springer svmono class under LyX, to write a monograph. 
 The class has a template for acronyms, which allows authors to make
 explanations in the following way:
 
 XXX  {blablabla}
   {blablablabla}
 ZZ  {blabla}
 
 This means, that an acronym to be explained is followed
 by an explanation in braces. The problem seems to be that the
 explanations are not aligned to any vertical line, but occur in
 various places, depending on the length of the explained symbol.
 This looks rather ugly (as is shown above). 
 
 My question is: can one do anything to force the alignment of
 all left braces at the same distance from the left margin?
 
 I would like to have something like in following list:
 
 XXX   {blablabla}
   {blablablabla}
 ZZ{blabla}
 
   Leslaw

Well, of course the kludgy way to do it is to use a table with no
visible borders. Ugly!

I know nothing about Springer svmono, but there's probably a way to
make a LyX environment that does what you want. 

Study the Labeling environment that comes with LyX 2.x. It's
almost what you want, and it aligns the explanations beneath each other.
Your job would be:

1) Turn off its feature where the first item is in italics (probably to
   designate it as a header
2) Wrap the explanation in curly braces.

Do that and you're done.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question: Using LyX as your daily word processor

2013-08-23 Thread Steve Litt 
On Fri, 23 Aug 2013 10:20:06 +0200
Jean-Marc Lasgouttes lasgout...@lyx.org wrote:

 22/08/2013 21:09, Steve Litt of Troubleshooters.Com:
  Yeah, now that you mention it, I remember KLyX. Thank you, thank
  you, THANK YOU for winning that battle!
 
 The problem was not only around KDE (although there were ideological 
 ideas behind this port that we did not share), but rather that we
 were very busy at that time turning the code base into something
 usable. The original implementations of footnotes and and tabulars
 were, err, interesting :) The priority was clearly not in a shiny
 interface.

Yes, I still remember (fondly, actually) xforms. LyX with xforms could
not have been accused of having a shiny interface :-)

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: a problem with formatting acronyms in svmono class

2013-08-23 Thread Steve Litt 
On Wed, 21 Aug 2013 16:20:36 + (UTC)
Bieniasz nbbie...@cyf-kr.edu.pl wrote:

 Hello,
 
 I am using the Springer svmono class under LyX, to write a monograph. 
 The class has a template for acronyms, which allows authors to make
 explanations in the following way:
 
 XXX  {blablabla}
   {blablablabla}
 ZZ  {blabla}
 
 This means, that an acronym to be explained is followed
 by an explanation in braces. The problem seems to be that the
 explanations are not aligned to any vertical line, but occur in
 various places, depending on the length of the explained symbol.
 This looks rather ugly (as is shown above). 
 
 My question is: can one do anything to force the alignment of
 all left braces at the same distance from the left margin?
 
 I would like to have something like in following list:
 
 XXX   {blablabla}
   {blablablabla}
 ZZ{blabla}
 
   Leslaw

Well, of course the kludgy way to do it is to use a table with no
visible borders. Ugly!

I know nothing about Springer svmono, but there's probably a way to
make a LyX environment that does what you want. 

Study the Labeling environment that comes with LyX 2.x. It's
almost what you want, and it aligns the explanations beneath each other.
Your job would be:

1) Turn off its feature where the first item is in italics (probably to
   designate it as a header
2) Wrap the explanation in curly braces.

Do that and you're done.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question: Using LyX as your daily word processor

2013-08-23 Thread Steve Litt 
On Fri, 23 Aug 2013 10:20:06 +0200
Jean-Marc Lasgouttes lasgout...@lyx.org wrote:

 22/08/2013 21:09, Steve Litt of Troubleshooters.Com:
  Yeah, now that you mention it, I remember KLyX. Thank you, thank
  you, THANK YOU for winning that battle!
 
 The problem was not only around KDE (although there were ideological 
 ideas behind this port that we did not share), but rather that we
 were very busy at that time turning the code base into something
 usable. The original implementations of footnotes and and tabulars
 were, err, interesting :) The priority was clearly not in a shiny
 interface.

