Re: LyX Promotion

[Rainer M Krug]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 24/03/11 19:09, Steve Litt wrote:
 On Thursday 24 March 2011 07:01:19 Rainer M Krug wrote:
 On 24/03/11 11:29, Guenter Milde wrote:
 On 2011-03-23, Steve Litt wrote:
 
 This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...

 I think we should have semantic import/export filters in addition to
 visual ones for all relevant document formats.

 I absolutely agree - this would make life so much easier: you can write
 in LyX, export sematically to doc / odt and do the formating in word /
 openoffice / libreoffice if the editor / conference only provides a
 specific word template.

 Definitely a priority.
 
 I'm not quite sure what you guys mean by semantic import/export, but if you 
 mean exporting the text marked up with (empty) styles and the (empty) style 
 definitions so all I have to do with the MSWord file is fill in the styles, 
 then I'm on it like a squirrel on a tree. Let me tell you why.
 
 The (insert your own curse phrase here) fools controlling the various eBook 
 formats have made it almost necessary to use MSWord as the input to the eBook 
 conversion process. Saaayyy what??? So let me get this straight. I write 
 my book in a good software like LyX, and then have to rewrite it in (insert 
 your favorite phrase meaning incompetent here) MSWord in order to put it on 
 a Kindle? Really?
 
 You know, if we're really considering this, there should be an option to 
 convert what we call Part, Chapter, Section, Subsection... to MSWord's 
 Header1, Header2, Header3, Header4 etc. And of course we need to do it 
 configurably because not everyone uses parts and not everyone uses chapters. 
 I'm attaching part of my VimOutliner to LyX converter so you can see how I 
 implemented a similar level to level mapping in that software.

I mean (and I thought that that is meant by semantic export) exactly that:

Exporting the document in such a way, that the structure is maintained,
but the final printed document does not conform to LaTeX rules, but to
MSWord rules.
For this, as you mention we needd to convert what we call Part,
Chapter, Section, Subsection... to MSWord's Header1, Header2, Header3,
Header4 etc.. It would be nice if one could have a mapping table,
inwhich is stated Part - Header1 , Chapter - Header2, ... but
which could be customised --- the default should map to the styles in
the default template of MSWord.
Character formating (emphasized, bold, ...) shgould be exported as
character formating, as it would be horrible to sort that out again.

And if I say MSWord and doc, I also mean LibreOffice / OpenOffice and odt.

For the use case of collaboration, the comments and track changes should
be exported as well.

Next step: it would be nice to have an importer, who is doing the same
the other way round - but that would be the next step.

I would guess that an exporter / importer combo like that would make
perfect sense for the use Steve mentioned and also be a perfect solution
for collaboration.

Cheers,

Rainer

 
 Thanks
 
 SteveT
 
 Steve Litt
 Recession Relief Package
 http://www.recession-relief.US
 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt
 


- -- 
Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation
Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)

Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology
Natural Sciences Building
Office Suite 2039
Stellenbosch University
Main Campus, Merriman Avenue
Stellenbosch
South Africa

Tel:+33 - (0)9 53 10 27 44
Cell:   +27 - (0)8 39 47 90 42
Fax (SA):   +27 - (0)8 65 16 27 82
Fax (D) :   +49 - (0)3 21 21 25 22 44
Fax (FR):   +33 - (0)9 58 10 27 44
email:  rai...@krugs.de

Skype:  RMkrug
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iEYEARECAAYFAk2MQW0ACgkQoYgNqgF2egpypQCghLht0KG5OPyqr4nTG+A+1rYk
BbgAnjLqXfeG6Q+g4IPBvV+dbAVRB8WZ
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Re: LyX Promotion

[stephen's mailinglist account]

On 23 March 2011 23:01, Rich Shepard rshep...@appl-ecosys.com wrote:


 However,
 many in the Microsoft Word world just don't care. And, frankly, I don't want
 them to switch unless they're willing to take the time to learn a different
 paradigm and understand what is underneath what they do.


with many of these users it is difficult to to get them to learn anything about
what Word/OO can do let alone anything else.  I have seen vast manuals
created in word with finger painting rather than styles, so none of
the automated
numbering/re-numbering, TOC etc features can be used.  It is an uphill
battle to get
them to do this in word, so to try and get them to use another package
seems unlikely.

Word has made it so easy to finger paint...



-- 
Stephen

Re: LyX Promotion

[stephen's mailinglist account]

On 23 March 2011 06:20, Steve Litt sl...@troubleshooters.com wrote:
 On Tuesday 22 March 2011 23:27:45 David L. Johnson wrote:
 On 03/22/2011 10:58 PM, John McCabe-Dansted wrote:

  3) Not WYSIWYG.  Normal users clearly expect WYSIWYG. WYSIWYG and
  WYSIWYM don't need to be mutually exclusive.

 They are to an extent, since WYSIWYG really means that all the document
 contains is what you see on the screen, without additional structure
 that properly formats it for a number of different export situations.

 That's not true at all. OpenOffice, MSWord, Abiword and Kompozer are all
 WYSIWYG, and all of them can be used to write styles based content that gives
 structure to the document.



 I think the LyX community does itself a grave disservice emphasizing this
 WYSIWYG vs WYSIWYM thing. If I were going to enumerate the good things about
 LyX, it would be something like this:

 * It typesets better and more consistently than its non-TeX based competitors.
 * It deletes unintentional double spaces and double newlines.
 * It always calculates references, TOC and indices correctly, unlike others.
 * The black on tan is readable and soothing to the eyes for long workdays.
 * Its simple native format invites programmatic document creation and editing.
 * It's free software, which protects your documents from vendor lock-in.
 * It's an incredibly fast authoring environment.

 WYSIMUWE
What you see is more useful whilst editing?

WYSSYFWFWYSBW
What you see stops you fiddling with format when you should be writing?


-- 
Stephen

Re: LyX Promotion

[stephen's mailinglist account]

On 23 March 2011 08:12, Graham Smith myotis...@gmail.com wrote:
 One possible approach is to write an introduction to Lyx specifically aimed
 at Word users.

 This has been done for R at
 http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/learnr-toolkit/ where the tutorials assume
 familiarity with Excel and demonstrate how things differ (or are the same)
 in R. There have also been similar things done for the GIS program Manifold,
 comparing it against the Industry standard products from ESRI.


There was a version for LaTeX
http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/info/latex4wp/latex4wp.pdf



 On 22 March 2011 15:51, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us wrote:

 Dear Users and Developers,

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

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

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

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

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

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

 For example:

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

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

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

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

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

 Which really 

Re: LyX Promotion

[Graham Smith]

Stephen


 There was a version for LaTeX
 http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/info/latex4wp/latex4wp.pdf


This looks useful, thanks.

Graham

Re: LyX Promotion

[Rainer M Krug]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 24/03/11 19:09, Steve Litt wrote:
 On Thursday 24 March 2011 07:01:19 Rainer M Krug wrote:
 On 24/03/11 11:29, Guenter Milde wrote:
 On 2011-03-23, Steve Litt wrote:
 
 This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...

 I think we should have semantic import/export filters in addition to
 visual ones for all relevant document formats.

 I absolutely agree - this would make life so much easier: you can write
 in LyX, export sematically to doc / odt and do the formating in word /
 openoffice / libreoffice if the editor / conference only provides a
 specific word template.

 Definitely a priority.
 
 I'm not quite sure what you guys mean by semantic import/export, but if you 
 mean exporting the text marked up with (empty) styles and the (empty) style 
 definitions so all I have to do with the MSWord file is fill in the styles, 
 then I'm on it like a squirrel on a tree. Let me tell you why.
 
 The (insert your own curse phrase here) fools controlling the various eBook 
 formats have made it almost necessary to use MSWord as the input to the eBook 
 conversion process. Saaayyy what??? So let me get this straight. I write 
 my book in a good software like LyX, and then have to rewrite it in (insert 
 your favorite phrase meaning incompetent here) MSWord in order to put it on 
 a Kindle? Really?
 
 You know, if we're really considering this, there should be an option to 
 convert what we call Part, Chapter, Section, Subsection... to MSWord's 
 Header1, Header2, Header3, Header4 etc. And of course we need to do it 
 configurably because not everyone uses parts and not everyone uses chapters. 
 I'm attaching part of my VimOutliner to LyX converter so you can see how I 
 implemented a similar level to level mapping in that software.

I mean (and I thought that that is meant by semantic export) exactly that:

Exporting the document in such a way, that the structure is maintained,
but the final printed document does not conform to LaTeX rules, but to
MSWord rules.
For this, as you mention we needd to convert what we call Part,
Chapter, Section, Subsection... to MSWord's Header1, Header2, Header3,
Header4 etc.. It would be nice if one could have a mapping table,
inwhich is stated Part - Header1 , Chapter - Header2, ... but
which could be customised --- the default should map to the styles in
the default template of MSWord.
Character formating (emphasized, bold, ...) shgould be exported as
character formating, as it would be horrible to sort that out again.

And if I say MSWord and doc, I also mean LibreOffice / OpenOffice and odt.

For the use case of collaboration, the comments and track changes should
be exported as well.

Next step: it would be nice to have an importer, who is doing the same
the other way round - but that would be the next step.

I would guess that an exporter / importer combo like that would make
perfect sense for the use Steve mentioned and also be a perfect solution
for collaboration.

Cheers,

Rainer

 
 Thanks
 
 SteveT
 
 Steve Litt
 Recession Relief Package
 http://www.recession-relief.US
 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt
 


- -- 
Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation
Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)

Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology
Natural Sciences Building
Office Suite 2039
Stellenbosch University
Main Campus, Merriman Avenue
Stellenbosch
South Africa

Tel:+33 - (0)9 53 10 27 44
Cell:   +27 - (0)8 39 47 90 42
Fax (SA):   +27 - (0)8 65 16 27 82
Fax (D) :   +49 - (0)3 21 21 25 22 44
Fax (FR):   +33 - (0)9 58 10 27 44
email:  rai...@krugs.de

Skype:  RMkrug
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iEYEARECAAYFAk2MQW0ACgkQoYgNqgF2egpypQCghLht0KG5OPyqr4nTG+A+1rYk
BbgAnjLqXfeG6Q+g4IPBvV+dbAVRB8WZ
=vkT+
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

Re: LyX Promotion

[stephen's mailinglist account]

On 23 March 2011 23:01, Rich Shepard rshep...@appl-ecosys.com wrote:


 However,
 many in the Microsoft Word world just don't care. And, frankly, I don't want
 them to switch unless they're willing to take the time to learn a different
 paradigm and understand what is underneath what they do.


with many of these users it is difficult to to get them to learn anything about
what Word/OO can do let alone anything else.  I have seen vast manuals
created in word with finger painting rather than styles, so none of
the automated
numbering/re-numbering, TOC etc features can be used.  It is an uphill
battle to get
them to do this in word, so to try and get them to use another package
seems unlikely.

Word has made it so easy to finger paint...



-- 
Stephen

Re: LyX Promotion

[stephen's mailinglist account]

On 23 March 2011 06:20, Steve Litt sl...@troubleshooters.com wrote:
 On Tuesday 22 March 2011 23:27:45 David L. Johnson wrote:
 On 03/22/2011 10:58 PM, John McCabe-Dansted wrote:

  3) Not WYSIWYG.  Normal users clearly expect WYSIWYG. WYSIWYG and
  WYSIWYM don't need to be mutually exclusive.

 They are to an extent, since WYSIWYG really means that all the document
 contains is what you see on the screen, without additional structure
 that properly formats it for a number of different export situations.

 That's not true at all. OpenOffice, MSWord, Abiword and Kompozer are all
 WYSIWYG, and all of them can be used to write styles based content that gives
 structure to the document.



 I think the LyX community does itself a grave disservice emphasizing this
 WYSIWYG vs WYSIWYM thing. If I were going to enumerate the good things about
 LyX, it would be something like this:

 * It typesets better and more consistently than its non-TeX based competitors.
 * It deletes unintentional double spaces and double newlines.
 * It always calculates references, TOC and indices correctly, unlike others.
 * The black on tan is readable and soothing to the eyes for long workdays.
 * Its simple native format invites programmatic document creation and editing.
 * It's free software, which protects your documents from vendor lock-in.
 * It's an incredibly fast authoring environment.

 WYSIMUWE
What you see is more useful whilst editing?

WYSSYFWFWYSBW
What you see stops you fiddling with format when you should be writing?


-- 
Stephen

Re: LyX Promotion

[stephen's mailinglist account]

On 23 March 2011 08:12, Graham Smith myotis...@gmail.com wrote:
 One possible approach is to write an introduction to Lyx specifically aimed
 at Word users.

 This has been done for R at
 http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/learnr-toolkit/ where the tutorials assume
 familiarity with Excel and demonstrate how things differ (or are the same)
 in R. There have also been similar things done for the GIS program Manifold,
 comparing it against the Industry standard products from ESRI.


There was a version for LaTeX
http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/info/latex4wp/latex4wp.pdf



 On 22 March 2011 15:51, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us wrote:

 Dear Users and Developers,

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

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

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

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

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

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

 For example:

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

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

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

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

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

 Which really 

Re: LyX Promotion

[Graham Smith]

Stephen


 There was a version for LaTeX
 http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/info/latex4wp/latex4wp.pdf


This looks useful, thanks.

Graham

Re: LyX Promotion

[Rainer M Krug]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 24/03/11 19:09, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Thursday 24 March 2011 07:01:19 Rainer M Krug wrote:
>> On 24/03/11 11:29, Guenter Milde wrote:
>>> On 2011-03-23, Steve Litt wrote:
> 
 This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...
>>>
>>> I think we should have "semantic" import/export filters in addition to
>>> "visual" ones for all relevant document formats.
>>
>> I absolutely agree - this would make life so much easier: you can write
>> in LyX, export sematically to doc / odt and do the formating in word /
>> openoffice / libreoffice if the editor / conference only provides a
>> specific word template.
>>
>> Definitely a priority.
> 
> I'm not quite sure what you guys mean by "semantic import/export", but if you 
> mean exporting the text marked up with (empty) styles and the (empty) style 
> definitions so all I have to do with the MSWord file is fill in the styles, 
> then I'm on it like a squirrel on a tree. Let me tell you why.
> 
> The (insert your own curse phrase here) fools controlling the various eBook 
> formats have made it almost necessary to use MSWord as the input to the eBook 
> conversion process. Saaayyy what??? So let me get this straight. I write 
> my book in a good software like LyX, and then have to rewrite it in (insert 
> your favorite phrase meaning "incompetent" here) MSWord in order to put it on 
> a Kindle? Really?
> 
> You know, if we're really considering this, there should be an option to 
> convert what we call Part, Chapter, Section, Subsection... to MSWord's 
> Header1, Header2, Header3, Header4 etc. And of course we need to do it 
> configurably because not everyone uses parts and not everyone uses chapters. 
> I'm attaching part of my VimOutliner to LyX converter so you can see how I 
> implemented a similar level to level mapping in that software.

I mean (and I thought that that is meant by "semantic export") exactly that:

Exporting the document in such a way, that the structure is maintained,
but the final printed document does not conform to LaTeX rules, but to
MSWord rules.
For this, as you mention we needd to "convert what we call Part,
Chapter, Section, Subsection... to MSWord's Header1, Header2, Header3,
Header4 etc.". It would be nice if one could have a mapping table,
inwhich is stated "Part -> Header1" , "Chapter -> Header2", ... but
which could be customised --- the default should map to the styles in
the default template of MSWord.
Character formating (emphasized, bold, ...) shgould be exported as
character formating, as it would be horrible to sort that out again.

And if I say MSWord and doc, I also mean LibreOffice / OpenOffice and odt.

For the use case of collaboration, the comments and track changes should
be exported as well.

Next step: it would be nice to have an importer, who is doing the same
the other way round - but that would be the next step.

I would guess that an exporter / importer combo like that would make
perfect sense for the use Steve mentioned and also be a perfect solution
for collaboration.

Cheers,

Rainer

> 
> Thanks
> 
> SteveT
> 
> Steve Litt
> Recession Relief Package
> http://www.recession-relief.US
> Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt
> 


- -- 
Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation
Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)

Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology
Natural Sciences Building
Office Suite 2039
Stellenbosch University
Main Campus, Merriman Avenue
Stellenbosch
South Africa

Tel:+33 - (0)9 53 10 27 44
Cell:   +27 - (0)8 39 47 90 42
Fax (SA):   +27 - (0)8 65 16 27 82
Fax (D) :   +49 - (0)3 21 21 25 22 44
Fax (FR):   +33 - (0)9 58 10 27 44
email:  rai...@krugs.de

Skype:  RMkrug
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iEYEARECAAYFAk2MQW0ACgkQoYgNqgF2egpypQCghLht0KG5OPyqr4nTG+A+1rYk
BbgAnjLqXfeG6Q+g4IPBvV+dbAVRB8WZ
=vkT+
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

Re: LyX Promotion

[stephen's mailinglist account]

On 23 March 2011 23:01, Rich Shepard  wrote:

>
 However,
> many in the Microsoft Word world just don't care. And, frankly, I don't want
> them to switch unless they're willing to take the time to learn a different
> paradigm and understand what is underneath what they do.


with many of these users it is difficult to to get them to learn anything about
what Word/OO can do let alone anything else.  I have seen vast manuals
created in word with finger painting rather than styles, so none of
the automated
numbering/re-numbering, TOC etc features can be used.  It is an uphill
battle to get
them to do this in word, so to try and get them to use another package
seems unlikely.

Word has made it so easy to finger paint...



-- 
Stephen

Re: LyX Promotion

[stephen's mailinglist account]

On 23 March 2011 06:20, Steve Litt  wrote:
> On Tuesday 22 March 2011 23:27:45 David L. Johnson wrote:
>> On 03/22/2011 10:58 PM, John McCabe-Dansted wrote:
>
>> > 3) Not WYSIWYG.  Normal users clearly expect WYSIWYG. WYSIWYG and
>> > WYSIWYM don't need to be mutually exclusive.
>>
>> They are to an extent, since WYSIWYG really means that all the document
>> contains is what you see on the screen, without additional structure
>> that properly formats it for a number of different export situations.
>
> That's not true at all. OpenOffice, MSWord, Abiword and Kompozer are all
> WYSIWYG, and all of them can be used to write styles based content that gives
> structure to the document.
>
>>

> I think the LyX community does itself a grave disservice emphasizing this
> WYSIWYG vs WYSIWYM thing. If I were going to enumerate the good things about
> LyX, it would be something like this:
>
> * It typesets better and more consistently than its non-TeX based competitors.
> * It deletes unintentional double spaces and double newlines.
> * It always calculates references, TOC and indices correctly, unlike others.
> * The black on tan is readable and soothing to the eyes for long workdays.
> * Its simple native format invites programmatic document creation and editing.
> * It's free software, which protects your documents from vendor lock-in.
> * It's an incredibly fast authoring environment.
>
 WYSIMUWE
What you see is more useful whilst editing?

