Re: Best ps pdf viewer in Linux

2004-03-19 Thread James Frye
On Thu, 18 Mar 2004, Andre Poenitz wrote:

> 'Best' depends on the beholder... alternatives are 'acroread', 'xpdf'
> and 'gv'.

There's also one called 'ggv'.  It has better text quality than anything
else I've seen (antialiased fonts, I think), but a terrible user
interface.  Hard to get it to display at the size I want, and not at its
idea of the "proper' size.

James



Re: Suggestion about classes

2003-12-31 Thread James Frye
On Wed, 31 Dec 2003, Ingar Pareliussen wrote:

> We have discussed such a system earlier, and to put it bluntly, it is
> probably never going to happen. It is not impossible, but it is very hard
> to do. First it needs to construct the latex and lyx class files, which is
> complicated. It then needs to advocate good layout. 

Well, we could argue about what constitutes good typography, and whether
Lyx/Latex/Tex actually implements it or just Knuth's tastes, but the only
typographical standards that're relevant to a thesis are the requirements
of your grad school.  If they want (as mine does) a 12-point font,
double-spaced with page numbers in the upper right corner, 1.2 inches from
the top, then that's what you give them.

> However, if you have lot of time on your hands and really want such a
> feature; mail me, I have some ideas how to proceed :-).

Having been through it, I don't think it would be that hard to do most of
the simple stuff - some way to set margins, page number positions, heading
styles, etc - *IF* one had adequate documentation. Most of my time was
actually spent in trial & error, checking out this package or that to see
if it would really do what I needed.  Even some instructions would help.

James

(I've actually been trying to make a template out of mine.  It's pure
latex, not Lyx, but if anyone's interested I could tar it up and send it.  
Maybe next week, depending on how the skiing is...)



Re: Color prefs

2003-12-05 Thread James Frye
At the time, I did narrow down where the problem was happening to a small
section of code, though I couldn't see how to fix it.  Maybe if you search
the list archives you can find those messages - though of course this
might be a different problem giving similar symptoms :-)

James

On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, Angus Leeming wrote:

> James Frye wrote:
> 
> > I reported this, or something similar, sometime last spring.
> > 
> > What I did is simply to edit the preferences file and set 
> > my colors by hand. It will read and use what's there just 
> > fine.
> 
> A WorkForMe makes it rather hard for me to investigate further, so if 
> no-one else can dig any deeper I guess we've reached an impass...
> 
> -- 
> Angus
> 



Re: Color prefs

2003-12-05 Thread James Frye
I reported this, or something similar, sometime last spring.

What I did is simply to edit the preferences file and set my colors by
hand.  It will read and use what's there just fine.

James

On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, [ISO-8859-1] Christian Ridderström wrote:

> On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, Jean-Pierre.Chretien wrote:
> 
> > I guess I will wait for the next release rather than wasting time to
> > find out what is wrong here, I can live with the defaults.
> Are you sure this bug is already reported and known by the developers?
> Otherwise it might make it to the next release as well...
> 
> /Christian
> 
> -- 
> Christian Ridderström   http://www.md.kth.se/~chr
> 
> 



Page numbers in upper right corner?

2003-11-29 Thread James Frye
I suppose this is a more of a general latex question than a Lyx-specific
one, but I haven't been able to find an answer anywhere else.  The
question seems pretty simple, even trivial: how can I get the page number
in the upper right corner of the page, instead of at the bottom center?
(Our grad school requires that in a thesis>)

I've tried the fancyheadings package, as suggested in the Lyx docs, and it
will do it on the first page (along with some other fancification that I
could probably eliminate with a little work), but ONLY the first page.
The rest get no page number at all.