Yes, I still remember (fondly, actually) xforms. LyX with xforms could
not have been accused of having a shiny interface :-)

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: a problem with formatting acronyms in svmono class

2013-08-23 Thread Steve Litt 
On Wed, 21 Aug 2013 16:20:36 + (UTC)
Bieniasz <nbbie...@cyf-kr.edu.pl> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I am using the Springer svmono class under LyX, to write a monograph. 
> The class has a template for "acronyms", which allows authors to make
> explanations in the following way:
> 
> XXX  {blablabla}
>   {blablablabla}
> ZZ  {blabla}
> 
> This means, that an acronym to be explained is followed
> by an explanation in braces. The problem seems to be that the
> explanations are not aligned to any vertical line, but occur in
> various places, depending on the length of the explained symbol.
> This looks rather ugly (as is shown above). 
> 
> My question is: can one do anything to force the alignment of
> all left braces at the same distance from the left margin?
> 
> I would like to have something like in following list:
> 
> XXX   {blablabla}
>   {blablablabla}
> ZZ{blabla}
> 
>   Leslaw

Well, of course the kludgy way to do it is to use a table with no
visible borders. Ugly!

I know nothing about Springer svmono, but there's probably a way to
make a LyX environment that does what you want. 

Study the "Labeling" environment that comes with LyX 2.x. It's
almost what you want, and it aligns the explanations beneath each other.
Your job would be:

1) Turn off its feature where the first item is in italics (probably to
   designate it as a header
2) Wrap the explanation in curly braces.

Do that and you're done.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question: Using LyX as your daily word processor

2013-08-23 Thread Steve Litt 
On Fri, 23 Aug 2013 10:20:06 +0200
Jean-Marc Lasgouttes <lasgout...@lyx.org> wrote:

> 22/08/2013 21:09, Steve Litt of Troubleshooters.Com:
> > Yeah, now that you mention it, I remember KLyX. Thank you, thank
> > you, THANK YOU for winning that battle!
> 
> The problem was not only around KDE (although there were ideological 
> ideas behind this port that we did not share), but rather that we
> were very busy at that time turning the code base into something
> usable. The original implementations of footnotes and and tabulars
> were, err, interesting :) The priority was clearly not in a shiny
> interface.

Yes, I still remember (fondly, actually) xforms. LyX with xforms could
not have been accused of having a shiny interface :-)

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question: Using LyX as your daily word processor

2013-08-22 Thread Steve Litt of Troubleshooters.Com 
On Thu, 22 Aug 2013 09:26:39 +0200
Wolfgang Engelmann engelm...@uni-tuebingen.de wrote:

 Am Thursday, 22. August 2013, 09:18:09 schrieb Scott Kostyshak:
  On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 3:19 AM, Wolfgang Engelmann
  
  engelm...@uni-tuebingen.de wrote:
   by the way, in Tübingen, my home town
  
  Cool! :)
  
  Scott
 
 More to Matthias Ettrich:
 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Ettrich
 
 Wolfgang

I give thanks to eternity that LyX wasn't made into a KDE app. My
business has banned all use of all KDE libraries, for stability's sake.
Qt's not bad, as a matter of fact Qt built apps seem easier to
configure, from my point of view, than Gtk built apps.

In the history of LyX, did anyone campaign for it to be a KDE app, and
if so, how was that (in my opinion mistake) prevented?


Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: a problem with formatting acronyms in svmono class

2013-08-22 Thread Steve Litt 
On Thu, 22 Aug 2013 08:19:04 + (UTC)
Bieniasz nbbie...@cyf-kr.edu.pl wrote:

 Paul A. Rubin Rubin at MSU.edu writes:
 
  
  Definition environment?
 Sorry, I don't grasp.
 Leslaw 

I don't grasp either. Perhaps he meant the Description environment,
but that doesn't bring you much closer to your desired alignment than
anything else.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question: Using LyX as your daily word processor

2013-08-22 Thread Steve Litt of Troubleshooters.Com 
On Thu, 22 Aug 2013 20:54:36 +0200
Jean-Marc Lasgouttes lasgout...@lyx.org wrote:

 Le 22/08/13 20:42, Steve Litt of Troubleshooters.Com a écrit :
  In the history of LyX, did anyone campaign for it to be a KDE app,
  and if so, how was that (in my opinion mistake) prevented?
 
 This is KLyX, a fork attempted by Matthias without telling us. But we 
 won in the end :)
 
 JMarc

Yeah, now that you mention it, I remember KLyX. Thank you, thank you,
THANK YOU for winning that battle!