WYSSYFWFWYSBW
What you see stops you fiddling with format when you should be writing?


-- 
Stephen

Re: LyX Promotion

[stephen's mailinglist account]

On 23 March 2011 08:12, Graham Smith  wrote:
> One possible approach is to write an introduction to Lyx specifically aimed
> at Word users.
>
> This has been done for R at
> http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/learnr-toolkit/ where the tutorials assume
> familiarity with Excel and demonstrate how things differ (or are the same)
> in R. There have also been similar things done for the GIS program Manifold,
> comparing it against the Industry standard products from ESRI.
>

There was a version for LaTeX
http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/info/latex4wp/latex4wp.pdf

>
>
> On 22 March 2011 15:51, Rob Oakes  wrote:
>>
>> Dear Users and Developers,
>>
>> Thank you to both Pavel and Stefano for ollowing up with Google about why
>> the GSoC application was turned down. Is there any way that I could help in
>> that review? Stefano, will you be attending the IRC meeting to be held later
>> today? I think it's very important that we understand why LyX was rejected
>> as a mentoring organization, and I'd be willing to hep in any way necessary.
>>
>> While I have some ideas about why it may have happened, I think that Pavel
>> hit the nail on the head. When I talk to people about LyX, they seem to
>> think of it as a specialized academic writing tool. Basically, a program
>> which helps professors and students write a thesis or articles. (To be even
>> more narrow, it seems like many think it is for math and physics people to
>> write a thesis or article.) Which is to say, a specialized program with an
>> incredibly small user base and use.
>>
>> While that stereotype may be somewhat true (I don't think anyone would
>> argue that many of the developers and users are within academics), it
>> significantly understates LyX's appeal, especially if you consider the
>> enhancements available in the upcoming version. From my own personal
>> experience, I've found LyX to be the most capable pre-press/writing tool
>> I've ever come across. If I were a publishing company or involved in the
>> creation of any type of documentation, I would be looking  at LyX very
>> carefully. It's the only tool that I know that allows you to manage
>> collaboration, typesetting the final output, and target both electronic and
>> print from the same source. With the recent explosion of electronic
>> publishing and eBooks, I think that makes it *highly* relevant.
>>
>> Yet, I'm not sure that the wider community appreciates that. (Hearing
>> Google's rationale for rejecting the GSoC application will help somewhat in
>> clarifying how LyX is perceived.) Which really brings me to the reason I'm
>> writing.
>>
>> Would it be worth trying to promote LyX to people who might find it
>> helpful?
>>
>> We've talked for a long time about writing a LyX book, which is an
>> excellent and wonderful project. But what if we first tested those waters by
>> tackling some smaller projects first?
>>
>> For example:
>>
>> 1.) I just learned about a new open design magazine this morning, called
>> LibreGraphics magazine (http://libregraphicsmag.com/). The goal of the
>> publication is to help designers find tools for their work. It seems like an
>> article about using LyX for book design would be a natural fit for their
>> target audience.
>>
>> 2.) In similar vein, the LibreGraphics meeting is also coming up. This
>> year, it will be held in Montreal. LibreGraphics targets a similar
>> demographic, and it seems like such a presentation would be a natural fit.
>> Even better, they pay the travel expenses of presenters
>> (http://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2011/). Might anyone be interested in
>> talking about using LyX to talk about book design, typography, or writing?
>>
>> 3.) It's been some time since Linux magazine or one of the other trade
>> publications published a general purpose article on LyX. Might it be worth
>> creating and submitting one? We might try and target Linux users magazine
>> (http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/), ZdNet, or one of the large Linux blogs (like
>> OMG!Ubuntu, http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/).
>>
>> 4.) It seems that there are people willing to help promote/evangelize LyX,
>> but I'm not sure we offer much in the way of promotional materials to help.
>> Would it be worthwhile to create a limited number of tutorials for people,
>> like Venom, who will be holding seminars or workshops? (I've also thought
>> about teaching a design workshop through my local library, and these
>> materials would help provide a curriculum.)
>>
>> The tutorials could address some of the finer points of using LyX that are
>> not covered in the manuals. For example, how do you collaborate using
>> version control? What is the process for creating custom, typeset
>> publications with LyX and LaTeX? We could publish cohesive examples and then
>> walk through how the code works. They might describe principles of design,
>> or typographical effects, and how they can be accomplished using LyX. Maybe
>> we could create a writeup on how 

Re: LyX Promotion

[Graham Smith]

Stephen


> There was a version for LaTeX
> http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/info/latex4wp/latex4wp.pdf
>
>
This looks useful, thanks.

Graham

Re: LyX Promotion

[Guenter Milde]

On 2011-03-23, Steve Litt wrote:
 On Wednesday 23 March 2011 09:54:29 you wrote:

 As for Word/OO--LyX interoperability, that seems a chimera. How can
 LyX ever be interoperable with Word, when even the LaTeX/LyX roundtrip
 will not get you back the document you started from? It seems to me
 that a more reasonable goal would be to have a Word-output function
 that strips all formatting except the semantically relevant items
 (emphasis, etc) and produce a clean Word file ready to be imported
 into a typesetting program or to be sent to Word-only people. 

 Even better, in addition to exporting emphasis and noun, have it export the 
 named but empty styles (environments and character styles) used in the doc, 
 so 
 the word doc has the styles and the text marked up with those styles. Then 
 all 
 that remains is to go in and modify those styles in MSWord or OOffice to 
 produce the desired look. After all, modifying a style in Word is five 
 minutes, not five hours.

 This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...

I think we should have semantic import/export filters in addition to
visual ones for all relevant document formats.

Günter

Re: LyX Promotion

[Rainer M Krug]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 24/03/11 11:29, Guenter Milde wrote:
 On 2011-03-23, Steve Litt wrote:
 On Wednesday 23 March 2011 09:54:29 you wrote:
 
 As for Word/OO--LyX interoperability, that seems a chimera. How can
 LyX ever be interoperable with Word, when even the LaTeX/LyX roundtrip
 will not get you back the document you started from? It seems to me
 that a more reasonable goal would be to have a Word-output function
 that strips all formatting except the semantically relevant items
 (emphasis, etc) and produce a clean Word file ready to be imported
 into a typesetting program or to be sent to Word-only people. 
 
 Even better, in addition to exporting emphasis and noun, have it export the 
 named but empty styles (environments and character styles) used in the doc, 
 so 
 the word doc has the styles and the text marked up with those styles. Then 
 all 
 that remains is to go in and modify those styles in MSWord or OOffice to 
 produce the desired look. After all, modifying a style in Word is five 
 minutes, not five hours.
 
 This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...
 
 I think we should have semantic import/export filters in addition to
 visual ones for all relevant document formats.

I absolutely agree - this would make life so much easier: you can write
in LyX, export sematically to doc / odt and do the formating in word /
openoffice / libreoffice if the editor / conference only provides a
specific word template.

Definitely a priority.

Rainer

 
 Günter
 


- -- 
Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation
Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)

Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology
Natural Sciences Building
Office Suite 2039
Stellenbosch University
Main Campus, Merriman Avenue
Stellenbosch
South Africa

Tel:+33 - (0)9 53 10 27 44
Cell:   +27 - (0)8 39 47 90 42
Fax (SA):   +27 - (0)8 65 16 27 82
Fax (D) :   +49 - (0)3 21 21 25 22 44
Fax (FR):   +33 - (0)9 58 10 27 44
email:  rai...@krugs.de

Skype:  RMkrug
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iEYEARECAAYFAk2LJH8ACgkQoYgNqgF2egoORwCdGPeRIFLgVGqMpwDt8giqaQAZ
gHsAni+hS4j2uv+Z8EeV1PvzDb/wrhKa
=Q01i
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

Re: LyX Promotion

[Liviu Andronic]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 12:01 PM, Rainer M Krug r.m.k...@gmail.com wrote:
 -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
 Hash: SHA1

 On 24/03/11 11:29, Guenter Milde wrote:
 On 2011-03-23, Steve Litt wrote:
 On Wednesday 23 March 2011 09:54:29 you wrote:

 As for Word/OO--LyX interoperability, that seems a chimera. How can
 LyX ever be interoperable with Word, when even the LaTeX/LyX roundtrip
 will not get you back the document you started from? It seems to me
 that a more reasonable goal would be to have a Word-output function
 that strips all formatting except the semantically relevant items
 (emphasis, etc) and produce a clean Word file ready to be imported
 into a typesetting program or to be sent to Word-only people.

 Even better, in addition to exporting emphasis and noun, have it export the
 named but empty styles (environments and character styles) used in the doc, 
 so
 the word doc has the styles and the text marked up with those styles. Then 
 all
 that remains is to go in and modify those styles in MSWord or OOffice to
 produce the desired look. After all, modifying a style in Word is five
 minutes, not five hours.

 This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...

 I think we should have semantic import/export filters in addition to
 visual ones for all relevant document formats.

 I absolutely agree - this would make life so much easier: you can write
 in LyX, export sematically to doc / odt and do the formating in word /
 openoffice / libreoffice if the editor / conference only provides a
 specific word template.

 Definitely a priority.

This might go down well as a GSoC project, as it seems useful and
simple enough. What do others think?
Liviu


 Rainer


 Günter



 - --
 Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation
 Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)

 Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology
 Natural Sciences Building
 Office Suite 2039
 Stellenbosch University
 Main Campus, Merriman Avenue
 Stellenbosch
 South Africa

 Tel:        +33 - (0)9 53 10 27 44
 Cell:       +27 - (0)8 39 47 90 42
 Fax (SA):   +27 - (0)8 65 16 27 82
 Fax (D) :   +49 - (0)3 21 21 25 22 44
 Fax (FR):   +33 - (0)9 58 10 27 44
 email:      rai...@krugs.de

 Skype:      RMkrug
 -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
 Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
 Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

 iEYEARECAAYFAk2LJH8ACgkQoYgNqgF2egoORwCdGPeRIFLgVGqMpwDt8giqaQAZ
 gHsAni+hS4j2uv+Z8EeV1PvzDb/wrhKa
 =Q01i
 -END PGP SIGNATURE-




-- 
Do you know how to read?
http://www.alienetworks.com/srtest.cfm
http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfce4-dict#speed-reader
Do you know how to write?
http://garbl.home.comcast.net/~garbl/stylemanual/e.htm#e-mail

Re: LyX Promotion

[stefano franchi]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 7:48 AM, Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 12:01 PM, Rainer M Krug r.m.k...@gmail.com wrote:
 -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
 Hash: SHA1

 On 24/03/11 11:29, Guenter Milde wrote:
 On 2011-03-23, Steve Litt wrote:
 On Wednesday 23 March 2011 09:54:29 you wrote:

 As for Word/OO--LyX interoperability, that seems a chimera. How can
 LyX ever be interoperable with Word, when even the LaTeX/LyX roundtrip
 will not get you back the document you started from? It seems to me
 that a more reasonable goal would be to have a Word-output function
 that strips all formatting except the semantically relevant items
 (emphasis, etc) and produce a clean Word file ready to be imported
 into a typesetting program or to be sent to Word-only people.

 Even better, in addition to exporting emphasis and noun, have it export the
 named but empty styles (environments and character styles) used in the 
 doc, so
 the word doc has the styles and the text marked up with those styles. Then 
 all
 that remains is to go in and modify those styles in MSWord or OOffice to
 produce the desired look. After all, modifying a style in Word is five
 minutes, not five hours.

 This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...

 I think we should have semantic import/export filters in addition to
 visual ones for all relevant document formats.

 I absolutely agree - this would make life so much easier: you can write
 in LyX, export sematically to doc / odt and do the formating in word /
 openoffice / libreoffice if the editor / conference only provides a
 specific word template.

 Definitely a priority.

 This might go down well as a GSoC project, as it seems useful and
 simple enough. What do others think?
 Liviu

Excellent idea, I think. Perhaps Richard can comment on  how far the
XHTML filter is from the goal? My impression, as a user, is that it
comes pretty close to what the project would be producing.

Stefano

Re: tutorials / slides for seminars or workshops (was: 'Re: LyX Promotion')

[Ronen Abravanel]

Translated my stuff to english:
http://technion.ac.il/~ronen/lyxlecture2/en/

probably there are some grammar problems. use freely.

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 8:51 PM, Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.comwrote:

 On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 7:45 PM, Ronen Abravanel ron...@gmail.com wrote:
   department, and I started with very short into on LaTeX and in what
   scene
   LyX is different from word, and then about 40 minutes of
 demonstration
   of
   what can I do and how can I do that.
  
   If there is nothing better, I can translate my tutorial to English
 (few
  
  What is the original language of the tutorial? Maybe I could digest it
  myself.
 
  Hebrew.
 
 Oh, I haven't gotten to Hebrew yet. :) If you have time and it's not
 much bother, I would indeed much appreciate a starting point for my
 workshop. Please let me know.

 Cheers
 Liviu

Re: LyX Promotion

[Steve Litt]

On Thursday 24 March 2011 07:01:19 Rainer M Krug wrote:
 On 24/03/11 11:29, Guenter Milde wrote:
  On 2011-03-23, Steve Litt wrote:

  This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...
  
  I think we should have semantic import/export filters in addition to
  visual ones for all relevant document formats.
 
 I absolutely agree - this would make life so much easier: you can write
 in LyX, export sematically to doc / odt and do the formating in word /
 openoffice / libreoffice if the editor / conference only provides a
 specific word template.
 
 Definitely a priority.

I'm not quite sure what you guys mean by semantic import/export, but if you 
mean exporting the text marked up with (empty) styles and the (empty) style 
definitions so all I have to do with the MSWord file is fill in the styles, 
then I'm on it like a squirrel on a tree. Let me tell you why.

The (insert your own curse phrase here) fools controlling the various eBook 
formats have made it almost necessary to use MSWord as the input to the eBook 
conversion process. Saaayyy what??? So let me get this straight. I write 
my book in a good software like LyX, and then have to rewrite it in (insert 
your favorite phrase meaning incompetent here) MSWord in order to put it on 
a Kindle? Really?

You know, if we're really considering this, there should be an option to 
convert what we call Part, Chapter, Section, Subsection... to MSWord's 
Header1, Header2, Header3, Header4 etc. And of course we need to do it 
configurably because not everyone uses parts and not everyone uses chapters. 
I'm attaching part of my VimOutliner to LyX converter so you can see how I 
implemented a similar level to level mapping in that software.

Thanks

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt

1: Chapter   
2: Section
3: Subsection
4: Subsubsection 
5: Paragraph 
6: Subparagraph  
7: Garbage7   
bodytext: Standard


otl2lyx.awk
Description: application/awk

Re: LyX Promotion

[Julien Rioux]

On 24/03/2011 2:09 PM, Steve Litt wrote:

On Thursday 24 March 2011 07:01:19 Rainer M Krug wrote:

On 24/03/11 11:29, Guenter Milde wrote:

On 2011-03-23, Steve Litt wrote:



This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...


I think we should have semantic import/export filters in addition to
visual ones for all relevant document formats.


I absolutely agree - this would make life so much easier: you can write
in LyX, export sematically to doc / odt and do the formating in word /
openoffice / libreoffice if the editor / conference only provides a
specific word template.

Definitely a priority.


I'm not quite sure what you guys mean by semantic import/export, but if you
mean exporting the text marked up with (empty) styles and the (empty) style
definitions so all I have to do with the MSWord file is fill in the styles,
then I'm on it like a squirrel on a tree. Let me tell you why.

The (insert your own curse phrase here) fools controlling the various eBook
formats have made it almost necessary to use MSWord as the input to the eBook
conversion process. Saaayyy what??? So let me get this straight. I write
my book in a good software like LyX, and then have to rewrite it in (insert
your favorite phrase meaning incompetent here) MSWord in order to put it on
a Kindle? Really?

You know, if we're really considering this, there should be an option to
convert what we call Part, Chapter, Section, Subsection... to MSWord's
Header1, Header2, Header3, Header4 etc. And of course we need to do it
configurably because not everyone uses parts and not everyone uses chapters.
I'm attaching part of my VimOutliner to LyX converter so you can see how I
implemented a similar level to level mapping in that software.

Thanks

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt



I love awk. Great tool. That's quite the script you got there. :)

--
Julien

Re: LyX Promotion

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Steve,

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

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

For example, if you wanted to change the heading for chapter style so that it 
exports to h1 (right now, it exports to h2), you could use the following in 
the local layout of your file.

Style Chapter
HTMLTag h2
End

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers,

Rob

Re: LyX Promotion

[Guenter Milde]

On 2011-03-23, Steve Litt wrote:
 On Wednesday 23 March 2011 09:54:29 you wrote:

 As for Word/OO--LyX interoperability, that seems a chimera. How can
 LyX ever be interoperable with Word, when even the LaTeX/LyX roundtrip
 will not get you back the document you started from? It seems to me
 that a more reasonable goal would be to have a Word-output function
 that strips all formatting except the semantically relevant items
 (emphasis, etc) and produce a clean Word file ready to be imported
 into a typesetting program or to be sent to Word-only people. 

 Even better, in addition to exporting emphasis and noun, have it export the 
 named but empty styles (environments and character styles) used in the doc, 
 so 
 the word doc has the styles and the text marked up with those styles. Then 
 all 
 that remains is to go in and modify those styles in MSWord or OOffice to 
 produce the desired look. After all, modifying a style in Word is five 
 minutes, not five hours.

 This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...

I think we should have semantic import/export filters in addition to
visual ones for all relevant document formats.

Günter

Re: LyX Promotion

[Rainer M Krug]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 24/03/11 11:29, Guenter Milde wrote:
 On 2011-03-23, Steve Litt wrote:
 On Wednesday 23 March 2011 09:54:29 you wrote:
 
 As for Word/OO--LyX interoperability, that seems a chimera. How can
 LyX ever be interoperable with Word, when even the LaTeX/LyX roundtrip
 will not get you back the document you started from? It seems to me
 that a more reasonable goal would be to have a Word-output function
 that strips all formatting except the semantically relevant items
 (emphasis, etc) and produce a clean Word file ready to be imported
 into a typesetting program or to be sent to Word-only people. 
 
 Even better, in addition to exporting emphasis and noun, have it export the 
 named but empty styles (environments and character styles) used in the doc, 
 so 
 the word doc has the styles and the text marked up with those styles. Then 
 all 
 that remains is to go in and modify those styles in MSWord or OOffice to 
 produce the desired look. After all, modifying a style in Word is five 
 minutes, not five hours.
 
 This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...
 