Thanks,
James  




Re: "Path to the lyx file cannot contain spaces"

2003-09-24 Thread James Frye
On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Bruce wrote:

> Or perhaps you meant that the fact that a computer has directories with
> spaces in their names indicates there may be a bug in the brain of the
> individual who created it? That I will acknowledge with grace. ;)

Yes, that's what I meant :-)  I think the language needs a new word for
things like this, which if done accidentally are bugs, but instead are
done deliberately.  Maybe a 'doze?  From the major perpetrator of such...

James



Re: "Path to the lyx file cannot contain spaces"

2003-09-23 Thread James Frye
On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, [ISO-8859-1] Christian Ridderström wrote:

> This behaviour is actually identical to *nix shells, you have to quote the 
> argument... for instance by doing:
>   dir "\program files"
> 
> The reason that you get two "File Not Found" is because you're trying to 
> list '\program' and '.\files'... 

Yes, I KNOW you can do that.  My point is that you shouldn't have to :-)

> I've never heard of such a rule, and quite often use spaces (and åäö) in 
> my names... 

Guess we must have learned *nix from different sources, then.  IIRC - it
has been a couple of decades - not using characters such as <, >, &, or
space was one of the basic "Intro to Unix" things.  Though as you learn
more (or make more mistakes), you learn that if you try really hard, you
actually can put most or all of them in names.  You can, I think, even put
quotes in names, and make your life really interesting :-)

But why do you want to make things difficult?  Putting odd characters in
names will, as we've seen here, break some programs.  Don't know about
you, but I have much better things to do with my time than figuring out
that my Lyx document doesn't print because I included a file with a
non-standard character in it.  If I stick to alphanumeric chars, I can
confidently elminate that class of error :-)

James



Re: "Path to the lyx file cannot contain spaces"

2003-09-23 Thread James Frye
On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, John Levon wrote:

> This is not how things work. "PROGRA~1" is most definitely NOT the
> "real filename".

Well, that gets us into philosophical discussions about the nature of
reality :-)  What I know ('cause I just tried it) is that if I open a
basic command-line prompt window on Win 2K, and do a "dir \progra~1", I
get expected output from the dir command.  If instead I do "dir \Program
Files", I get a bunch of "File Not Found" messages.  To me that says that
the "progra~1" version of the filename is at a more basic level in the OS.

In any case, the 8.3 version works, and so Lyx (or other programs) can
easily be ported just by substituting '\' for '/', and telling the Windows
user which version of the names to use.  Constructive laziness :-)

As for whether there's a "no spaces in filenames" rule in *nix, it's like
the rule about driving on a particular side of the road.  It's true that
you can, with some effort, create names that have spaces (or other
non-printing characters), just as you can ignore the signs and drive up
the exit ramp onto the freeway.  Either action is probably going to make
for an interesting day, though.

James



Re: "Path to the lyx file cannot contain spaces"

2003-09-22 Thread James Frye
On Mon, 22 Sep 2003, Paul A. Rubin wrote:

> Angus Leeming <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in
> 
> That those of us using Windows (not all voluntarily, I might add) do have 
> to make accommodations (such as renaming directories, or adding symbolic 
> links) to use LyX (and, for that matter, most any software ported from 
> Unix-like systems).  The generalization of the prior post that "file and 
> directory names should NEVER contain spaces" is a bit draconian in the 
> Windows world, if not inapt.  After all, the operating system is geared 
> toward having all programs installed in "\Program Files" and most of your 
> documents in "My Documents".  

Which I suppose was really my point: The universe in which I think most
Lyx users spend most of their time is one in which simple, sensible
software is a desirable goal.  The rule about filenames not containing
spaces is there for a reason (just as for instance there are rules about
which side of the road you drive on), and it was a rule in all operating
systems I know of for a long time before there ever was a Windows.

If Microsoft chooses to break the rule, why should we in the rest of the
world be expected to do a lot of work to compensate for their arrogance? A
simple error message is IMHO quite sufficient :-)

For that matter, even in Windows the real filenames don't contain spaces.
Rather, each file has a name which follows the 8.3 rule, and a text label
that can be used instead.  That label may contain spaces (and be quite
long), but the filename doesn't.  Thus for instance the "Program Files"
directory is really named "PROGRA~1", and people forced to follow Windows
conventions can easily use that instead.