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question: Using LyX as your daily word processor

2013-08-22 Thread Steve Litt of Troubleshooters.Com 
On Thu, 22 Aug 2013 09:26:39 +0200
Wolfgang Engelmann engelm...@uni-tuebingen.de wrote:

 Am Thursday, 22. August 2013, 09:18:09 schrieb Scott Kostyshak:
  On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 3:19 AM, Wolfgang Engelmann
  
  engelm...@uni-tuebingen.de wrote:
   by the way, in Tübingen, my home town
  
  Cool! :)
  
  Scott
 
 More to Matthias Ettrich:
 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Ettrich
 
 Wolfgang

I give thanks to eternity that LyX wasn't made into a KDE app. My
business has banned all use of all KDE libraries, for stability's sake.
Qt's not bad, as a matter of fact Qt built apps seem easier to
configure, from my point of view, than Gtk built apps.

In the history of LyX, did anyone campaign for it to be a KDE app, and
if so, how was that (in my opinion mistake) prevented?


Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: a problem with formatting acronyms in svmono class

2013-08-22 Thread Steve Litt 
On Thu, 22 Aug 2013 08:19:04 + (UTC)
Bieniasz nbbie...@cyf-kr.edu.pl wrote:

 Paul A. Rubin Rubin at MSU.edu writes:
 
  
  Definition environment?
 Sorry, I don't grasp.
 Leslaw 

I don't grasp either. Perhaps he meant the Description environment,
but that doesn't bring you much closer to your desired alignment than
anything else.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question: Using LyX as your daily word processor

2013-08-22 Thread Steve Litt of Troubleshooters.Com 
On Thu, 22 Aug 2013 20:54:36 +0200
Jean-Marc Lasgouttes lasgout...@lyx.org wrote:

 Le 22/08/13 20:42, Steve Litt of Troubleshooters.Com a écrit :
  In the history of LyX, did anyone campaign for it to be a KDE app,
  and if so, how was that (in my opinion mistake) prevented?
 
 This is KLyX, a fork attempted by Matthias without telling us. But we 
 won in the end :)
 
 JMarc

Yeah, now that you mention it, I remember KLyX. Thank you, thank you,
THANK YOU for winning that battle!

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question: Using LyX as your daily word processor

2013-08-22 Thread Steve Litt of Troubleshooters.Com 
On Thu, 22 Aug 2013 09:26:39 +0200
Wolfgang Engelmann <engelm...@uni-tuebingen.de> wrote:

> Am Thursday, 22. August 2013, 09:18:09 schrieb Scott Kostyshak:
> > On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 3:19 AM, Wolfgang Engelmann
> > 
> > <engelm...@uni-tuebingen.de> wrote:
> > > by the way, in Tübingen, my home town
> > 
> > Cool! :)
> > 
> > Scott
> 
> More to Matthias Ettrich:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Ettrich
> 
> Wolfgang

I give thanks to eternity that LyX wasn't made into a KDE app. My
business has banned all use of all KDE libraries, for stability's sake.
Qt's not bad, as a matter of fact Qt built apps seem easier to
configure, from my point of view, than Gtk built apps.

In the history of LyX, did anyone campaign for it to be a KDE app, and
if so, how was that (in my opinion mistake) prevented?


Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: a problem with formatting acronyms in svmono class

2013-08-22 Thread Steve Litt 
On Thu, 22 Aug 2013 08:19:04 + (UTC)
Bieniasz <nbbie...@cyf-kr.edu.pl> wrote:

> Paul A. Rubin  MSU.edu> writes:
> 
>  
> > Definition environment?
> Sorry, I don't grasp.
> Leslaw 

I don't grasp either. Perhaps he meant the Description environment,
but that doesn't bring you much closer to your desired alignment than
anything else.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question: Using LyX as your daily word processor

2013-08-22 Thread Steve Litt of Troubleshooters.Com 
On Thu, 22 Aug 2013 20:54:36 +0200
Jean-Marc Lasgouttes <lasgout...@lyx.org> wrote:

> Le 22/08/13 20:42, Steve Litt of Troubleshooters.Com a écrit :
> > In the history of LyX, did anyone campaign for it to be a KDE app,
> > and if so, how was that (in my opinion mistake) prevented?
> 
> This is KLyX, a fork attempted by Matthias without telling us. But we 
> won in the end :)
> 
> JMarc

Yeah, now that you mention it, I remember KLyX. Thank you, thank you,
THANK YOU for winning that battle!

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Help on LaTeX if statement

2013-08-19 Thread Steve Litt of Troubleshooters.Com 
On Mon, 19 Aug 2013 12:40:48 + (UTC)
Guenter Milde mi...@users.sf.net wrote:

 On 2013-08-10, Steve Litt wrote:
  Hi all,
 
  I need your help. Could you please point me to the best web
  resources I'd need in order to understand LaTeX's if statement? 
 