 I think we should have semantic import/export filters in addition to
 visual ones for all relevant document formats.

I absolutely agree - this would make life so much easier: you can write
in LyX, export sematically to doc / odt and do the formating in word /
openoffice / libreoffice if the editor / conference only provides a
specific word template.

Definitely a priority.

Rainer

 
 Günter
 


- -- 
Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation
Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)

Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology
Natural Sciences Building
Office Suite 2039
Stellenbosch University
Main Campus, Merriman Avenue
Stellenbosch
South Africa

Tel:+33 - (0)9 53 10 27 44
Cell:   +27 - (0)8 39 47 90 42
Fax (SA):   +27 - (0)8 65 16 27 82
Fax (D) :   +49 - (0)3 21 21 25 22 44
Fax (FR):   +33 - (0)9 58 10 27 44
email:  rai...@krugs.de

Skype:  RMkrug
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iEYEARECAAYFAk2LJH8ACgkQoYgNqgF2egoORwCdGPeRIFLgVGqMpwDt8giqaQAZ
gHsAni+hS4j2uv+Z8EeV1PvzDb/wrhKa
=Q01i
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

Re: LyX Promotion

[Liviu Andronic]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 12:01 PM, Rainer M Krug r.m.k...@gmail.com wrote:
 -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
 Hash: SHA1

 On 24/03/11 11:29, Guenter Milde wrote:
 On 2011-03-23, Steve Litt wrote:
 On Wednesday 23 March 2011 09:54:29 you wrote:

 As for Word/OO--LyX interoperability, that seems a chimera. How can
 LyX ever be interoperable with Word, when even the LaTeX/LyX roundtrip
 will not get you back the document you started from? It seems to me
 that a more reasonable goal would be to have a Word-output function
 that strips all formatting except the semantically relevant items
 (emphasis, etc) and produce a clean Word file ready to be imported
 into a typesetting program or to be sent to Word-only people.

 Even better, in addition to exporting emphasis and noun, have it export the
 named but empty styles (environments and character styles) used in the doc, 
 so
 the word doc has the styles and the text marked up with those styles. Then 
 all
 that remains is to go in and modify those styles in MSWord or OOffice to
 produce the desired look. After all, modifying a style in Word is five
 minutes, not five hours.

 This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...

 I think we should have semantic import/export filters in addition to
 visual ones for all relevant document formats.

 I absolutely agree - this would make life so much easier: you can write
 in LyX, export sematically to doc / odt and do the formating in word /
 openoffice / libreoffice if the editor / conference only provides a
 specific word template.

 Definitely a priority.

This might go down well as a GSoC project, as it seems useful and
simple enough. What do others think?
Liviu


 Rainer


 Günter



 - --
 Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation
 Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)

 Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology
 Natural Sciences Building
 Office Suite 2039
 Stellenbosch University
 Main Campus, Merriman Avenue
 Stellenbosch
 South Africa

 Tel:        +33 - (0)9 53 10 27 44
 Cell:       +27 - (0)8 39 47 90 42
 Fax (SA):   +27 - (0)8 65 16 27 82
 Fax (D) :   +49 - (0)3 21 21 25 22 44
 Fax (FR):   +33 - (0)9 58 10 27 44
 email:      rai...@krugs.de

 Skype:      RMkrug
 -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
 Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
 Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

 iEYEARECAAYFAk2LJH8ACgkQoYgNqgF2egoORwCdGPeRIFLgVGqMpwDt8giqaQAZ
 gHsAni+hS4j2uv+Z8EeV1PvzDb/wrhKa
 =Q01i
 -END PGP SIGNATURE-




-- 
Do you know how to read?
http://www.alienetworks.com/srtest.cfm
http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfce4-dict#speed-reader
Do you know how to write?
http://garbl.home.comcast.net/~garbl/stylemanual/e.htm#e-mail

Re: LyX Promotion

[stefano franchi]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 7:48 AM, Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 12:01 PM, Rainer M Krug r.m.k...@gmail.com wrote:
 -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
 Hash: SHA1

 On 24/03/11 11:29, Guenter Milde wrote:
 On 2011-03-23, Steve Litt wrote:
 On Wednesday 23 March 2011 09:54:29 you wrote:

 As for Word/OO--LyX interoperability, that seems a chimera. How can
 LyX ever be interoperable with Word, when even the LaTeX/LyX roundtrip
 will not get you back the document you started from? It seems to me
 that a more reasonable goal would be to have a Word-output function
 that strips all formatting except the semantically relevant items
 (emphasis, etc) and produce a clean Word file ready to be imported
 into a typesetting program or to be sent to Word-only people.

 Even better, in addition to exporting emphasis and noun, have it export the
 named but empty styles (environments and character styles) used in the 
 doc, so
 the word doc has the styles and the text marked up with those styles. Then 
 all
 that remains is to go in and modify those styles in MSWord or OOffice to
 produce the desired look. After all, modifying a style in Word is five
 minutes, not five hours.

 This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...

 I think we should have semantic import/export filters in addition to
 visual ones for all relevant document formats.

 I absolutely agree - this would make life so much easier: you can write
 in LyX, export sematically to doc / odt and do the formating in word /
 openoffice / libreoffice if the editor / conference only provides a
 specific word template.

 Definitely a priority.

 This might go down well as a GSoC project, as it seems useful and
 simple enough. What do others think?
 Liviu

Excellent idea, I think. Perhaps Richard can comment on  how far the
XHTML filter is from the goal? My impression, as a user, is that it
comes pretty close to what the project would be producing.

Stefano

Re: tutorials / slides for seminars or workshops (was: 'Re: LyX Promotion')

[Ronen Abravanel]

Translated my stuff to english:
http://technion.ac.il/~ronen/lyxlecture2/en/

probably there are some grammar problems. use freely.

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 8:51 PM, Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.comwrote:

 On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 7:45 PM, Ronen Abravanel ron...@gmail.com wrote:
   department, and I started with very short into on LaTeX and in what
   scene
   LyX is different from word, and then about 40 minutes of
 demonstration
   of
   what can I do and how can I do that.
  
   If there is nothing better, I can translate my tutorial to English
 (few
  
  What is the original language of the tutorial? Maybe I could digest it
  myself.
 
  Hebrew.
 
 Oh, I haven't gotten to Hebrew yet. :) If you have time and it's not
 much bother, I would indeed much appreciate a starting point for my
 workshop. Please let me know.

 Cheers
 Liviu

Re: LyX Promotion

[Steve Litt]

On Thursday 24 March 2011 07:01:19 Rainer M Krug wrote:
 On 24/03/11 11:29, Guenter Milde wrote:
  On 2011-03-23, Steve Litt wrote:

  This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...
  
  I think we should have semantic import/export filters in addition to
  visual ones for all relevant document formats.
 
 I absolutely agree - this would make life so much easier: you can write
 in LyX, export sematically to doc / odt and do the formating in word /
 openoffice / libreoffice if the editor / conference only provides a
 specific word template.
 
 Definitely a priority.

I'm not quite sure what you guys mean by semantic import/export, but if you 
mean exporting the text marked up with (empty) styles and the (empty) style 
definitions so all I have to do with the MSWord file is fill in the styles, 
then I'm on it like a squirrel on a tree. Let me tell you why.

The (insert your own curse phrase here) fools controlling the various eBook 
formats have made it almost necessary to use MSWord as the input to the eBook 
conversion process. Saaayyy what??? So let me get this straight. I write 
my book in a good software like LyX, and then have to rewrite it in (insert 
your favorite phrase meaning incompetent here) MSWord in order to put it on 
a Kindle? Really?

You know, if we're really considering this, there should be an option to 
convert what we call Part, Chapter, Section, Subsection... to MSWord's 
Header1, Header2, Header3, Header4 etc. And of course we need to do it 
configurably because not everyone uses parts and not everyone uses chapters. 
I'm attaching part of my VimOutliner to LyX converter so you can see how I 
implemented a similar level to level mapping in that software.

Thanks

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt

1: Chapter   
2: Section
3: Subsection
4: Subsubsection 
5: Paragraph 
6: Subparagraph  
7: Garbage7   
bodytext: Standard


otl2lyx.awk
Description: application/awk

Re: LyX Promotion

[Julien Rioux]

On 24/03/2011 2:09 PM, Steve Litt wrote:

On Thursday 24 March 2011 07:01:19 Rainer M Krug wrote:

On 24/03/11 11:29, Guenter Milde wrote:

On 2011-03-23, Steve Litt wrote:



This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...


I think we should have semantic import/export filters in addition to
visual ones for all relevant document formats.


I absolutely agree - this would make life so much easier: you can write
in LyX, export sematically to doc / odt and do the formating in word /
openoffice / libreoffice if the editor / conference only provides a
specific word template.

Definitely a priority.


I'm not quite sure what you guys mean by semantic import/export, but if you
mean exporting the text marked up with (empty) styles and the (empty) style
definitions so all I have to do with the MSWord file is fill in the styles,
then I'm on it like a squirrel on a tree. Let me tell you why.

The (insert your own curse phrase here) fools controlling the various eBook
formats have made it almost necessary to use MSWord as the input to the eBook
conversion process. Saaayyy what??? So let me get this straight. I write
my book in a good software like LyX, and then have to rewrite it in (insert
your favorite phrase meaning incompetent here) MSWord in order to put it on
a Kindle? Really?

You know, if we're really considering this, there should be an option to
convert what we call Part, Chapter, Section, Subsection... to MSWord's
Header1, Header2, Header3, Header4 etc. And of course we need to do it
configurably because not everyone uses parts and not everyone uses chapters.
I'm attaching part of my VimOutliner to LyX converter so you can see how I
implemented a similar level to level mapping in that software.

Thanks

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt



I love awk. Great tool. That's quite the script you got there. :)

--
Julien

Re: LyX Promotion

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Steve,

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

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

For example, if you wanted to change the heading for chapter style so that it 
exports to h1 (right now, it exports to h2), you could use the following in 
the local layout of your file.

Style Chapter
HTMLTag h2
End

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers,

Rob

Re: LyX Promotion

[Guenter Milde]

On 2011-03-23, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Wednesday 23 March 2011 09:54:29 you wrote:

>> As for Word/OO<-->LyX interoperability, that seems a chimera. How can
>> LyX ever be interoperable with Word, when even the LaTeX/LyX roundtrip
>> will not get you back the document you started from? It seems to me
>> that a more reasonable goal would be to have a Word-output function
>> that strips all formatting except the semantically relevant items
>> (emphasis, etc) and produce a clean Word file ready to be imported
>> into a typesetting program or to be sent to Word-only people. 

> Even better, in addition to exporting emphasis and noun, have it export the 
> named but empty styles (environments and character styles) used in the doc, 
> so 
> the word doc has the styles and the text marked up with those styles. Then 
> all 
> that remains is to go in and modify those styles in MSWord or OOffice to 
> produce the desired look. After all, modifying a style in Word is five 
> minutes, not five hours.

> This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...

I think we should have "semantic" import/export filters in addition to
"visual" ones for all relevant document formats.

Günter

Re: LyX Promotion

[Rainer M Krug]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 24/03/11 11:29, Guenter Milde wrote:
> On 2011-03-23, Steve Litt wrote:
>> On Wednesday 23 March 2011 09:54:29 you wrote:
> 
>>> As for Word/OO<-->LyX interoperability, that seems a chimera. How can
>>> LyX ever be interoperable with Word, when even the LaTeX/LyX roundtrip
>>> will not get you back the document you started from? It seems to me
>>> that a more reasonable goal would be to have a Word-output function
>>> that strips all formatting except the semantically relevant items
>>> (emphasis, etc) and produce a clean Word file ready to be imported
>>> into a typesetting program or to be sent to Word-only people. 
> 
>> Even better, in addition to exporting emphasis and noun, have it export the 
>> named but empty styles (environments and character styles) used in the doc, 
>> so 
>> the word doc has the styles and the text marked up with those styles. Then 
>> all 
>> that remains is to go in and modify those styles in MSWord or OOffice to 
>> produce the desired look. After all, modifying a style in Word is five 
>> minutes, not five hours.
> 
>> This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...
> 
> I think we should have "semantic" import/export filters in addition to
> "visual" ones for all relevant document formats.

I absolutely agree - this would make life so much easier: you can write
in LyX, export sematically to doc / odt and do the formating in word /
openoffice / libreoffice if the editor / conference only provides a
specific word template.

Definitely a priority.

Rainer

> 
> Günter
> 


- -- 
Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation
Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)

Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology
Natural Sciences Building
Office Suite 2039
Stellenbosch University
Main Campus, Merriman Avenue
Stellenbosch
South Africa

Tel:+33 - (0)9 53 10 27 44
Cell:   +27 - (0)8 39 47 90 42
Fax (SA):   +27 - (0)8 65 16 27 82
Fax (D) :   +49 - (0)3 21 21 25 22 44
Fax (FR):   +33 - (0)9 58 10 27 44
email:  rai...@krugs.de

Skype:  RMkrug
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iEYEARECAAYFAk2LJH8ACgkQoYgNqgF2egoORwCdGPeRIFLgVGqMpwDt8giqaQAZ
gHsAni+hS4j2uv+Z8EeV1PvzDb/wrhKa
=Q01i
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

Re: LyX Promotion

[Liviu Andronic]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 12:01 PM, Rainer M Krug  wrote:
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On 24/03/11 11:29, Guenter Milde wrote:
>> On 2011-03-23, Steve Litt wrote:
>>> On Wednesday 23 March 2011 09:54:29 you wrote:
>>
 As for Word/OO<-->LyX interoperability, that seems a chimera. How can
 LyX ever be interoperable with Word, when even the LaTeX/LyX roundtrip
 will not get you back the document you started from? It seems to me
 that a more reasonable goal would be to have a Word-output function
 that strips all formatting except the semantically relevant items
 (emphasis, etc) and produce a clean Word file ready to be imported
 into a typesetting program or to be sent to Word-only people.
>>
>>> Even better, in addition to exporting emphasis and noun, have it export the
>>> named but empty styles (environments and character styles) used in the doc, 
>>> so
>>> the word doc has the styles and the text marked up with those styles. Then 
>>> all
>>> that remains is to go in and modify those styles in MSWord or OOffice to
>>> produce the desired look. After all, modifying a style in Word is five
>>> minutes, not five hours.
>>
>>> This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...
>>
>> I think we should have "semantic" import/export filters in addition to
>> "visual" ones for all relevant document formats.
>
> I absolutely agree - this would make life so much easier: you can write
> in LyX, export sematically to doc / odt and do the formating in word /
> openoffice / libreoffice if the editor / conference only provides a
> specific word template.
>
> Definitely a priority.
>
This might go down well as a GSoC project, as it seems useful and
"simple" enough. What do others think?
Liviu


> Rainer
>
>>
>> Günter
>>
>
>
> - --
> Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation
> Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)
>
> Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology
> Natural Sciences Building
> Office Suite 2039
> Stellenbosch University
> Main Campus, Merriman Avenue
> Stellenbosch
> South Africa
>
> Tel:        +33 - (0)9 53 10 27 44
> Cell:       +27 - (0)8 39 47 90 42
> Fax (SA):   +27 - (0)8 65 16 27 82
> Fax (D) :   +49 - (0)3 21 21 25 22 44
> Fax (FR):   +33 - (0)9 58 10 27 44
> email:      rai...@krugs.de
>
> Skype:      RMkrug
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/
>
> iEYEARECAAYFAk2LJH8ACgkQoYgNqgF2egoORwCdGPeRIFLgVGqMpwDt8giqaQAZ
> gHsAni+hS4j2uv+Z8EeV1PvzDb/wrhKa
> =Q01i
> -END PGP SIGNATURE-
>



-- 
Do you know how to read?
http://www.alienetworks.com/srtest.cfm
http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfce4-dict#speed-reader
Do you know how to write?
http://garbl.home.comcast.net/~garbl/stylemanual/e.htm#e-mail

Re: LyX Promotion

[stefano franchi]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 7:48 AM, Liviu Andronic  wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 12:01 PM, Rainer M Krug  wrote:
>> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> On 24/03/11 11:29, Guenter Milde wrote:
>>> On 2011-03-23, Steve Litt wrote:
 On Wednesday 23 March 2011 09:54:29 you wrote:
>>>
> As for Word/OO<-->LyX interoperability, that seems a chimera. How can
> LyX ever be interoperable with Word, when even the LaTeX/LyX roundtrip
> will not get you back the document you started from? It seems to me
> that a more reasonable goal would be to have a Word-output function
> that strips all formatting except the semantically relevant items
> (emphasis, etc) and produce a clean Word file ready to be imported
> into a typesetting program or to be sent to Word-only people.
>>>
 Even better, in addition to exporting emphasis and noun, have it export the
 named but empty styles (environments and character styles) used in the 
 doc, so
 the word doc has the styles and the text marked up with those styles. Then 
 all
 that remains is to go in and modify those styles in MSWord or OOffice to
 produce the desired look. After all, modifying a style in Word is five
 minutes, not five hours.
>>>
 This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...
>>>
>>> I think we should have "semantic" import/export filters in addition to
>>> "visual" ones for all relevant document formats.
>>
>> I absolutely agree - this would make life so much easier: you can write
>> in LyX, export sematically to doc / odt and do the formating in word /
>> openoffice / libreoffice if the editor / conference only provides a
>> specific word template.
>>
>> Definitely a priority.
>>
> This might go down well as a GSoC project, as it seems useful and
> "simple" enough. What do others think?
> Liviu

Excellent idea, I think. Perhaps Richard can comment on  how far the
XHTML filter is from the goal? My impression, as a user, is that it
comes pretty close to what the project would be producing.

Stefano

Re: tutorials / slides for seminars or workshops (was: 'Re: LyX Promotion')

[Ronen Abravanel]

Translated my stuff to english:
http://technion.ac.il/~ronen/lyxlecture2/en/

probably there are some grammar problems. use freely.

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 8:51 PM, Liviu Andronic wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 7:45 PM, Ronen Abravanel  wrote:
> >> > department, and I started with very short into on LaTeX and "in what
> >> > scene
> >> > LyX is different from word", and then about 40 minutes of
> demonstration
> >> > of
> >> > what can I do and how can I do that.
> >> >
> >> > If there is nothing better, I can translate my tutorial to English
> (few
> >> >
> >> What is the original language of the tutorial? Maybe I could digest it
> >> myself.
> >>
> > Hebrew.
> >
> Oh, I haven't gotten to Hebrew yet. :) If you have time and it's not
> much bother, I would indeed much appreciate a starting point for my
> workshop. Please let me know.
>
> Cheers
> Liviu
>

Re: LyX Promotion

[Steve Litt]

On Thursday 24 March 2011 07:01:19 Rainer M Krug wrote:
> On 24/03/11 11:29, Guenter Milde wrote:
> > On 2011-03-23, Steve Litt wrote:

> >> This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...
> > 
> > I think we should have "semantic" import/export filters in addition to
> > "visual" ones for all relevant document formats.
> 
> I absolutely agree - this would make life so much easier: you can write
> in LyX, export sematically to doc / odt and do the formating in word /
> openoffice / libreoffice if the editor / conference only provides a
> specific word template.
> 
> Definitely a priority.