James



Re: Xfig question

2003-09-19 Thread James Frye
On Thu, 18 Sep 2003, Jean-Pierre.Chretien wrote:

> >>I too would like to know if there's some source of information on xfig (or
> >>any other usable drawing program for Linux).  I need to do some simple
> >>diagrams, but can't seem to find anything that works.  I'm about ready to
> >>hunt out my old copy of Generic CADD, and boot DOS :-(
> 
> man xfig
> man transfig
> 
> But what I like in xfig (in addition to its powerful import and export
> capabilities and the batch processing features) is the 
> object oriented interface...

Which is specifically what I don't like:  I want a manual with
instructions, or a set of menus that have words on them - preferrably
English, but I can deal with most European languages (or Japanese) far
more readily than I can figure out what those stupid little pictures are
supposed to mean.  At least give me something I can print out on a couple
of pages, and use as a cross-reference :-)

I've looked at most of the packages suggested here, and other than the
interface issues, they all seem to lack two important features.  First,
and absolutely critical to me, is that there needs to be some color
translation layer between screen and paper.  I can't work with anything
but a black background for more than a few minutes at most.  Second, I'd
like to be able to draw in native units, not have to scale everything by
hand to paper units.  If I'm drawing house plans, I want to work in feet &
inches; if I'm drawing nerve cells, I want to work in micrometers - either
way, the computer should do the work of fitting the drawing to the paper.

If anyone knows of a package that might do these things, I'd be happy to
give it a try.  Otherwise, it's back to DOS :-(

Thanks,
James



Re: "Path to the lyx file cannot contain spaces"

2003-09-19 Thread James Frye
On Thu, 18 Sep 2003, Bruce wrote:

> I get this message when try to preview a file that (suprise) is in a
> directory that has spaces in its name.
> 
> Not that this is a huge deal, I'm just curious... why is this?

There's an obvious answer: file and directory names should NEVER contain
spaces.  If you somehow encounter one that does, it is most likely a bug
of some sort, and not a valid file.

James



Re: Xfig question

2003-09-17 Thread James Frye
On Wed, 17 Sep 2003, Rich Shepard wrote:

>   While this is not explicitly LyX, I'm using Xfig to prepare illustrations
> for my book which is being written with LyX. If anyone knows of a more
> appropriate mail list, _please_ let me know.

I too would like to know if there's some source of information on xfig (or
any other usable drawing program for Linux).  I need to do some simple
diagrams, but can't seem to find anything that works.  I'm about ready to
hunt out my old copy of Generic CADD, and boot DOS :-(

James



Re: spam-mail?

2003-08-25 Thread James Frye
Well, a lot of us, I think.  If spam - even spam without worms & viruses -
is getting spread by the list server, it's far more likely to get read by
people who see "Lyx" in the title, and so think it's good stuff.

James 

On Mon, 25 Aug 2003, Andre Poenitz wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 25, 2003 at 05:18:52PM +0200, Katrin Pietzsch wrote:
> > Just curiosity: am I the only one who received this mail? According to 
> > the mail header it was addressed to the list, otherwise i wouldn't have 
> > posted the topic here.
> 
> No, I think I got one as well.
> 
> But who cares...
> 
> Andre'
> 



Re: Index question

2003-07-01 Thread James Frye
On Tue, 1 Jul 2003, Robin Turner wrote:

> or
> 
> simulacra - see simulacrum
> simulacrum, 6, 8, 16

A bit off the track, but IMHO this is the single most annoying thing
anyone can do in an index.  I would love to have an option in the index
generator that says A and B are equivalent, so both A and B get a list of
the references to either.

James 



Re: others like lyx?