 The raw if statement is provided by TeX (not LaTeX) and therefore
 has a different look and feel as well as philosophy and working.
 Read about it in the excellent TEX BY TOPIC, A TEXNICIAN’S REFERENCE
 from VICTOR EIJKHOUT.
 http://www.eijkhout.net/texbytopic/texbytopic.html
 
 For a more LaTeX-like layer, have a look at the ifthenelse package
 http://www.ctan.org/pkg/ifthen, well documented, try `texdoc ifthen`.
 
 Günter
 

Thanks Günter,

I decided to use TeX's ifx statement. It sux that there's no elsif, but
it's reasonably useable, and if you need complex logic you can do it
by flipping flags.

I just downloaded the book you suggested. Personally, I like TeX more
than LaTeX for much the same reasons I like C better than C++. So this
book will be very helpful for me. I already have a fairly good idea
*how to use* TeX, this book gives me the whys. Thanks for the great
suggestion.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Help on LaTeX if statement

2013-08-19 Thread Steve Litt of Troubleshooters.Com 
On Mon, 19 Aug 2013 12:40:48 + (UTC)
Guenter Milde mi...@users.sf.net wrote:

 On 2013-08-10, Steve Litt wrote:
  Hi all,
 
  I need your help. Could you please point me to the best web
  resources I'd need in order to understand LaTeX's if statement? 
 
 The raw if statement is provided by TeX (not LaTeX) and therefore
 has a different look and feel as well as philosophy and working.
 Read about it in the excellent TEX BY TOPIC, A TEXNICIAN’S REFERENCE
 from VICTOR EIJKHOUT.
 http://www.eijkhout.net/texbytopic/texbytopic.html
 
 For a more LaTeX-like layer, have a look at the ifthenelse package
 http://www.ctan.org/pkg/ifthen, well documented, try `texdoc ifthen`.
 
 Günter
 

Thanks Günter,

I decided to use TeX's ifx statement. It sux that there's no elsif, but
it's reasonably useable, and if you need complex logic you can do it
by flipping flags.

I just downloaded the book you suggested. Personally, I like TeX more
than LaTeX for much the same reasons I like C better than C++. So this
book will be very helpful for me. I already have a fairly good idea
*how to use* TeX, this book gives me the whys. Thanks for the great
suggestion.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Help on LaTeX if statement

2013-08-19 Thread Steve Litt of Troubleshooters.Com 
On Mon, 19 Aug 2013 12:40:48 + (UTC)
Guenter Milde <mi...@users.sf.net> wrote:

> On 2013-08-10, Steve Litt wrote:
> > Hi all,
> 
> > I need your help. Could you please point me to the best web
> > resources I'd need in order to understand LaTeX's "if" statement? 
> 
> The "raw" if statement is provided by TeX (not LaTeX) and therefore
> has a different "look and feel" as well as philosophy and working.
> Read about it in the excellent "TEX BY TOPIC, A TEXNICIAN’S REFERENCE"
> from VICTOR EIJKHOUT.
> http://www.eijkhout.net/texbytopic/texbytopic.html
> 
> For a more LaTeX-like layer, have a look at the ifthenelse package
> http://www.ctan.org/pkg/ifthen, well documented, try `texdoc ifthen`.
> 
> Günter
> 

Thanks Günter,

I decided to use TeX's ifx statement. It sux that there's no elsif, but
it's reasonably useable, and if you need complex logic you can do it
by flipping flags.

I just downloaded the book you suggested. Personally, I like TeX more
than LaTeX for much the same reasons I like C better than C++. So this
book will be very helpful for me. I already have a fairly good idea
*how to use* TeX, this book gives me the "whys". Thanks for the great
suggestion.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

Re: Question: Using LyX as your daily word processor

2013-08-17 Thread Steve Litt of Troubleshooters.Com 
On Sat, 17 Aug 2013 07:30:43 -0600
Ken Springer snowsh...@q.com wrote:

 I'm always looking for software that fits me better, giving me the 
 output I'm looking for.
 
 I'm interested in knowing what users of LyX think of the idea of
 using it as a general word processor, instead of MS Word, Libre
 Office, Apple's Pages, etc.
 
 Pluses?  Minuses?

Pluses: Stable. Doesn't let you put in extra spaces and newlines,
unless you *mean* to. Supports brain-dead authoring. Produces a
good-looking PDF output. Does math well.

Minuses: Much more difficult to create/change paragraph styles and
character styles than in MSWord or LibreOffice.

HTH,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance

<    3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   >