I'm not quite sure what you guys mean by "semantic import/export", but if you 
mean exporting the text marked up with (empty) styles and the (empty) style 
definitions so all I have to do with the MSWord file is fill in the styles, 
then I'm on it like a squirrel on a tree. Let me tell you why.

The (insert your own curse phrase here) fools controlling the various eBook 
formats have made it almost necessary to use MSWord as the input to the eBook 
conversion process. Saaayyy what??? So let me get this straight. I write 
my book in a good software like LyX, and then have to rewrite it in (insert 
your favorite phrase meaning "incompetent" here) MSWord in order to put it on 
a Kindle? Really?

You know, if we're really considering this, there should be an option to 
convert what we call Part, Chapter, Section, Subsection... to MSWord's 
Header1, Header2, Header3, Header4 etc. And of course we need to do it 
configurably because not everyone uses parts and not everyone uses chapters. 
I'm attaching part of my VimOutliner to LyX converter so you can see how I 
implemented a similar level to level mapping in that software.

Thanks

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt

1: Chapter   
2: Section
3: Subsection
4: Subsubsection 
5: Paragraph 
6: Subparagraph  
7: Garbage7   
bodytext: Standard


otl2lyx.awk
Description: application/awk

Re: LyX Promotion

[Julien Rioux]

On 24/03/2011 2:09 PM, Steve Litt wrote:

On Thursday 24 March 2011 07:01:19 Rainer M Krug wrote:

On 24/03/11 11:29, Guenter Milde wrote:

On 2011-03-23, Steve Litt wrote:



This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...


I think we should have "semantic" import/export filters in addition to
"visual" ones for all relevant document formats.


I absolutely agree - this would make life so much easier: you can write
in LyX, export sematically to doc / odt and do the formating in word /
openoffice / libreoffice if the editor / conference only provides a
specific word template.

Definitely a priority.


I'm not quite sure what you guys mean by "semantic import/export", but if you
mean exporting the text marked up with (empty) styles and the (empty) style
definitions so all I have to do with the MSWord file is fill in the styles,
then I'm on it like a squirrel on a tree. Let me tell you why.

The (insert your own curse phrase here) fools controlling the various eBook
formats have made it almost necessary to use MSWord as the input to the eBook
conversion process. Saaayyy what??? So let me get this straight. I write
my book in a good software like LyX, and then have to rewrite it in (insert
your favorite phrase meaning "incompetent" here) MSWord in order to put it on
a Kindle? Really?

You know, if we're really considering this, there should be an option to
convert what we call Part, Chapter, Section, Subsection... to MSWord's
Header1, Header2, Header3, Header4 etc. And of course we need to do it
configurably because not everyone uses parts and not everyone uses chapters.
I'm attaching part of my VimOutliner to LyX converter so you can see how I
implemented a similar level to level mapping in that software.

Thanks

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt



I love awk. Great tool. That's quite the script you got there. :)

--
Julien

Re: LyX Promotion

[Rob Oakes]

Hi Steve,

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

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

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

Style Chapter
HTMLTag h2
End

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers,

Rob

Re: LyX Promotion

[Steve Litt]

On Tuesday 22 March 2011 23:27:45 David L. Johnson wrote:
 On 03/22/2011 10:58 PM, John McCabe-Dansted wrote:

  3) Not WYSIWYG.  Normal users clearly expect WYSIWYG. WYSIWYG and
  WYSIWYM don't need to be mutually exclusive.
 
 They are to an extent, since WYSIWYG really means that all the document
 contains is what you see on the screen, without additional structure
 that properly formats it for a number of different export situations.

That's not true at all. OpenOffice, MSWord, Abiword and Kompozer are all 
WYSIWYG, and all of them can be used to write styles based content that gives 
structure to the document.

 
 Think about writing a document in word.  You spend time getting the
 spacing right, the margins to look right, and align all the bits of text
 by hand.  

That's not true at all. In 1999, before knowing about LyX, I wrote a 317 page 
styles based book in MS Word, and you'd better believe the spacing, margins 
and alignment were all governed by styles and not by one-off formatting.

I think the LyX community does itself a grave disservice emphasizing this 
WYSIWYG vs WYSIWYM thing. If I were going to enumerate the good things about 
LyX, it would be something like this:

* It typesets better and more consistently than its non-TeX based competitors.
* It deletes unintentional double spaces and double newlines.
* It always calculates references, TOC and indices correctly, unlike others.
* The black on tan is readable and soothing to the eyes for long workdays.
* Its simple native format invites programmatic document creation and editing.
* It's free software, which protects your documents from vendor lock-in.
* It's an incredibly fast authoring environment.

 
 Ignoring the difficulty
 
  in implementing for a while, having a WYSIWYG mode would be great.
  After the content is complete, I go though a cycle of: Notice
  something weird with the line-breaking in the PDF, muck around with
  the LyX source hoping it fixed the problem;
 
 No.  TeX handles all that, don't ask users to spend effort in dealing
 with how lines break.  Write the paper, let TeX format it.  I would not
 want to worry about how it looks on the page while writing, that is a
 bad habit that you can avoid with LyX.

I have to disagree again. If there's something weird with the line-breaking 
in the PDF, then it will make the reader uncomfortable, and you can't just say 
Let TeX handle it, because apparently it didn't, and the reader must be 
comfortable. Long words, URLs, monospaced type are just a few of the things 
that make funny line breaks in default-formatted LyX docs. And by funny line 
breaks I mean lines walking right off the page, which is a fatal error as far 
as the reader's concerned. Most such problems can be handled by \sloppy, but 
unless you want the whole doc sloppy, you must do that on a paragraph by 
paragraph basis.

When I began using LyX in 2001 and complained about the prodigious difficulty 
of making your own paragraph styles, some people told me just use the 
defaults. Scuse me? LyX didn't provide a Warning style, and my readers needed 
one. It didn't provide a Story style, and my readers needed one. Saying to 
just use the defaults is a lot like telling a programmer to use standard 
cooked input on a keyboard driven menu system. Sure, it's easier for the 
programmer, but the user has to hit double the keystrokes, and he'll hate the 
end product.

I wrote an article about some of this ten years ago:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/bestandworst.htm

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt

Re: LyX Promotion

[Rainer M Krug]

 1) Compile Errors. Normal users aren't used to dealing with compile
 errors and shouldn't be expected to fix them. Even I don't like
 dealing with compile errors all that much.
 1a) Perhaps we could do some sort of bisect to determine where the
 error is (either over the file itself or some fine-grained history).
 1b) Perhaps we could improve the latex export so that compile errors
 only occur if the user uses ERT. Particularly with beamer, this isn't
 always the case.

This is an important point, and one should evaluate if it is feasible
to go further into 'asking' LaTeX wheere the error is - it would
definitley help the users to provide a better understandable error
message *if* something fails.

ERT are a different issue - if you are using ERTs, you should know
what you are doing and out of the responsibility zone of LyX.

But beamer should be refined.


 2) Compatibility with Word. Typical users expect to be able to open
 and save word documents.

What I would expect / not expect from a word document which is
exported from LyX is:

1) Have all the content (normally this is the case)

2) Not look like a LaTeX document - I want to use it to collaborate
with word users, so the actual layout (margins, ...) are irrelevant
for me. Sections should be using the style for header 1, subsections
header 2, ... SO that it *looks* MsWordish and easy for the word user
(which is not the case when it looks as a document created by LaTeX  -
start with the margins which look horrible in word but are brilliant
in the final pdf). This refers to paragraph styles - but character
styles should be exported as they are. So a mapping would be usefull:
Section - header 1 , ...

2a) I understand that one wants to have sometime the possibility to
export the LaTeX generated document - but that is a different story.

3) Contain the track changes from LyX

4) Contain the comments

To go from there, I would expect that, when importing the word
document I get back from my collaborators with track changes and
comments, that

1) Track changes are imported
2) Comments are imported
3) Paragraph styles are ignored, apart from the mapped default
styles (header 1- Section)

My reasoning is, that in most cases, an export is NOT done to see the
final layout (for this I usually attach a pdf as well), but for
editorial comments.

Cheers,

Rainer



 --
 John C. McCabe-Dansted




-- 
NEW GERMAN FAX NUMBER!!!

Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation
Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)

Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology
Natural Sciences Building
Office Suite 2039
Stellenbosch University
Main Campus, Merriman Avenue
Stellenbosch
South Africa

Cell:           +27 - (0)83 9479 042
Fax:            +27 - (0)86 516 2782
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email:          rai...@krugs.de

Skype:          RMkrug
Google:         r.m.k...@gmail.com

Re: LyX Promotion

[Graham Smith]

One possible approach is to write an introduction to Lyx specifically aimed
at Word users.

This has been done for R at
http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/learnr-toolkit/ where the tutorials assume
familiarity with Excel and demonstrate how things differ (or are the same)
in R. There have also been similar things done for the GIS program Manifold,
comparing it against the Industry standard products from ESRI.

I had a couple of aborted attempts with Lyx, because, as a Word User, I just
couldn't get my head around certain concepts (the concept of compiling a
document probably being the main one). I then eventually came back to Lyx
via SWeave in R, which introduced me to Latex, and then Lyx fell into place
and I realised it gave me an easy interface to Latex for every day
documents.

A Lyx equivilant of the R tutorials would have been a great help.

Graham



On 22 March 2011 15:51, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us wrote:

 Dear Users and Developers,

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

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

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

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

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

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

 For example:

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

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

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

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

 The tutorials could address some of the finer points of using LyX that are
 not covered in the manuals. For example, how do you collaborate using
 version control? What is the process for creating custom, typeset
 publications with LyX and LaTeX? We could publish cohesive examples and then
 walk through how the code works. They might describe 

Re: LyX Promotion

[Rainer M Krug]

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 9:12 AM, Graham Smith myotis...@gmail.com wrote:
 One possible approach is to write an introduction to Lyx specifically aimed
 at Word users.

 This has been done for R at
 http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/learnr-toolkit/ where the tutorials assume
 familiarity with Excel and demonstrate how things differ (or are the same)
 in R. There have also been similar things done for the GIS program Manifold,
 comparing it against the Industry standard products from ESRI.

 I had a couple of aborted attempts with Lyx, because, as a Word User, I just
 couldn't get my head around certain concepts (the concept of compiling a
 document probably being the main one). I then eventually came back to Lyx
 via SWeave in R, which introduced me to Latex, and then Lyx fell into place
 and I realised it gave me an easy interface to Latex for every day
 documents.

 A Lyx equivilant of the R tutorials would have been a great help.

I completely agree and this would be a very usefull document - but the
issue is not to provide an easy transition from Word to LyX, but to
enable an easy co-operation with Word or OO / LibreOffice users, in
the sense that:

Main Document in LyX - export to doc / odt (including comments and
track changes) - comment from Word users in document - import into
LyX - editiong in LyX - export to doc / odt (including comments and
track changes) - ... - Finl editing in LyX

So the Word user would not be confronted with LyX.

But I think that this should be a separate topic.

Cheers,

Rainer


 Graham



 On 22 March 2011 15:51, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us wrote:

 Dear Users and Developers,

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

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

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

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

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

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

 For example:

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

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

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

 4.) It seems that there are people willing to help promote/evangelize LyX,
 but I'm not sure we 

Re: LyX Promotion

[Liviu Andronic]

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 9:12 AM, Graham Smith myotis...@gmail.com wrote:
 One possible approach is to write an introduction to Lyx specifically aimed
 at Word users.

This makes a lot of sense to me. Most of all we probably need an
introduction for those coming from the world of Word (highest
priority) and, perhaps, one for those with a heavy LaTeX background.
(For the latter, we might simply recycle the existing Help  Tutorial
 LyX for LaTeX users, but give it much better visibility on the
lyx.org home page.)

If you give it some thought, the two are essentially the only ones
that make sense, because there aren't really other types of newcomers:
you are either already familiar with Word, or with LaTeX; else you
wouldn't be looking at LyX in the first place.

Liviu


 This has been done for R at
 http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/learnr-toolkit/ where the tutorials assume
 familiarity with Excel and demonstrate how things differ (or are the same)
 in R. There have also been similar things done for the GIS program Manifold,
 comparing it against the Industry standard products from ESRI.

 I had a couple of aborted attempts with Lyx, because, as a Word User, I just
 couldn't get my head around certain concepts (the concept of compiling a
 document probably being the main one). I then eventually came back to Lyx
 via SWeave in R, which introduced me to Latex, and then Lyx fell into place
 and I realised it gave me an easy interface to Latex for every day
 documents.

 A Lyx equivilant of the R tutorials would have been a great help.

 Graham



 On 22 March 2011 15:51, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us wrote:

 Dear Users and Developers,

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

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

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

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

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

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

 For example:

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

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

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

 4.) It seems that there are people willing to help promote/evangelize LyX,
 

Re: LyX Promotion

[Graham Smith]

Rainer,

I completely agree and this would be a very usefull document - but the
 issue is not to provide an easy transition from Word to LyX, but to
 enable an easy co-operation with Word or OO / LibreOffice users, in
 the sense that:


Ah OK, I obviously misunderstood the basis of the thread, I thought it was
to broaden the appeal/user base beyond the perceived Academic one (but I use
it in consultancy).

Graham

Re: LyX Promotion

[george legge]

Steve, I like your list of good things about LyX;
but you have omitted what to me is the most significant:

Try using Word to compile a  long book with many illustrations, often with 3
graphics to a page.
Word has a shocking reputation for using a master document with many child
documents,
particularly one with many graphics. There are many warnings that Word will
crash and corrupt files.

So be it - I used OpenOffice. Result: as the book got longer, the OpenOffice
master crashed frequently.
Every time a child document was added or modified, the master document took
up to half an hour to update and was likely to crash in the process.
At least OpenOffice never corrupted the files; but it became impractical to
complete assembly of the book.

I carried the same files over to LyX, converting each child document.
Result: LyX has not crashed once and it assembles or updates the master
document into a pdf, with all the graphics inserted in less than 30 seconds.

I may have to negotiate with LyX on where I wish to place an image or what
ERT is needed.
But the worse that might happen is I get an error message.
All through the operations, LyX remains rock steady.

For long complex documents, LyX is the practical solution.

Cheers, George Legge



On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 5:20 PM, Steve Litt sl...@troubleshooters.comwrote:

 If I were going to enumerate the good things about
 LyX, it would be something like this:

 * It typesets better and more consistently than its non-TeX based
 competitors.
 * It deletes unintentional double spaces and double newlines.
 * It always calculates references, TOC and indices correctly, unlike
 others.
 * The black on tan is readable and soothing to the eyes for long workdays.
 * Its simple native format invites programmatic document creation and
 editing.
 * It's free software, which protects your documents from vendor lock-in.
 * It's an incredibly fast authoring environment.

Re: tutorials / slides for seminars or workshops (was: 'Re: LyX Promotion')

[Guenter Milde]

On 2011-03-22, Liviu Andronic wrote:
 On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us wrote:

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

 I will be holding a workshop on LyX to graduate types at my university
 and I'm not very sure where from to begin. Some ready materials
 (slides on the advantages of LyX/LaTeX over MS Word and the hord, step
 by step tutorials for creating your first document in LyX, using
 bibliography and fancier features) would be of enormous help.

 At the moment I plan to start with the 'Help  Documentation' in
 preparing my tutorial. Perhaps some of you have already passed through
 this experience and have some materials readily available? If so,
 please post them here.

There is already much material at http://wiki.lyx.org. Maybe a review
and re-organization might improve its impact factor.

Günter

Re: LyX Promotion

[stefano franchi]

 On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 5:20 PM, Steve Litt sl...@troubleshooters.com
 wrote:

 If I were going to enumerate the good things about
 LyX, it would be something like this:

 * It typesets better and more consistently than its non-TeX based
 competitors.
 * It deletes unintentional double spaces and double newlines.
 * It always calculates references, TOC and indices correctly, unlike
 others.
 * The black on tan is readable and soothing to the eyes for long workdays.
 * Its simple native format invites programmatic document creation and
 editing.
 * It's free software, which protects your documents from vendor lock-in.
 * It's an incredibly fast authoring environment.

I completely agree with Steve's points about LyX. In particular, I
think he is right in pointing out that pure LyX/LaTeX will almost
never produce a final production quality output. And by production
quality I mean a document typeset to the typographical standards used
and enforced by good publishing houses. LaTeX will almost get you
there---let's say 90% of the way---while Word/OO do not even try. But
that final 10% requires manual intervention and exact much more pain
than you'll ever encounter in Word/OO or other standard word
processors. I say this from my very recent experience as the co-editor
a 400+ book done with LyX and typeset to publisher's specs.

There are many reasons for this fact. One is font handling, which is
very poor in LaTeX. Things are getting better with LuaTeX/fonttspec,
but the process is still far from straightforward. A second problem is
page breaks, which is certainly not one of LaTeX's strengths out of
the box. Not only page breaks need to be manually adjusted in the
final draft, getting correct grid-like layout with properly balanced
odd and even page is incredibly difficult, in my experience. A recent
article in TugBoat went into some details on this issue, and the
discussion continued on comp.text.tex. I don't know enough TeX to
really use the experimental algorithms that were proposed both in the
article and in the group, and my sense of the current state of the art
is that a better page-handling algorithm will have to wait for a
LuaTeX-based solution. There are other issues as well, some of which
Steve mentioned. And I am not even getting into the academia-only
problems of correctly typesetting  bibliography styles and index
layouts.

In short: LyX should not be promoted as the tool that gets you
camera-ready production-quality pdf files out of the box. It
won't. It will producenear-production-quality pdf that will need
quite a bit of tweaking and will require specialized skills in order
to be perfect. Out of the box, LyX will produce better looking
documents  than your average word processor. In my experience, though,
most Word users do not really care, because what they get from their
word processor is good enough. In a sense, they are right: for
informal communication, a document typeset by Word is often
sufficient. And for formal communication, well, the professionals who
work for publishing houses and/or service bureaus  will take your Word
document and produce a professionally  typeset document with tools
like InDesign, Quark Xpress, etcetera.

(As some have pointed out, this situation may change as personally
produced e-books become a mass phenomenon. In my opinion, though, we
are not even close to that.)