2003-06-18 Thread James Frye
On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Jan Peters wrote:

> If I make a list of features I really need, would you guys
> really implement them? I would start with two things:
> 
> a) The Menus in Lyx are very good --- however, the usage
> of the math-panels is not nice. I would like to see that
> integrated as toolbars. 

Can I add a feature request in the other direction?  Either a setting to
eliminate toolbars altogether, or a way to replace the icons with text?

At my usual resolution (1800x1200 on a 21" screen), the current icons are
so small that they're pretty much indistinguishable blobs.  Even when I
enlarge them, very few are actually "intuitive" to me: I have no clue at
all as to what functions most are supposed to do.  For instance, it's
much, much easier for me to read the word "Print", than to try to figure
out that some tiny squiggles are supposed to be a picture of an
old-fashioned dot-matrix printer with paper sticking out, and that that
corresponds to the print function.

James



Re: sorting tables?

2003-05-30 Thread James Frye
On Mon, 26 May 2003, Andre Poenitz wrote:

> Same here. The default spacing follow good type setting style. Exposing
> them to the casual user is likely to produce bad typesetting, so at least
> my interest in making that accessible is limited.

I'd say instead that the default spacing &c follows rules laid down by
certain academic journals and suchlike.  That does not necessarily equate
to "good".  Just for instance, the default "new paragraph" action is,
IIRC, to indent but not to add space.  Now if your journal wants that,
fine, but for my own use I want no indent and a blank line between
paragraphs.  Likewise I don't want a default 10 point typeface with 1.5
inch margins on each side, I want a title that's left-justified rather
than centered, and so on through many choices.

Of course there are some things that are indeed bad typesetting, I would
defy anyone to give a logical reason why any of the options I'd like to
set are bad in any objective sense, rather than just a matter of personal
preference.

What I would like is some sort of style editor that would let me easily
change such things.  If I'm e.g. writing a paper for journal X, of course
I select and use their style, but that's not what I want or need for
everyday use.

James 



Re: colour of \textrm{}

2003-03-25 Thread James Frye
Paul,

I think that only changes the color of the display, not what's actually
being printed.  (And is not saved in lyx file, etc.)  The
Preferences->Colors dialog should do this, but doesn't as of 1.3 (xforms).

You can change the screen colors by editing the preferences file.  Most of
the names of things that have colors aren't in the default, though.  If
you can't find them elsewhere, I could send you a copy of mine.

As far as changing actual text colors in the printout, I have no idea,
but would like to know.

James

On Tue, 25 Mar 2003, Paul Stansell wrote:

> Can anyone tell me how I can change the colour of roman characters in
> \textrm{} in the maths environment.  In lyx-1.3.1 (qt) their colour is not
> changed using Preference > Look and feel > Colors > math (but their
> background colour is changed with Preference > Look and feel > Colors >
> math background).
> 



Re: How to indent block?

2003-03-07 Thread James Frye
On Fri, 7 Mar 2003, Dekel Tsur wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 03:15:38PM -0800, James Frye wrote:
> > 
> > Now another question from a lazy new user:  would it be possible to
> > somehow define a macro to do that, and assign it to a key?  It would work
> > sort of like importing Lex math formulas:  mark the desired text, then hit
> > the key, and an ERT and the Lex command text are wrapped around it.
> 
> The correct way to do this is to define a new layout in the .layout file.
> Customization.lyx covers this issue.

Well, in a way it does.  I mean, did I read the section?  Yes.  Did I
understand enough of it to even guess where to start trying to clone a
custom one from the closest existing version.  No, not even close :-)

Maybe in a month or two I'll have gotten to the point where I can do that.
Unfortunately, the paper is due Wednesday :-(

Thanks,
James   



Re: How to indent block?