On the other hand, LyX should be promoted, I think, as a more
productive environment. To put it crudely: LyX/LaTeX's weakness
(finessing formats is a royal pain) turns into a strength: you know
you do not want to mess with the format because it is a pain.
Therefore you focus on the content only. Thi sis obviously true for
long, complex documents, as many have pointed out. But it is also true
for shorter documents. I routinely write everything except letters in
LyX, from memos to lecture notes, to notes to myself. to articles,
etc. I am much more productive than I have ever been (and I have used
every single version of MS Word from 1.0/DOS forward, plus various
assorted alternatives).


As for Word/OO--LyX interoperability, that seems a chimera. How can
LyX ever be interoperable with Word, when even the LaTeX/LyX roundtrip
will not get you back the document you started from? It seems to me
that a more reasonable goal would be to have a Word-output function
that strips all formatting except the semantically relevant items
(emphasis, etc) and produce a clean Word file ready to be imported
into a typesetting program or to be sent to Word-only people. The
XHTML output filter in LyX 2.0 is almost there, I think.


The biggest hurdle to LyX's acceptance, I think, is that it is almost
impossible to cooperate with people not using it. Writing an article,
or a memo, or a report, grant application, with Word users is not
possible unless the LyX user takes the responsibility of maintaining a
LyX master file and inputting corrections and edits from pdf
annotations, manual edits on hard copys, word snippets, 

Re: tutorials / slides for seminars or workshops (was: 'Re: LyX Promotion')

[Ronen Abravanel]

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 11:49 PM, Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.comwrote:

 On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 10:23 PM, Ronen Abravanel ron...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  How long should it be? A year ago I had one hour workshop on LyX in my
 
 I highly doubt that it would exceed an hour.


  department, and I started with very short into on LaTeX and in what
 scene
  LyX is different from word, and then about 40 minutes of demonstration
 of
  what can I do and how can I do that.
 
  If there is nothing better, I can translate my tutorial to English (few
 
 What is the original language of the tutorial? Maybe I could digest it
 myself.

 Hebrew.


  beamer-slides, and 3 pages of do that in order to achieve this...
 list...
 
 This is a nice idea for a tutorial, too.
 Liviu



  Ronen
 
  On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 6:38 PM, Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.com
  wrote:
 
  Dear all
  I think this is a very good idea.
 
 
  On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us
 wrote:
   4.) It seems that there are people willing to help promote/evangelize
   LyX, but I'm not sure we offer much in the way of promotional
 materials to
   help. Would it be worthwhile to create a limited number of tutorials
 for
   people, like Venom, who will be holding seminars or workshops? (I've
 also
   thought about teaching a design workshop through my local library, and
 these
   materials would help provide a curriculum.)
  
  I will be holding a workshop on LyX to graduate types at my university
  and I'm not very sure where from to begin. Some ready materials
  (slides on the advantages of LyX/LaTeX over MS Word and the hord, step
  by step tutorials for creating your first document in LyX, using
  bibliography and fancier features) would be of enormous help.
 
  At the moment I plan to start with the 'Help  Documentation' in
  preparing my tutorial. Perhaps some of you have already passed through
  this experience and have some materials readily available? If so,
  please post them here.
 
  Regards
  Liviu
 
 



 --
 Do you know how to read?
 http://www.alienetworks.com/srtest.cfm
 http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfce4-dict#speed-reader
 Do you know how to write?
 http://garbl.home.comcast.net/~garbl/stylemanual/e.htm#e-mail

Re: tutorials / slides for seminars or workshops (was: 'Re: LyX Promotion')

[Liviu Andronic]

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 7:45 PM, Ronen Abravanel ron...@gmail.com wrote:
  department, and I started with very short into on LaTeX and in what
  scene
  LyX is different from word, and then about 40 minutes of demonstration
  of
  what can I do and how can I do that.
 
  If there is nothing better, I can translate my tutorial to English (few
 
 What is the original language of the tutorial? Maybe I could digest it
 myself.

 Hebrew.

Oh, I haven't gotten to Hebrew yet. :) If you have time and it's not
much bother, I would indeed much appreciate a starting point for my
workshop. Please let me know.

Cheers
Liviu

Re: LyX Promotion

[John Kane]

--- On Wed, 3/23/11, Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.com wrote:

 From: Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.com
 Subject: Re: LyX Promotion
 To: Graham Smith myotis...@gmail.com
 Cc: LyX Devel lyx-de...@lists.lyx.org, lyx-users@lists.lyx.org
 Received: Wednesday, March 23, 2011, 4:34 AM
 On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 9:12 AM,
 Graham Smith myotis...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  One possible approach is to write an introduction to
 Lyx specifically aimed
  at Word users.
 
 This makes a lot of sense to me. Most of all we probably
 need an
 introduction for those coming from the world of Word
 (highest
 priority) and, perhaps, one for those with a heavy LaTeX
 background.
 (For the latter, we might simply recycle the existing Help
  Tutorial
  LyX for LaTeX users, but give it much better
 visibility on the
 lyx.org home page.)
 
 If you give it some thought, the two are essentially the
 only ones
 that make sense, because there aren't really other types of
 newcomers:
 you are either already familiar with Word, or with LaTeX;
 else you
 wouldn't be looking at LyX in the first place.

Logic splitting here but I would be coming, well am,  from an SGML,OOo/AmiPro, 
FullWrite Professional background  and there still seem to be quite a few 
WordPerfect people still out there.  

Agreed that the majority of people are likely to be Word or Latex but not all,  
 

 
 Liviu
 
 
  This has been done for R at
  http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/learnr-toolkit/ where
 the tutorials assume
  familiarity with Excel and demonstrate how things
 differ (or are the same)
  in R. There have also been similar things done for the
 GIS program Manifold,
  comparing it against the Industry standard products
 from ESRI.
 
  I had a couple of aborted attempts with Lyx, because,
 as a Word User, I just
  couldn't get my head around certain concepts (the
 concept of compiling a
  document probably being the main one). I then
 eventually came back to Lyx
  via SWeave in R, which introduced me to Latex, and
 then Lyx fell into place
  and I realised it gave me an easy interface to Latex
 for every day
  documents.
 
  A Lyx equivilant of the R tutorials would have been a
 great help.
 
  Graham
 
 
 
  On 22 March 2011 15:51, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us
 wrote:
 
  Dear Users and Developers,
 
  Thank you to both Pavel and Stefano for ollowing
 up with Google about why
  the GSoC application was turned down. Is there any
 way that I could help in
  that review? Stefano, will you be attending the
 IRC meeting to be held later
  today? I think it's very important that we
 understand why LyX was rejected
  as a mentoring organization, and I'd be willing to
 hep in any way necessary.
 
  While I have some ideas about why it may have
 happened, I think that Pavel
  hit the nail on the head. When I talk to people
 about LyX, they seem to
  think of it as a specialized academic writing
 tool. Basically, a program
  which helps professors and students write a thesis
 or articles. (To be even
  more narrow, it seems like many think it is for
 math and physics people to
  write a thesis or article.) Which is to say, a
 specialized program with an
  incredibly small user base and use.
 
  While that stereotype may be somewhat true (I
 don't think anyone would
  argue that many of the developers and users are
 within academics), it
  significantly understates LyX's appeal, especially
 if you consider the
  enhancements available in the upcoming version.
 From my own personal
  experience, I've found LyX to be the most capable
 pre-press/writing tool
  I've ever come across. If I were a publishing
 company or involved in the
  creation of any type of documentation, I would be
 looking  at LyX very
  carefully. It's the only tool that I know that
 allows you to manage
  collaboration, typesetting the final output, and
 target both electronic and
  print from the same source. With the recent
 explosion of electronic
  publishing and eBooks, I think that makes it
 *highly* relevant.
 
  Yet, I'm not sure that the wider community
 appreciates that. (Hearing
  Google's rationale for rejecting the GSoC
 application will help somewhat in
  clarifying how LyX is perceived.) Which really
 brings me to the reason I'm
  writing.
 
  Would it be worth trying to promote LyX to people
 who might find it
  helpful?
 
  We've talked for a long time about writing a LyX
 book, which is an
  excellent and wonderful project. But what if we
 first tested those waters by
  tackling some smaller projects first?
 
  For example:
 
  1.) I just learned about a new open design
 magazine this morning, called
  LibreGraphics magazine (http://libregraphicsmag.com/). The goal of the
  publication is to help designers find tools for
 their work. It seems like an
  article about using LyX for book design would be a
 natural fit for their
  target audience.
 
  2.) In similar vein, the LibreGraphics meeting is
 also coming up. This
  year, it will be held in Montreal. LibreGraphics

Re: LyX Promotion

[Guenter Milde]

On 2011-03-23, John McCabe-Dansted wrote:
 On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 11:51 PM, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us wrote:

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

IMV, handling formal, complex documents and math typesetting are actually
LyX main strenghts.

...

 To the extent that the stereotype is true, it may also be worth
 considering what the reasons are for this, and if it is reasonable to
 remove those reasons. Off-the-top of my head the following could be
 issues.

 1) Compile Errors.
...
 1b) Perhaps we could improve the latex export so that compile errors
 only occur if the user uses ERT.

This is an ongoing task (as LaTeX evolves and there are far too many ways
to create a compile error that cannot be foreseen). However, my
experience is that LaTeX compile errors are already treated as bugs, so
no change in policy is needed. Also there is usually fast help (hints on
thw right way or workarounds) when compile errors are reported on the
users list (even faster if a minimal example is given).


 2) Compatibility with Word. Typical users expect to be able to open
 and save word documents.

...

 3) Not WYSIWYG.  
...

 After the content is complete, I go though a cycle of: Notice
 something weird with the line-breaking in the PDF, muck around with
 the LyX source hoping it fixed the problem; recompile PDF. This can
 take a while and having a WYSIWYG mode could make this process a
 factor of ten times faster.

Where do you expecte the speedup?

* Compiling a long, complex document can take considerable time.
  In WYSIWYG mode, this time would be needed with every edit action.
  
* A major speedup of the process is possible without WYSIWYG mode:

  The keyword is inverse search: clicking in the PDF viewer brings you
  to the right spot in the source. Getting this to work out of the box
  seems a worthwile task.
  
Günter

Re: LyX Promotion

[Steve Litt]

On Wednesday 23 March 2011 09:54:29 you wrote:

 As for Word/OO--LyX interoperability, that seems a chimera. How can
 LyX ever be interoperable with Word, when even the LaTeX/LyX roundtrip
 will not get you back the document you started from? It seems to me
 that a more reasonable goal would be to have a Word-output function
 that strips all formatting except the semantically relevant items
 (emphasis, etc) and produce a clean Word file ready to be imported
 into a typesetting program or to be sent to Word-only people. 

Even better, in addition to exporting emphasis and noun, have it export the 
named but empty styles (environments and character styles) used in the doc, so 
the word doc has the styles and the text marked up with those styles. Then all 
that remains is to go in and modify those styles in MSWord or OOffice to 
produce the desired look. After all, modifying a style in Word is five 
minutes, not five hours.

This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...

Thanks

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt

Re: LyX Promotion

[Rich Shepard]

On Wed, 23 Mar 2011, John Kane wrote:


Logic splitting here but I would be coming, well am,  from an
SGML,OOo/AmiPro, FullWrite Professional background and there still seem to
be quite a few WordPerfect people still out there.

Agreed that the majority of people are likely to be Word or Latex but not
all,


  I'll throw in my opinion, too. It's free and well worth the price. About
15 years ago we had this same discussion about linux: how do we get more
people to defenestrate and adopt linux or the *BSDs. The consensus settled
down to: don't do anything. Those who want to work in a better, more secure
computing environment will do so. Those who want to
point-and-click/drag-and-drool, and not learn how to type at a CLI are not
candidates for the unices. And Microsoft is welcome to support them.

  It's the same with LyX/LaTeX. Not everyone cares about typeset output (but
put a page from OO.o Writer next to the same text from TeX and everyone can
see the difference), and not everyone wants to understand what's going on
underneath the hood. To use LyX you need to know LaTeX. For most of us, too,
we accept that we're not expert typographers, page layout gurus, or document
structure experts. So we leave those to the professionals and we just
produce our documents while focusing on content (the substantive) and
ignoring the superficial. Yes, we sometimes need to change appearances, but
we can do this very easily with the KOMA-script and Memoir classes. However,
many in the Microsoft Word world just don't care. And, frankly, I don't want
them to switch unless they're willing to take the time to learn a different
paradigm and understand what is underneath what they do.

  On may other open source software mail lists I see the struggles of those
who want to run the applications on Windoze. They don't understand the need
to know the tool since all their experience is in using tools that are
totally opaque to them because they are proprietary.

  I had this discussion earlier today with a colleague who does forest
analytics and he was explaining how limiting SAS is compared to R, but folks
still resist change because it means learning something new.

  The LyX-using community keeps growing. New users will find it just like
the rest of us did.

Rich

Re: LyX Promotion

[Steve Litt]

On Tuesday 22 March 2011 23:27:45 David L. Johnson wrote:
 On 03/22/2011 10:58 PM, John McCabe-Dansted wrote:

  3) Not WYSIWYG.  Normal users clearly expect WYSIWYG. WYSIWYG and
  WYSIWYM don't need to be mutually exclusive.
 
 They are to an extent, since WYSIWYG really means that all the document
 contains is what you see on the screen, without additional structure
 that properly formats it for a number of different export situations.

That's not true at all. OpenOffice, MSWord, Abiword and Kompozer are all 
WYSIWYG, and all of them can be used to write styles based content that gives 
structure to the document.

 
 Think about writing a document in word.  You spend time getting the
 spacing right, the margins to look right, and align all the bits of text
 by hand.  

That's not true at all. In 1999, before knowing about LyX, I wrote a 317 page 
styles based book in MS Word, and you'd better believe the spacing, margins 
and alignment were all governed by styles and not by one-off formatting.

I think the LyX community does itself a grave disservice emphasizing this 
WYSIWYG vs WYSIWYM thing. If I were going to enumerate the good things about 
LyX, it would be something like this:

* It typesets better and more consistently than its non-TeX based competitors.
* It deletes unintentional double spaces and double newlines.
* It always calculates references, TOC and indices correctly, unlike others.
* The black on tan is readable and soothing to the eyes for long workdays.
* Its simple native format invites programmatic document creation and editing.
* It's free software, which protects your documents from vendor lock-in.
* It's an incredibly fast authoring environment.

 
 Ignoring the difficulty
 
  in implementing for a while, having a WYSIWYG mode would be great.
  After the content is complete, I go though a cycle of: Notice
  something weird with the line-breaking in the PDF, muck around with
  the LyX source hoping it fixed the problem;
 
 No.  TeX handles all that, don't ask users to spend effort in dealing
 with how lines break.  Write the paper, let TeX format it.  I would not
 want to worry about how it looks on the page while writing, that is a
 bad habit that you can avoid with LyX.

I have to disagree again. If there's something weird with the line-breaking 
in the PDF, then it will make the reader uncomfortable, and you can't just say 
Let TeX handle it, because apparently it didn't, and the reader must be 
comfortable. Long words, URLs, monospaced type are just a few of the things 
that make funny line breaks in default-formatted LyX docs. And by funny line 
breaks I mean lines walking right off the page, which is a fatal error as far 
as the reader's concerned. Most such problems can be handled by \sloppy, but 
unless you want the whole doc sloppy, you must do that on a paragraph by 
paragraph basis.

When I began using LyX in 2001 and complained about the prodigious difficulty 
of making your own paragraph styles, some people told me just use the 
defaults. Scuse me? LyX didn't provide a Warning style, and my readers needed 
one. It didn't provide a Story style, and my readers needed one. Saying to 
just use the defaults is a lot like telling a programmer to use standard 
cooked input on a keyboard driven menu system. Sure, it's easier for the 
programmer, but the user has to hit double the keystrokes, and he'll hate the 
end product.

I wrote an article about some of this ten years ago:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/bestandworst.htm

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt

Re: LyX Promotion

[Rainer M Krug]

 1) Compile Errors. Normal users aren't used to dealing with compile
 errors and shouldn't be expected to fix them. Even I don't like
 dealing with compile errors all that much.
 1a) Perhaps we could do some sort of bisect to determine where the
 error is (either over the file itself or some fine-grained history).
 1b) Perhaps we could improve the latex export so that compile errors
 only occur if the user uses ERT. Particularly with beamer, this isn't
 always the case.

This is an important point, and one should evaluate if it is feasible
to go further into 'asking' LaTeX wheere the error is - it would
definitley help the users to provide a better understandable error
message *if* something fails.

ERT are a different issue - if you are using ERTs, you should know
what you are doing and out of the responsibility zone of LyX.

But beamer should be refined.


 2) Compatibility with Word. Typical users expect to be able to open
 and save word documents.

What I would expect / not expect from a word document which is
exported from LyX is:

1) Have all the content (normally this is the case)

2) Not look like a LaTeX document - I want to use it to collaborate
with word users, so the actual layout (margins, ...) are irrelevant
for me. Sections should be using the style for header 1, subsections
header 2, ... SO that it *looks* MsWordish and easy for the word user
(which is not the case when it looks as a document created by LaTeX  -
start with the margins which look horrible in word but are brilliant
in the final pdf). This refers to paragraph styles - but character
styles should be exported as they are. So a mapping would be usefull:
Section - header 1 , ...

2a) I understand that one wants to have sometime the possibility to
export the LaTeX generated document - but that is a different story.

3) Contain the track changes from LyX

4) Contain the comments

To go from there, I would expect that, when importing the word
document I get back from my collaborators with track changes and
comments, that

1) Track changes are imported
2) Comments are imported
3) Paragraph styles are ignored, apart from the mapped default
styles (header 1- Section)

My reasoning is, that in most cases, an export is NOT done to see the
final layout (for this I usually attach a pdf as well), but for
editorial comments.

Cheers,

Rainer



 --
 John C. McCabe-Dansted




-- 
NEW GERMAN FAX NUMBER!!!

Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation
Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)

Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology
Natural Sciences Building
Office Suite 2039
Stellenbosch University
Main Campus, Merriman Avenue
Stellenbosch
South Africa

Cell:           +27 - (0)83 9479 042
Fax:            +27 - (0)86 516 2782
Fax:            +49 - (0)321 2125 2244
email:          rai...@krugs.de

Skype:          RMkrug
Google:         r.m.k...@gmail.com

Re: LyX Promotion

[Graham Smith]

One possible approach is to write an introduction to Lyx specifically aimed
at Word users.

This has been done for R at
http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/learnr-toolkit/ where the tutorials assume
familiarity with Excel and demonstrate how things differ (or are the same)
in R. There have also been similar things done for the GIS program Manifold,
comparing it against the Industry standard products from ESRI.