2003-03-06 Thread James Frye
On Thu, 6 Mar 2003, I Wayan Warmada wrote:

> On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, James Frye wrote:
> 
> | Is there a way in Lyx (or even in raw Latex) to conveniently indent a
> | whole block of text?  Not indenting just the first line of a paragraph,
> 
> I used... put the following text command
> 
> {\addtolength{\leftskip}{amount} %in ERT
> 
> your text...
> your text...
> your text...
> 
> } %in ERT

Thanks, that looks like just what I want.   

Now another question from a lazy new user:  would it be possible to
somehow define a macro to do that, and assign it to a key?  It would work
sort of like importing Lex math formulas:  mark the desired text, then hit
the key, and an ERT and the Lex command text are wrapped around it.

James



How to indent block?

2003-03-05 Thread James Frye
Hi,

Is there a way in Lyx (or even in raw Latex) to conveniently indent a
whole block of text?  Not indenting just the first line of a paragraph,
but putting the whole left edge over some amount, so that it stands out
from the surrounding text and looks better?  

  Sort of like this, if the mail program keeps the message formatted
  the same way I'm typing it in.

I'd also like to apply similar positioning to the various sorts of lists
(enumerate and such).  They do indent a little bit now, but not enough to
(in my opinion anyway) really stand out, or look good.

Thanks,
James 



Lyx programming docs?

2003-02-18 Thread James Frye
Is there any documentation around on programming Lyx?  It looks like I may
need do hack into the code to fix some of the bugs, and add a few things
to make my life easier, and that sure would be easier if I had some sort
of guide.

Thanks,
James 




Re: Setting GUI font, other setup?

2003-02-17 Thread James Frye
OS is Linux 2.4.10-64GB-SMP, the SuSe 7.3 distribution.  
XFree86 4.1.0
Window manager is fvwm2
Xforms 1.0
Truetype fonts I'm not sure about - I think I probably installed them, but 
offhand can't think of a way to tell for sure...

The problem with colors not being set turned out to be that most of them
weren't being saved, due to a comparison with defaults (I think) in
LColor.C.  They work if you edit the preferences files by hand...

James

On Mon, 17 Feb 2003, Matej Cepl wrote:

> James Frye wrote:
> > Oh, forgot to mention that I have the Xforms version, not Qt (and not KDE
> > either). Couldn't find anywhere to download the Qt stuff from, and I had
> > to hack into the source to figure out why colors weren't being set at all.
> 
> Could you write us what is the environment you use (operating
> system, version of X, which window manager and which version,
> whether you have installed TrueTypes, which version of Xforms),
> please?
> 
>Thanks
> 
>   Matej
> 
> 




Re: Setting GUI font, other setup?

2003-02-17 Thread James Frye
Oh, forgot to mention that I have the Xforms version, not Qt (and not KDE
either). Couldn't find anywhere to download the Qt stuff from, and I had
to hack into the source to figure out why colors weren't being set at all.

Thanks,
James

On Tue, 18 Feb 2003, Dekel Tsur wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 17, 2003 at 01:45:26PM -0800, James Frye wrote:
> > I am - or at least I hope to become - a new user of Lyx (1.3), but I'm
> > having a few problems getting a usable environment set up.  In particular,
> > the font used by the GUI (the one used on menus and such, not the text
> > being edited) is too small for me to read without a magnifier.  How can I
> > change it to something readable?
> 
> If you use the QT frontend, you can set the menu font using KDE control center
> (kcontrol).
> 




Setting GUI font, other setup?

2003-02-17 Thread James Frye
Hi,

I am - or at least I hope to become - a new user of Lyx (1.3), but I'm
having a few problems getting a usable environment set up.  In particular,
the font used by the GUI (the one used on menus and such, not the text
being edited) is too small for me to read without a magnifier.  How can I
change it to something readable?

Also, is there a list of bindable functions anywhere?  I see the several
existing sets are documented, but I can't find a list of the functions.
That might help me with my next question, which is how I get out of insert
mode into normal overtype mode.  I would think that the Insert key would
toggle this, but it doesn't seem to.

Thanks,
James