I had a couple of aborted attempts with Lyx, because, as a Word User, I just
couldn't get my head around certain concepts (the concept of compiling a
document probably being the main one). I then eventually came back to Lyx
via SWeave in R, which introduced me to Latex, and then Lyx fell into place
and I realised it gave me an easy interface to Latex for every day
documents.

A Lyx equivilant of the R tutorials would have been a great help.

Graham



On 22 March 2011 15:51, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us wrote:

 Dear Users and Developers,

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

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

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

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

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

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

 For example:

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

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

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

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

 The tutorials could address some of the finer points of using LyX that are
 not covered in the manuals. For example, how do you collaborate using
 version control? What is the process for creating custom, typeset
 publications with LyX and LaTeX? We could publish cohesive examples and then
 walk through how the code works. They might describe 

Re: LyX Promotion

[Rainer M Krug]

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 9:12 AM, Graham Smith myotis...@gmail.com wrote:
 One possible approach is to write an introduction to Lyx specifically aimed
 at Word users.

 This has been done for R at
 http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/learnr-toolkit/ where the tutorials assume
 familiarity with Excel and demonstrate how things differ (or are the same)
 in R. There have also been similar things done for the GIS program Manifold,
 comparing it against the Industry standard products from ESRI.

 I had a couple of aborted attempts with Lyx, because, as a Word User, I just
 couldn't get my head around certain concepts (the concept of compiling a
 document probably being the main one). I then eventually came back to Lyx
 via SWeave in R, which introduced me to Latex, and then Lyx fell into place
 and I realised it gave me an easy interface to Latex for every day
 documents.

 A Lyx equivilant of the R tutorials would have been a great help.

I completely agree and this would be a very usefull document - but the
issue is not to provide an easy transition from Word to LyX, but to
enable an easy co-operation with Word or OO / LibreOffice users, in
the sense that:

Main Document in LyX - export to doc / odt (including comments and
track changes) - comment from Word users in document - import into
LyX - editiong in LyX - export to doc / odt (including comments and
track changes) - ... - Finl editing in LyX

So the Word user would not be confronted with LyX.

But I think that this should be a separate topic.

Cheers,

Rainer


 Graham



 On 22 March 2011 15:51, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us wrote:

 Dear Users and Developers,

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

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

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

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

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

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

 For example:

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

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

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

 4.) It seems that there are people willing to help promote/evangelize LyX,
 but I'm not sure we 

Re: LyX Promotion

[Liviu Andronic]

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 9:12 AM, Graham Smith myotis...@gmail.com wrote:
 One possible approach is to write an introduction to Lyx specifically aimed
 at Word users.

This makes a lot of sense to me. Most of all we probably need an
introduction for those coming from the world of Word (highest
priority) and, perhaps, one for those with a heavy LaTeX background.
(For the latter, we might simply recycle the existing Help  Tutorial
 LyX for LaTeX users, but give it much better visibility on the
lyx.org home page.)

If you give it some thought, the two are essentially the only ones
that make sense, because there aren't really other types of newcomers:
you are either already familiar with Word, or with LaTeX; else you
wouldn't be looking at LyX in the first place.

Liviu


 This has been done for R at
 http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/learnr-toolkit/ where the tutorials assume
 familiarity with Excel and demonstrate how things differ (or are the same)
 in R. There have also been similar things done for the GIS program Manifold,
 comparing it against the Industry standard products from ESRI.

 I had a couple of aborted attempts with Lyx, because, as a Word User, I just
 couldn't get my head around certain concepts (the concept of compiling a
 document probably being the main one). I then eventually came back to Lyx
 via SWeave in R, which introduced me to Latex, and then Lyx fell into place
 and I realised it gave me an easy interface to Latex for every day
 documents.

 A Lyx equivilant of the R tutorials would have been a great help.

 Graham



 On 22 March 2011 15:51, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us wrote:

 Dear Users and Developers,

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

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

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

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

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

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

 For example:

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

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

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

 4.) It seems that there are people willing to help promote/evangelize LyX,
 

Re: LyX Promotion

[Graham Smith]

Rainer,

I completely agree and this would be a very usefull document - but the
 issue is not to provide an easy transition from Word to LyX, but to
 enable an easy co-operation with Word or OO / LibreOffice users, in
 the sense that:


Ah OK, I obviously misunderstood the basis of the thread, I thought it was
to broaden the appeal/user base beyond the perceived Academic one (but I use
it in consultancy).

Graham

Re: LyX Promotion

[george legge]

Steve, I like your list of good things about LyX;
but you have omitted what to me is the most significant:

Try using Word to compile a  long book with many illustrations, often with 3
graphics to a page.
Word has a shocking reputation for using a master document with many child
documents,
particularly one with many graphics. There are many warnings that Word will
crash and corrupt files.

So be it - I used OpenOffice. Result: as the book got longer, the OpenOffice
master crashed frequently.
Every time a child document was added or modified, the master document took
up to half an hour to update and was likely to crash in the process.
At least OpenOffice never corrupted the files; but it became impractical to
complete assembly of the book.

I carried the same files over to LyX, converting each child document.
Result: LyX has not crashed once and it assembles or updates the master
document into a pdf, with all the graphics inserted in less than 30 seconds.

I may have to negotiate with LyX on where I wish to place an image or what
ERT is needed.
But the worse that might happen is I get an error message.
All through the operations, LyX remains rock steady.

For long complex documents, LyX is the practical solution.

Cheers, George Legge



On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 5:20 PM, Steve Litt sl...@troubleshooters.comwrote:

 If I were going to enumerate the good things about
 LyX, it would be something like this:

 * It typesets better and more consistently than its non-TeX based
 competitors.
 * It deletes unintentional double spaces and double newlines.
 * It always calculates references, TOC and indices correctly, unlike
 others.
 * The black on tan is readable and soothing to the eyes for long workdays.
 * Its simple native format invites programmatic document creation and
 editing.
 * It's free software, which protects your documents from vendor lock-in.
 * It's an incredibly fast authoring environment.

Re: tutorials / slides for seminars or workshops (was: 'Re: LyX Promotion')

[Guenter Milde]

On 2011-03-22, Liviu Andronic wrote:
 On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us wrote:

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

 I will be holding a workshop on LyX to graduate types at my university
 and I'm not very sure where from to begin. Some ready materials
 (slides on the advantages of LyX/LaTeX over MS Word and the hord, step
 by step tutorials for creating your first document in LyX, using
 bibliography and fancier features) would be of enormous help.

 At the moment I plan to start with the 'Help  Documentation' in
 preparing my tutorial. Perhaps some of you have already passed through
 this experience and have some materials readily available? If so,
 please post them here.

There is already much material at http://wiki.lyx.org. Maybe a review
and re-organization might improve its impact factor.

Günter

Re: LyX Promotion

[stefano franchi]

 On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 5:20 PM, Steve Litt sl...@troubleshooters.com
 wrote:

 If I were going to enumerate the good things about
 LyX, it would be something like this:

 * It typesets better and more consistently than its non-TeX based
 competitors.
 * It deletes unintentional double spaces and double newlines.
 * It always calculates references, TOC and indices correctly, unlike
 others.
 * The black on tan is readable and soothing to the eyes for long workdays.
 * Its simple native format invites programmatic document creation and
 editing.
 * It's free software, which protects your documents from vendor lock-in.
 * It's an incredibly fast authoring environment.

I completely agree with Steve's points about LyX. In particular, I
think he is right in pointing out that pure LyX/LaTeX will almost
never produce a final production quality output. And by production
quality I mean a document typeset to the typographical standards used
and enforced by good publishing houses. LaTeX will almost get you
there---let's say 90% of the way---while Word/OO do not even try. But
that final 10% requires manual intervention and exact much more pain
than you'll ever encounter in Word/OO or other standard word
processors. I say this from my very recent experience as the co-editor
a 400+ book done with LyX and typeset to publisher's specs.

There are many reasons for this fact. One is font handling, which is
very poor in LaTeX. Things are getting better with LuaTeX/fonttspec,
but the process is still far from straightforward. A second problem is
page breaks, which is certainly not one of LaTeX's strengths out of
the box. Not only page breaks need to be manually adjusted in the
final draft, getting correct grid-like layout with properly balanced
odd and even page is incredibly difficult, in my experience. A recent
article in TugBoat went into some details on this issue, and the
discussion continued on comp.text.tex. I don't know enough TeX to
really use the experimental algorithms that were proposed both in the
article and in the group, and my sense of the current state of the art
is that a better page-handling algorithm will have to wait for a
LuaTeX-based solution. There are other issues as well, some of which
Steve mentioned. And I am not even getting into the academia-only
problems of correctly typesetting  bibliography styles and index
layouts.

In short: LyX should not be promoted as the tool that gets you
camera-ready production-quality pdf files out of the box. It
won't. It will producenear-production-quality pdf that will need
quite a bit of tweaking and will require specialized skills in order
to be perfect. Out of the box, LyX will produce better looking
documents  than your average word processor. In my experience, though,
most Word users do not really care, because what they get from their
word processor is good enough. In a sense, they are right: for
informal communication, a document typeset by Word is often
sufficient. And for formal communication, well, the professionals who
work for publishing houses and/or service bureaus  will take your Word
document and produce a professionally  typeset document with tools
like InDesign, Quark Xpress, etcetera.

(As some have pointed out, this situation may change as personally
produced e-books become a mass phenomenon. In my opinion, though, we
are not even close to that.)

On the other hand, LyX should be promoted, I think, as a more
productive environment. To put it crudely: LyX/LaTeX's weakness
(finessing formats is a royal pain) turns into a strength: you know
you do not want to mess with the format because it is a pain.
Therefore you focus on the content only. Thi sis obviously true for
long, complex documents, as many have pointed out. But it is also true
for shorter documents. I routinely write everything except letters in
LyX, from memos to lecture notes, to notes to myself. to articles,
etc. I am much more productive than I have ever been (and I have used
every single version of MS Word from 1.0/DOS forward, plus various
assorted alternatives).


As for Word/OO--LyX interoperability, that seems a chimera. How can
LyX ever be interoperable with Word, when even the LaTeX/LyX roundtrip
will not get you back the document you started from? It seems to me
that a more reasonable goal would be to have a Word-output function
that strips all formatting except the semantically relevant items
(emphasis, etc) and produce a clean Word file ready to be imported
into a typesetting program or to be sent to Word-only people. The
XHTML output filter in LyX 2.0 is almost there, I think.


The biggest hurdle to LyX's acceptance, I think, is that it is almost
impossible to cooperate with people not using it. Writing an article,
or a memo, or a report, grant application, with Word users is not
possible unless the LyX user takes the responsibility of maintaining a
LyX master file and inputting corrections and edits from pdf
annotations, manual edits on hard copys, word snippets, 

Re: tutorials / slides for seminars or workshops (was: 'Re: LyX Promotion')

[Ronen Abravanel]

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 11:49 PM, Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.comwrote:

 On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 10:23 PM, Ronen Abravanel ron...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  How long should it be? A year ago I had one hour workshop on LyX in my
 
 I highly doubt that it would exceed an hour.


  department, and I started with very short into on LaTeX and in what
 scene
  LyX is different from word, and then about 40 minutes of demonstration
 of
  what can I do and how can I do that.
 
  If there is nothing better, I can translate my tutorial to English (few
 
 What is the original language of the tutorial? Maybe I could digest it
 myself.

 Hebrew.


  beamer-slides, and 3 pages of do that in order to achieve this...
 list...
 
 This is a nice idea for a tutorial, too.
 Liviu



  Ronen
 
  On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 6:38 PM, Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.com
  wrote:
 
  Dear all
  I think this is a very good idea.
 
 
  On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us
 wrote:
   4.) It seems that there are people willing to help promote/evangelize
   LyX, but I'm not sure we offer much in the way of promotional
 materials to
   help. Would it be worthwhile to create a limited number of tutorials
 for
   people, like Venom, who will be holding seminars or workshops? (I've
 also
   thought about teaching a design workshop through my local library, and
 these
   materials would help provide a curriculum.)
  
  I will be holding a workshop on LyX to graduate types at my university
  and I'm not very sure where from to begin. Some ready materials
  (slides on the advantages of LyX/LaTeX over MS Word and the hord, step
  by step tutorials for creating your first document in LyX, using
  bibliography and fancier features) would be of enormous help.
 
  At the moment I plan to start with the 'Help  Documentation' in
  preparing my tutorial. Perhaps some of you have already passed through
  this experience and have some materials readily available? If so,
  please post them here.
 
  Regards
  Liviu
 
 



 --
 Do you know how to read?
 http://www.alienetworks.com/srtest.cfm
 http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfce4-dict#speed-reader
 Do you know how to write?
 http://garbl.home.comcast.net/~garbl/stylemanual/e.htm#e-mail

Re: tutorials / slides for seminars or workshops (was: 'Re: LyX Promotion')

[Liviu Andronic]

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 7:45 PM, Ronen Abravanel ron...@gmail.com wrote:
  department, and I started with very short into on LaTeX and in what
  scene
  LyX is different from word, and then about 40 minutes of demonstration
  of
  what can I do and how can I do that.
 
  If there is nothing better, I can translate my tutorial to English (few
 
 What is the original language of the tutorial? Maybe I could digest it
 myself.

 Hebrew.

Oh, I haven't gotten to Hebrew yet. :) If you have time and it's not
much bother, I would indeed much appreciate a starting point for my
workshop. Please let me know.

Cheers
Liviu

Re: LyX Promotion

[John Kane]

--- On Wed, 3/23/11, Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.com wrote:

 From: Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.com
 Subject: Re: LyX Promotion
 To: Graham Smith myotis...@gmail.com
 Cc: LyX Devel lyx-de...@lists.lyx.org, lyx-users@lists.lyx.org
 Received: Wednesday, March 23, 2011, 4:34 AM
 On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 9:12 AM,
 Graham Smith myotis...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  One possible approach is to write an introduction to
 Lyx specifically aimed
  at Word users.
 
 This makes a lot of sense to me. Most of all we probably
 need an
 introduction for those coming from the world of Word
 (highest
 priority) and, perhaps, one for those with a heavy LaTeX
 background.
 (For the latter, we might simply recycle the existing Help
  Tutorial
  LyX for LaTeX users, but give it much better
 visibility on the
 lyx.org home page.)
 
 If you give it some thought, the two are essentially the
 only ones
 that make sense, because there aren't really other types of
 newcomers:
 you are either already familiar with Word, or with LaTeX;
 else you
 wouldn't be looking at LyX in the first place.

Logic splitting here but I would be coming, well am,  from an SGML,OOo/AmiPro, 
FullWrite Professional background  and there still seem to be quite a few 
WordPerfect people still out there.  

Agreed that the majority of people are likely to be Word or Latex but not all,  
 

 
 Liviu
 
 
  This has been done for R at
  http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/learnr-toolkit/ where
 the tutorials assume
  familiarity with Excel and demonstrate how things
 differ (or are the same)
  in R. There have also been similar things done for the
 GIS program Manifold,
  comparing it against the Industry standard products
 from ESRI.
 
  I had a couple of aborted attempts with Lyx, because,
 as a Word User, I just
  couldn't get my head around certain concepts (the
 concept of compiling a
  document probably being the main one). I then
 eventually came back to Lyx
  via SWeave in R, which introduced me to Latex, and
 then Lyx fell into place
  and I realised it gave me an easy interface to Latex
 for every day
  documents.
 
  A Lyx equivilant of the R tutorials would have been a
 great help.
 
  Graham
 
 
 
  On 22 March 2011 15:51, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us
 wrote:
 
  Dear Users and Developers,
 
  Thank you to both Pavel and Stefano for ollowing
 up with Google about why
  the GSoC application was turned down. Is there any
 way that I could help in
  that review? Stefano, will you be attending the
 IRC meeting to be held later
  today? I think it's very important that we
 understand why LyX was rejected
  as a mentoring organization, and I'd be willing to
 hep in any way necessary.
 
  While I have some ideas about why it may have
 happened, I think that Pavel
  hit the nail on the head. When I talk to people
 about LyX, they seem to
  think of it as a specialized academic writing
 tool. Basically, a program
  which helps professors and students write a thesis
 or articles. (To be even
  more narrow, it seems like many think it is for
 math and physics people to
  write a thesis or article.) Which is to say, a
 specialized program with an
  incredibly small user base and use.
 
  While that stereotype may be somewhat true (I
 don't think anyone would
  argue that many of the developers and users are
 within academics), it
  significantly understates LyX's appeal, especially
 if you consider the
  enhancements available in the upcoming version.
 From my own personal
  experience, I've found LyX to be the most capable
 pre-press/writing tool
  I've ever come across. If I were a publishing
 company or involved in the
  creation of any type of documentation, I would be
 looking  at LyX very
  carefully. It's the only tool that I know that
 allows you to manage
  collaboration, typesetting the final output, and
 target both electronic and
  print from the same source. With the recent
 explosion of electronic
  publishing and eBooks, I think that makes it
 *highly* relevant.
 
  Yet, I'm not sure that the wider community
 appreciates that. (Hearing
  Google's rationale for rejecting the GSoC
 application will help somewhat in
  clarifying how LyX is perceived.) Which really
 brings me to the reason I'm
  writing.
 
  Would it be worth trying to promote LyX to people
 who might find it
  helpful?
 
  We've talked for a long time about writing a LyX
 book, which is an
  excellent and wonderful project. But what if we
 first tested those waters by
  tackling some smaller projects first?
 
  For example:
 
  1.) I just learned about a new open design
 magazine this morning, called
  LibreGraphics magazine (http://libregraphicsmag.com/). The goal of the
  publication is to help designers find tools for
 their work. It seems like an
  article about using LyX for book design would be a
 natural fit for their
  target audience.
 
  2.) In similar vein, the LibreGraphics meeting is
 also coming up. This
  year, it will be held in Montreal. LibreGraphics

Re: LyX Promotion

[Guenter Milde]

On 2011-03-23, John McCabe-Dansted wrote:
 On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 11:51 PM, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us wrote:

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

IMV, handling formal, complex documents and math typesetting are actually
LyX main strenghts.

...

 To the extent that the stereotype is true, it may also be worth
 considering what the reasons are for this, and if it is reasonable to
 remove those reasons. Off-the-top of my head the following could be
 issues.

 1) Compile Errors.
...
 1b) Perhaps we could improve the latex export so that compile errors
 only occur if the user uses ERT.

This is an ongoing task (as LaTeX evolves and there are far too many ways
to create a compile error that cannot be foreseen). However, my
experience is that LaTeX compile errors are already treated as bugs, so
no change in policy is needed. Also there is usually fast help (hints on
thw right way or workarounds) when compile errors are reported on the
users list (even faster if a minimal example is given).


 2) Compatibility with Word. Typical users expect to be able to open
 and save word documents.

...

 3) Not WYSIWYG.  
...

 After the content is complete, I go though a cycle of: Notice
 something weird with the line-breaking in the PDF, muck around with
 the LyX source hoping it fixed the problem; recompile PDF. This can
 take a while and having a WYSIWYG mode could make this process a
 factor of ten times faster.

Where do you expecte the speedup?

* Compiling a long, complex document can take considerable time.
  In WYSIWYG mode, this time would be needed with every edit action.
  
* A major speedup of the process is possible without WYSIWYG mode:

  The keyword is inverse search: clicking in the PDF viewer brings you
  to the right spot in the source. Getting this to work out of the box
  seems a worthwile task.
  
Günter

Re: LyX Promotion

[Steve Litt]

On Wednesday 23 March 2011 09:54:29 you wrote:

 As for Word/OO--LyX interoperability, that seems a chimera. How can
 LyX ever be interoperable with Word, when even the LaTeX/LyX roundtrip
 will not get you back the document you started from? It seems to me
 that a more reasonable goal would be to have a Word-output function
 that strips all formatting except the semantically relevant items
 (emphasis, etc) and produce a clean Word file ready to be imported
 into a typesetting program or to be sent to Word-only people. 

Even better, in addition to exporting emphasis and noun, have it export the 
named but empty styles (environments and character styles) used in the doc, so 
the word doc has the styles and the text marked up with those styles. Then all 
that remains is to go in and modify those styles in MSWord or OOffice to 
produce the desired look. After all, modifying a style in Word is five 
minutes, not five hours.

This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...

Thanks

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt

Re: LyX Promotion

[Rich Shepard]

On Wed, 23 Mar 2011, John Kane wrote:


Logic splitting here but I would be coming, well am,  from an
SGML,OOo/AmiPro, FullWrite Professional background and there still seem to
be quite a few WordPerfect people still out there.

Agreed that the majority of people are likely to be Word or Latex but not
all,


  I'll throw in my opinion, too. It's free and well worth the price. About
15 years ago we had this same discussion about linux: how do we get more
people to defenestrate and adopt linux or the *BSDs. The consensus settled
down to: don't do anything. Those who want to work in a better, more secure
computing environment will do so. Those who want to
point-and-click/drag-and-drool, and not learn how to type at a CLI are not
candidates for the unices. And Microsoft is welcome to support them.

  It's the same with LyX/LaTeX. Not everyone cares about typeset output (but
put a page from OO.o Writer next to the same text from TeX and everyone can
see the difference), and not everyone wants to understand what's going on
underneath the hood. To use LyX you need to know LaTeX. For most of us, too,
we accept that we're not expert typographers, page layout gurus, or document
structure experts. So we leave those to the professionals and we just
produce our documents while focusing on content (the substantive) and
ignoring the superficial. Yes, we sometimes need to change appearances, but
we can do this very easily with the KOMA-script and Memoir classes. However,
many in the Microsoft Word world just don't care. And, frankly, I don't want
them to switch unless they're willing to take the time to learn a different
paradigm and understand what is underneath what they do.

  On may other open source software mail lists I see the struggles of those
who want to run the applications on Windoze. They don't understand the need
to know the tool since all their experience is in using tools that are
totally opaque to them because they are proprietary.

  I had this discussion earlier today with a colleague who does forest
analytics and he was explaining how limiting SAS is compared to R, but folks
still resist change because it means learning something new.

  The LyX-using community keeps growing. New users will find it just like
the rest of us did.

Rich

Re: LyX Promotion

[Steve Litt]

On Tuesday 22 March 2011 23:27:45 David L. Johnson wrote:
> On 03/22/2011 10:58 PM, John McCabe-Dansted wrote:

> > 3) Not WYSIWYG.  Normal users clearly expect WYSIWYG. WYSIWYG and
> > WYSIWYM don't need to be mutually exclusive.
> 
> They are to an extent, since WYSIWYG really means that all the document
> contains is what you see on the screen, without additional structure
> that properly formats it for a number of different export situations.

That's not true at all. OpenOffice, MSWord, Abiword and Kompozer are all 
WYSIWYG, and all of them can be used to write styles based content that gives 
structure to the document.

> 
> Think about writing a document in word.  You spend time getting the
> spacing right, the margins to look right, and align all the bits of text
> by hand.  

That's not true at all. In 1999, before knowing about LyX, I wrote a 317 page 
styles based book in MS Word, and you'd better believe the spacing, margins 
and alignment were all governed by styles and not by one-off formatting.

I think the LyX community does itself a grave disservice emphasizing this 
WYSIWYG vs WYSIWYM thing. If I were going to enumerate the good things about 
LyX, it would be something like this:

* It typesets better and more consistently than its non-TeX based competitors.
* It deletes unintentional double spaces and double newlines.
* It always calculates references, TOC and indices correctly, unlike others.
* The black on tan is readable and soothing to the eyes for long workdays.
* Its simple native format invites programmatic document creation and editing.
* It's free software, which protects your documents from vendor lock-in.
* It's an incredibly fast authoring environment.

> 
> Ignoring the difficulty
> 
> > in implementing for a while, having a WYSIWYG mode would be great.
> > After the content is complete, I go though a cycle of: Notice
> > something weird with the line-breaking in the PDF, muck around with
> > the LyX source hoping it fixed the problem;
> 
> No.  TeX handles all that, don't ask users to spend effort in dealing
> with how lines break.  Write the paper, let TeX format it.  I would not
> want to worry about how it looks on the page while writing, that is a
> bad habit that you can avoid with LyX.

I have to disagree again. If there's something "weird with the line-breaking" 
in the PDF, then it will make the reader uncomfortable, and you can't just say 
"Let TeX handle it", because apparently it didn't, and the reader must be 
comfortable. Long words, URLs, monospaced type are just a few of the things 
that make funny line breaks in default-formatted LyX docs. And by funny line 
breaks I mean lines walking right off the page, which is a fatal error as far 
as the reader's concerned. Most such problems can be handled by \sloppy, but 
unless you want the whole doc sloppy, you must do that on a paragraph by 
paragraph basis.

When I began using LyX in 2001 and complained about the prodigious difficulty 
of making your own paragraph styles, some people told me "just use the 
defaults." Scuse me? LyX didn't provide a Warning style, and my readers needed 
one. It didn't provide a Story style, and my readers needed one. Saying to 
just use the defaults is a lot like telling a programmer to use standard 
cooked input on a keyboard driven menu system. Sure, it's easier for the 
programmer, but the user has to hit double the keystrokes, and he'll hate the 
end product.

I wrote an article about some of this ten years ago:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/bestandworst.htm

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt

Re: LyX Promotion

[Rainer M Krug]

> 1) Compile Errors. Normal users aren't used to dealing with compile
> errors and shouldn't be expected to fix them. Even I don't like
> dealing with compile errors all that much.
> 1a) Perhaps we could do some sort of bisect to determine where the
> error is (either over the file itself or some fine-grained history).
> 1b) Perhaps we could improve the latex export so that compile errors
> only occur if the user uses ERT. Particularly with beamer, this isn't
> always the case.

This is an important point, and one should evaluate if it is feasible
to go further into 'asking' LaTeX wheere the error is - it would
definitley help the users to provide a better understandable error
message *if* something fails.

ERT are a different issue - if you are using ERTs, you should know
what you are doing and out of the responsibility zone of LyX.

But beamer should be refined.

>
> 2) Compatibility with Word. Typical users expect to be able to open
> and save word documents.

What I would expect / not expect from a word document which is
exported from LyX is:

1) Have all the content (normally this is the case)

2) Not look like a LaTeX document - I want to use it to collaborate
with word users, so the actual layout (margins, ...) are irrelevant
for me. Sections should be using the style for header 1, subsections
header 2, ... SO that it *looks* MsWordish and easy for the word user
(which is not the case when it looks as a document created by LaTeX  -
start with the margins which look horrible in word but are brilliant
in the final pdf). This refers to paragraph styles - but character
styles should be exported as they are. So a mapping would be usefull:
"Section -> header 1" , ...

2a) I understand that one wants to have sometime the possibility to
export the LaTeX generated document - but that is a different story.

3) Contain the track changes from LyX

4) Contain the comments

To go from there, I would expect that, when importing the word
document I get back from my collaborators with track changes and
comments, that

1) Track changes are imported
2) Comments are imported
3) Paragraph styles are ignored, apart from the "mapped" default
styles (header 1-> Section)

My reasoning is, that in most cases, an export is NOT done to see the
final layout (for this I usually attach a pdf as well), but for
editorial comments.

Cheers,

Rainer

>
>
> --
> John C. McCabe-Dansted
>



-- 
NEW GERMAN FAX NUMBER!!!

Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation
Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)

Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology
Natural Sciences Building
Office Suite 2039
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Main Campus, Merriman Avenue
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Skype:          RMkrug
Google:         r.m.k...@gmail.com

Re: LyX Promotion

[Graham Smith]

One possible approach is to write an introduction to Lyx specifically aimed
at Word users.

This has been done for R at
http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/learnr-toolkit/ where the tutorials assume
familiarity with Excel and demonstrate how things differ (or are the same)
in R. There have also been similar things done for the GIS program Manifold,
comparing it against the Industry standard products from ESRI.

I had a couple of aborted attempts with Lyx, because, as a Word User, I just
couldn't get my head around certain concepts (the concept of compiling a
document probably being the main one). I then eventually came back to Lyx
via SWeave in R, which introduced me to Latex, and then Lyx fell into place
and I realised it gave me an easy interface to Latex for every day
documents.

A Lyx equivilant of the R tutorials would have been a great help.

Graham



On 22 March 2011 15:51, Rob Oakes  wrote:

> Dear Users and Developers,
>
> Thank you to both Pavel and Stefano for ollowing up with Google about why
> the GSoC application was turned down. Is there any way that I could help in
> that review? Stefano, will you be attending the IRC meeting to be held later
> today? I think it's very important that we understand why LyX was rejected
> as a mentoring organization, and I'd be willing to hep in any way necessary.
>
> While I have some ideas about why it may have happened, I think that Pavel
> hit the nail on the head. When I talk to people about LyX, they seem to
> think of it as a specialized academic writing tool. Basically, a program
> which helps professors and students write a thesis or articles. (To be even
> more narrow, it seems like many think it is for math and physics people to
> write a thesis or article.) Which is to say, a specialized program with an
> incredibly small user base and use.
>
> While that stereotype may be somewhat true (I don't think anyone would
> argue that many of the developers and users are within academics), it
> significantly understates LyX's appeal, especially if you consider the
> enhancements available in the upcoming version. From my own personal
> experience, I've found LyX to be the most capable pre-press/writing tool
> I've ever come across. If I were a publishing company or involved in the
> creation of any type of documentation, I would be looking  at LyX very
> carefully. It's the only tool that I know that allows you to manage
> collaboration, typesetting the final output, and target both electronic and
> print from the same source. With the recent explosion of electronic
> publishing and eBooks, I think that makes it *highly* relevant.
>
> Yet, I'm not sure that the wider community appreciates that. (Hearing
> Google's rationale for rejecting the GSoC application will help somewhat in
> clarifying how LyX is perceived.) Which really brings me to the reason I'm
> writing.
>
> Would it be worth trying to promote LyX to people who might find it
> helpful?
>
> We've talked for a long time about writing a LyX book, which is an
> excellent and wonderful project. But what if we first tested those waters by
> tackling some smaller projects first?
>
> For example:
>
> 1.) I just learned about a new open design magazine this morning, called
> LibreGraphics magazine (http://libregraphicsmag.com/). The goal of the
> publication is to help designers find tools for their work. It seems like an
> article about using LyX for book design would be a natural fit for their
> target audience.
>
> 2.) In similar vein, the LibreGraphics meeting is also coming up. This
> year, it will be held in Montreal. LibreGraphics targets a similar
> demographic, and it seems like such a presentation would be a natural fit.
> Even better, they pay the travel expenses of presenters (
> http://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2011/). Might anyone be interested in
> talking about using LyX to talk about book design, typography, or writing?
>
> 3.) It's been some time since Linux magazine or one of the other trade
> publications published a general purpose article on LyX. Might it be worth
> creating and submitting one? We might try and target Linux users magazine (
> http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/), ZdNet, or one of the large Linux blogs (like
> OMG!Ubuntu, http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/).
>
> 4.) It seems that there are people willing to help promote/evangelize LyX,
> but I'm not sure we offer much in the way of promotional materials to help.
> Would it be worthwhile to create a limited number of tutorials for people,
> like Venom, who will be holding seminars or workshops? (I've also thought
> about teaching a design workshop through my local library, and these
> materials would help provide a curriculum.)
>
> The tutorials could address some of the finer points of using LyX that are
> not covered in the manuals. For example, how do you collaborate using
> version control? What is the process for creating custom, typeset
> publications with LyX and LaTeX? We could publish cohesive 

Re: LyX Promotion

[Rainer M Krug]

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 9:12 AM, Graham Smith  wrote:
> One possible approach is to write an introduction to Lyx specifically aimed
> at Word users.
>
> This has been done for R at
> http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/learnr-toolkit/ where the tutorials assume
> familiarity with Excel and demonstrate how things differ (or are the same)
> in R. There have also been similar things done for the GIS program Manifold,
> comparing it against the Industry standard products from ESRI.
>
> I had a couple of aborted attempts with Lyx, because, as a Word User, I just
> couldn't get my head around certain concepts (the concept of compiling a
> document probably being the main one). I then eventually came back to Lyx
> via SWeave in R, which introduced me to Latex, and then Lyx fell into place
> and I realised it gave me an easy interface to Latex for every day
> documents.
>
> A Lyx equivilant of the R tutorials would have been a great help.

I completely agree and this would be a very usefull document - but the
issue is not to provide an easy transition from Word to LyX, but to
enable an easy co-operation with Word or OO / LibreOffice users, in
the sense that:

Main Document in LyX -> export to doc / odt (including comments and
track changes) -> comment from Word users in document -> import into
LyX -> editiong in LyX -> export to doc / odt (including comments and
track changes) -> ... -> Finl editing in LyX

So the Word user would not be confronted with LyX.

But I think that this should be a separate topic.

Cheers,

Rainer

>
> Graham
>
>
>
> On 22 March 2011 15:51, Rob Oakes  wrote:
>>
>> Dear Users and Developers,
>>
>> Thank you to both Pavel and Stefano for ollowing up with Google about why
>> the GSoC application was turned down. Is there any way that I could help in
>> that review? Stefano, will you be attending the IRC meeting to be held later
>> today? I think it's very important that we understand why LyX was rejected
>> as a mentoring organization, and I'd be willing to hep in any way necessary.
>>
>> While I have some ideas about why it may have happened, I think that Pavel
>> hit the nail on the head. When I talk to people about LyX, they seem to
>> think of it as a specialized academic writing tool. Basically, a program
>> which helps professors and students write a thesis or articles. (To be even
>> more narrow, it seems like many think it is for math and physics people to
>> write a thesis or article.) Which is to say, a specialized program with an
>> incredibly small user base and use.
>>
>> While that stereotype may be somewhat true (I don't think anyone would
>> argue that many of the developers and users are within academics), it
>> significantly understates LyX's appeal, especially if you consider the
>> enhancements available in the upcoming version. From my own personal
>> experience, I've found LyX to be the most capable pre-press/writing tool
>> I've ever come across. If I were a publishing company or involved in the
>> creation of any type of documentation, I would be looking  at LyX very
>> carefully. It's the only tool that I know that allows you to manage
>> collaboration, typesetting the final output, and target both electronic and
>> print from the same source. With the recent explosion of electronic
>> publishing and eBooks, I think that makes it *highly* relevant.
>>
>> Yet, I'm not sure that the wider community appreciates that. (Hearing
>> Google's rationale for rejecting the GSoC application will help somewhat in
>> clarifying how LyX is perceived.) Which really brings me to the reason I'm
>> writing.
>>
>> Would it be worth trying to promote LyX to people who might find it
>> helpful?
>>
>> We've talked for a long time about writing a LyX book, which is an
>> excellent and wonderful project. But what if we first tested those waters by
>> tackling some smaller projects first?
>>
>> For example:
>>
>> 1.) I just learned about a new open design magazine this morning, called
>> LibreGraphics magazine (http://libregraphicsmag.com/). The goal of the
>> publication is to help designers find tools for their work. It seems like an
>> article about using LyX for book design would be a natural fit for their
>> target audience.
>>
>> 2.) In similar vein, the LibreGraphics meeting is also coming up. This
>> year, it will be held in Montreal. LibreGraphics targets a similar
>> demographic, and it seems like such a presentation would be a natural fit.
>> Even better, they pay the travel expenses of presenters
>> (http://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2011/). Might anyone be interested in
>> talking about using LyX to talk about book design, typography, or writing?
>>
>> 3.) It's been some time since Linux magazine or one of the other trade
>> publications published a general purpose article on LyX. Might it be worth
>> creating and submitting one? We might try and target Linux users magazine
>> (http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/), ZdNet, or one of the large 

Re: LyX Promotion

[Liviu Andronic]

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 9:12 AM, Graham Smith  wrote:
> One possible approach is to write an introduction to Lyx specifically aimed
> at Word users.
>
This makes a lot of sense to me. Most of all we probably need an
introduction for those coming from the world of Word (highest
priority) and, perhaps, one for those with a heavy LaTeX background.
(For the latter, we might simply recycle the existing Help > Tutorial
> LyX for LaTeX users, but give it much better visibility on the
lyx.org home page.)

If you give it some thought, the two are essentially the only ones
that make sense, because there aren't really other types of newcomers:
you are either already familiar with Word, or with LaTeX; else you
wouldn't be looking at LyX in the first place.

Liviu


> This has been done for R at
> http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/learnr-toolkit/ where the tutorials assume
> familiarity with Excel and demonstrate how things differ (or are the same)
> in R. There have also been similar things done for the GIS program Manifold,
> comparing it against the Industry standard products from ESRI.
>
> I had a couple of aborted attempts with Lyx, because, as a Word User, I just
> couldn't get my head around certain concepts (the concept of compiling a
> document probably being the main one). I then eventually came back to Lyx
> via SWeave in R, which introduced me to Latex, and then Lyx fell into place
> and I realised it gave me an easy interface to Latex for every day
> documents.
>
> A Lyx equivilant of the R tutorials would have been a great help.
>
> Graham
>
>
>
> On 22 March 2011 15:51, Rob Oakes  wrote:
>>
>> Dear Users and Developers,
>>
>> Thank you to both Pavel and Stefano for ollowing up with Google about why
>> the GSoC application was turned down. Is there any way that I could help in
>> that review? Stefano, will you be attending the IRC meeting to be held later
>> today? I think it's very important that we understand why LyX was rejected
>> as a mentoring organization, and I'd be willing to hep in any way necessary.
>>
>> While I have some ideas about why it may have happened, I think that Pavel
>> hit the nail on the head. When I talk to people about LyX, they seem to
>> think of it as a specialized academic writing tool. Basically, a program
>> which helps professors and students write a thesis or articles. (To be even
>> more narrow, it seems like many think it is for math and physics people to
>> write a thesis or article.) Which is to say, a specialized program with an
>> incredibly small user base and use.
>>
>> While that stereotype may be somewhat true (I don't think anyone would
>> argue that many of the developers and users are within academics), it
>> significantly understates LyX's appeal, especially if you consider the
>> enhancements available in the upcoming version. From my own personal
>> experience, I've found LyX to be the most capable pre-press/writing tool
>> I've ever come across. If I were a publishing company or involved in the
>> creation of any type of documentation, I would be looking  at LyX very
>> carefully. It's the only tool that I know that allows you to manage
>> collaboration, typesetting the final output, and target both electronic and
>> print from the same source. With the recent explosion of electronic
>> publishing and eBooks, I think that makes it *highly* relevant.
>>
>> Yet, I'm not sure that the wider community appreciates that. (Hearing
>> Google's rationale for rejecting the GSoC application will help somewhat in
>> clarifying how LyX is perceived.) Which really brings me to the reason I'm
>> writing.
>>
>> Would it be worth trying to promote LyX to people who might find it
>> helpful?
>>
>> We've talked for a long time about writing a LyX book, which is an
>> excellent and wonderful project. But what if we first tested those waters by
>> tackling some smaller projects first?
>>
>> For example:
>>
>> 1.) I just learned about a new open design magazine this morning, called
>> LibreGraphics magazine (http://libregraphicsmag.com/). The goal of the
>> publication is to help designers find tools for their work. It seems like an
>> article about using LyX for book design would be a natural fit for their
>> target audience.
>>
>> 2.) In similar vein, the LibreGraphics meeting is also coming up. This
>> year, it will be held in Montreal. LibreGraphics targets a similar
>> demographic, and it seems like such a presentation would be a natural fit.
>> Even better, they pay the travel expenses of presenters
>> (http://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2011/). Might anyone be interested in
>> talking about using LyX to talk about book design, typography, or writing?
>>
>> 3.) It's been some time since Linux magazine or one of the other trade
>> publications published a general purpose article on LyX. Might it be worth
>> creating and submitting one? We might try and target Linux users magazine
>> (http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/), ZdNet, or one of 

Re: LyX Promotion

[Graham Smith]

Rainer,

I completely agree and this would be a very usefull document - but the
> issue is not to provide an easy transition from Word to LyX, but to
> enable an easy co-operation with Word or OO / LibreOffice users, in
> the sense that:
>

Ah OK, I obviously misunderstood the basis of the thread, I thought it was
to broaden the appeal/user base beyond the perceived Academic one (but I use
it in consultancy).

Graham

Re: LyX Promotion

[george legge]

Steve, I like your list of good things about LyX;
but you have omitted what to me is the most significant:

Try using Word to compile a  long book with many illustrations, often with 3
graphics to a page.
Word has a shocking reputation for using a master document with many child
documents,
particularly one with many graphics. There are many warnings that Word will
crash and corrupt files.

So be it - I used OpenOffice. Result: as the book got longer, the OpenOffice
master crashed frequently.
Every time a child document was added or modified, the master document took
up to half an hour to update and was likely to crash in the process.
At least OpenOffice never corrupted the files; but it became impractical to
complete assembly of the book.

I carried the same files over to LyX, converting each child document.
Result: LyX has not crashed once and it assembles or updates the master
document into a pdf, with all the graphics inserted in less than 30 seconds.

I may have to negotiate with LyX on where I wish to place an image or what
ERT is needed.
But the worse that might happen is I get an error message.
All through the operations, LyX remains rock steady.

For long complex documents, LyX is the practical solution.

Cheers, George Legge



On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 5:20 PM, Steve Litt wrote:

> If I were going to enumerate the good things about
> LyX, it would be something like this:
>
> * It typesets better and more consistently than its non-TeX based
> competitors.
> * It deletes unintentional double spaces and double newlines.
> * It always calculates references, TOC and indices correctly, unlike
> others.
> * The black on tan is readable and soothing to the eyes for long workdays.
> * Its simple native format invites programmatic document creation and
> editing.
> * It's free software, which protects your documents from vendor lock-in.
> * It's an incredibly fast authoring environment.
>

Re: tutorials / slides for seminars or workshops (was: 'Re: LyX Promotion')

[Guenter Milde]

On 2011-03-22, Liviu Andronic wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Rob Oakes  wrote:

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

> I will be holding a workshop on LyX to graduate types at my university
> and I'm not very sure where from to begin. Some ready materials
> (slides on the advantages of LyX/LaTeX over MS Word and the hord, step
> by step tutorials for creating your first document in LyX, using
> bibliography and fancier features) would be of enormous help.
>
> At the moment I plan to start with the 'Help > Documentation' in
> preparing my tutorial. Perhaps some of you have already passed through
> this experience and have some materials readily available? If so,
> please post them here.

There is already much material at http://wiki.lyx.org. Maybe a review
and re-organization might improve its "impact factor".

Günter

Re: LyX Promotion

[stefano franchi]

> On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 5:20 PM, Steve Litt 
> wrote:
>>
>> If I were going to enumerate the good things about
>> LyX, it would be something like this:
>>
>> * It typesets better and more consistently than its non-TeX based
>> competitors.
>> * It deletes unintentional double spaces and double newlines.
>> * It always calculates references, TOC and indices correctly, unlike
>> others.
>> * The black on tan is readable and soothing to the eyes for long workdays.
>> * Its simple native format invites programmatic document creation and
>> editing.
>> * It's free software, which protects your documents from vendor lock-in.
>> * It's an incredibly fast authoring environment.

I completely agree with Steve's points about LyX. In particular, I
think he is right in pointing out that "pure" LyX/LaTeX will almost
never produce a final "production quality" output. And by "production
quality" I mean a document typeset to the typographical standards used
and enforced by good publishing houses. LaTeX will almost get you
there---let's say 90% of the way---while Word/OO do not even try. But
that final 10% requires manual intervention and exact much more pain
than you'll ever encounter in Word/OO or other standard word
processors. I say this from my very recent experience as the co-editor
a 400+ book done with LyX and typeset to publisher's specs.

There are many reasons for this fact. One is font handling, which is
very poor in LaTeX. Things are getting better with LuaTeX/fonttspec,
but the process is still far from straightforward. A second problem is
page breaks, which is certainly not one of LaTeX's strengths "out of
the box." Not only page breaks need to be manually adjusted in the
final draft, getting correct grid-like layout with properly balanced
odd and even page is incredibly difficult, in my experience. A recent
article in TugBoat went into some details on this issue, and the
discussion continued on comp.text.tex. I don't know enough TeX to
really use the experimental algorithms that were proposed both in the
article and in the group, and my sense of the current state of the art
is that a better page-handling algorithm will have to wait for a
LuaTeX-based solution. There are other issues as well, some of which
Steve mentioned. And I am not even getting into the academia-only
problems of correctly typesetting  bibliography styles and index
layouts.

In short: LyX should not be promoted as the tool that gets you
"camera-ready" "production-quality" pdf files out of the box. It
won't. It will produce"near-production-quality" pdf that will need
quite a bit of tweaking and will require specialized skills in order
to be "perfect." Out of the box, LyX will produce better looking
documents  than your average word processor. In my experience, though,
most Word users do not really care, because what they get from their
word processor is good enough. In a sense, they are right: for
informal communication, a document typeset by Word is often
sufficient. And for formal communication, well, the professionals who
work for publishing houses and/or service bureaus  will take your Word
document and produce a professionally  typeset document with tools
like InDesign, Quark Xpress, etcetera.

(As some have pointed out, this situation may change as personally
produced e-books become a mass phenomenon. In my opinion, though, we
are not even close to that.)

On the other hand, LyX should be promoted, I think, as a more
productive environment. To put it crudely: LyX/LaTeX's weakness
(finessing formats is a royal pain) turns into a strength: you know
you do not want to mess with the format because it is a pain.
Therefore you focus on the content only. Thi sis obviously true for
long, complex documents, as many have pointed out. But it is also true
for shorter documents. I routinely write everything except letters in
LyX, from memos to lecture notes, to notes to myself. to articles,
etc. I am much more productive than I have ever been (and I have used
every single version of MS Word from 1.0/DOS forward, plus various
assorted alternatives).


As for Word/OO<-->LyX interoperability, that seems a chimera. How can
LyX ever be interoperable with Word, when even the LaTeX/LyX roundtrip
will not get you back the document you started from? It seems to me
that a more reasonable goal would be to have a Word-output function
that strips all formatting except the semantically relevant items
(emphasis, etc) and produce a clean Word file ready to be imported
into a typesetting program or to be sent to Word-only people. The
XHTML output filter in LyX 2.0 is almost there, I think.


The biggest hurdle to LyX's acceptance, I think, is that it is almost
impossible to cooperate with people not using it. Writing an article,
or a memo, or a report, grant application, with Word users is not
possible unless the LyX user takes the responsibility of maintaining a
LyX master file and inputting corrections and edits from pdf

Re: tutorials / slides for seminars or workshops (was: 'Re: LyX Promotion')

[Ronen Abravanel]

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 11:49 PM, Liviu Andronic wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 10:23 PM, Ronen Abravanel 
> wrote:
> > How long should it be? A year ago I had one hour workshop on LyX in my
> >
> I highly doubt that it would exceed an hour.
>
>
> > department, and I started with very short into on LaTeX and "in what
> scene
> > LyX is different from word", and then about 40 minutes of demonstration
> of
> > what can I do and how can I do that.
> >
> > If there is nothing better, I can translate my tutorial to English (few
> >
> What is the original language of the tutorial? Maybe I could digest it
> myself.
>
> Hebrew.

>
> > beamer-slides, and 3 pages of "do that in order to achieve this..."
> list...
> >
> This is a nice idea for a tutorial, too.
> Liviu
>
>
>
> > Ronen
> >
> > On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 6:38 PM, Liviu Andronic 
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> Dear all
> >> I think this is a very good idea.
> >>
> >>
> >> On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Rob Oakes 
> wrote:
> >> > 4.) It seems that there are people willing to help promote/evangelize
> >> > LyX, but I'm not sure we offer much in the way of promotional
> materials to
> >> > help. Would it be worthwhile to create a limited number of tutorials
> for
> >> > people, like Venom, who will be holding seminars or workshops? (I've
> also
> >> > thought about teaching a design workshop through my local library, and
> these
> >> > materials would help provide a curriculum.)
> >> >
> >> I will be holding a workshop on LyX to graduate types at my university
> >> and I'm not very sure where from to begin. Some ready materials
> >> (slides on the advantages of LyX/LaTeX over MS Word and the hord, step
> >> by step tutorials for creating your first document in LyX, using
> >> bibliography and fancier features) would be of enormous help.
> >>
> >> At the moment I plan to start with the 'Help > Documentation' in
> >> preparing my tutorial. Perhaps some of you have already passed through
> >> this experience and have some materials readily available? If so,
> >> please post them here.
> >>
> >> Regards
> >> Liviu
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Do you know how to read?
> http://www.alienetworks.com/srtest.cfm
> http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfce4-dict#speed-reader
> Do you know how to write?
> http://garbl.home.comcast.net/~garbl/stylemanual/e.htm#e-mail
>

Re: tutorials / slides for seminars or workshops (was: 'Re: LyX Promotion')

[Liviu Andronic]

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 7:45 PM, Ronen Abravanel  wrote:
>> > department, and I started with very short into on LaTeX and "in what
>> > scene
>> > LyX is different from word", and then about 40 minutes of demonstration
>> > of
>> > what can I do and how can I do that.
>> >
>> > If there is nothing better, I can translate my tutorial to English (few
>> >
>> What is the original language of the tutorial? Maybe I could digest it
>> myself.
>>
> Hebrew.
>
Oh, I haven't gotten to Hebrew yet. :) If you have time and it's not
much bother, I would indeed much appreciate a starting point for my
workshop. Please let me know.

Cheers
Liviu

Re: LyX Promotion

[John Kane]

--- On Wed, 3/23/11, Liviu Andronic <landronim...@gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Liviu Andronic <landronim...@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: LyX Promotion
> To: "Graham Smith" <myotis...@gmail.com>
> Cc: "LyX Devel" <lyx-de...@lists.lyx.org>, lyx-users@lists.lyx.org
> Received: Wednesday, March 23, 2011, 4:34 AM
> On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 9:12 AM,
> Graham Smith <myotis...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > One possible approach is to write an introduction to
> Lyx specifically aimed
> > at Word users.
> >
> This makes a lot of sense to me. Most of all we probably
> need an
> introduction for those coming from the world of Word
> (highest
> priority) and, perhaps, one for those with a heavy LaTeX
> background.
> (For the latter, we might simply recycle the existing Help
> > Tutorial
> > LyX for LaTeX users, but give it much better
> visibility on the
> lyx.org home page.)
> 
> If you give it some thought, the two are essentially the
> only ones
> that make sense, because there aren't really other types of
> newcomers:
> you are either already familiar with Word, or with LaTeX;
> else you
> wouldn't be looking at LyX in the first place.

Logic splitting here but I would be coming, well am,  from an SGML,OOo/AmiPro, 
FullWrite Professional background  and there still seem to be quite a few 
WordPerfect people still out there.  

Agreed that the majority of people are likely to be Word or Latex but not all,  
 

> 
> Liviu
> 
> 
> > This has been done for R at
> > http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/learnr-toolkit/ where
> the tutorials assume
> > familiarity with Excel and demonstrate how things
> differ (or are the same)
> > in R. There have also been similar things done for the
> GIS program Manifold,
> > comparing it against the Industry standard products
> from ESRI.
> >
> > I had a couple of aborted attempts with Lyx, because,
> as a Word User, I just
> > couldn't get my head around certain concepts (the
> concept of compiling a
> > document probably being the main one). I then
> eventually came back to Lyx
> > via SWeave in R, which introduced me to Latex, and
> then Lyx fell into place
> > and I realised it gave me an easy interface to Latex
> for every day
> > documents.
> >
> > A Lyx equivilant of the R tutorials would have been a
> great help.
> >
> > Graham
> >
> >
> >
> > On 22 March 2011 15:51, Rob Oakes <lyx-de...@oak-tree.us>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Dear Users and Developers,
> >>
> >> Thank you to both Pavel and Stefano for ollowing
> up with Google about why
> >> the GSoC application was turned down. Is there any
> way that I could help in
> >> that review? Stefano, will you be attending the
> IRC meeting to be held later
> >> today? I think it's very important that we
> understand why LyX was rejected
> >> as a mentoring organization, and I'd be willing to
> hep in any way necessary.
> >>
> >> While I have some ideas about why it may have
> happened, I think that Pavel
> >> hit the nail on the head. When I talk to people
> about LyX, they seem to
> >> think of it as a specialized academic writing
> tool. Basically, a program
> >> which helps professors and students write a thesis
> or articles. (To be even
> >> more narrow, it seems like many think it is for
> math and physics people to
> >> write a thesis or article.) Which is to say, a
> specialized program with an
> >> incredibly small user base and use.
> >>
> >> While that stereotype may be somewhat true (I
> don't think anyone would
> >> argue that many of the developers and users are
> within academics), it
> >> significantly understates LyX's appeal, especially
> if you consider the
> >> enhancements available in the upcoming version.
> From my own personal
> >> experience, I've found LyX to be the most capable
> pre-press/writing tool
> >> I've ever come across. If I were a publishing
> company or involved in the
> >> creation of any type of documentation, I would be
> looking  at LyX very
> >> carefully. It's the only tool that I know that
> allows you to manage
> >> collaboration, typesetting the final output, and
> target both electronic and
> >> print from the same source. With the recent
> explosion of electronic
> >> publishing and eBooks, I think that makes it
> *highly* relevant.
> >>
> >> Yet, I'm not sure that the wider community
> appreciates that. (Hearing
> >> Google's rationale

Re: LyX Promotion

[Guenter Milde]

On 2011-03-23, John McCabe-Dansted wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 11:51 PM, Rob Oakes  wrote:

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

IMV, handling formal, complex documents and math typesetting are actually
LyX main strenghts.

...

> To the extent that the stereotype is true, it may also be worth
> considering what the reasons are for this, and if it is reasonable to
> remove those reasons. Off-the-top of my head the following could be
> issues.

> 1) Compile Errors.
...
> 1b) Perhaps we could improve the latex export so that compile errors
> only occur if the user uses ERT.

This is an ongoing task (as LaTeX evolves and there are far too many ways
to create a compile error that cannot be foreseen). However, my
experience is that LaTeX compile errors are already treated as bugs, so
no change in policy is needed. Also there is usually fast help (hints on
"thw right way" or workarounds) when compile errors are reported on the
users list (even faster if a minimal example is given).


> 2) Compatibility with Word. Typical users expect to be able to open
> and save word documents.

...

> 3) Not WYSIWYG.  
...

> After the content is complete, I go though a cycle of: Notice
> something weird with the line-breaking in the PDF, muck around with
> the LyX source hoping it fixed the problem; recompile PDF. This can
> take a while and having a WYSIWYG mode could make this process a
> factor of ten times faster.

Where do you expecte the speedup?

* Compiling a long, complex document can take considerable time.
  In WYSIWYG mode, this time would be needed with every edit action.
  
* A major speedup of the process is possible without WYSIWYG mode:

  The keyword is "inverse search": clicking in the PDF viewer brings you
  to the right spot in the source. Getting this to work out of the box
  seems a worthwile task.
  
Günter

Re: LyX Promotion

[Steve Litt]

On Wednesday 23 March 2011 09:54:29 you wrote:

> As for Word/OO<-->LyX interoperability, that seems a chimera. How can
> LyX ever be interoperable with Word, when even the LaTeX/LyX roundtrip
> will not get you back the document you started from? It seems to me
> that a more reasonable goal would be to have a Word-output function
> that strips all formatting except the semantically relevant items
> (emphasis, etc) and produce a clean Word file ready to be imported
> into a typesetting program or to be sent to Word-only people. 

Even better, in addition to exporting emphasis and noun, have it export the 
named but empty styles (environments and character styles) used in the doc, so 
the word doc has the styles and the text marked up with those styles. Then all 
that remains is to go in and modify those styles in MSWord or OOffice to 
produce the desired look. After all, modifying a style in Word is five 
minutes, not five hours.

This is a wonderful idea. Now if we can only go the other direction...

Thanks

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt

Re: LyX Promotion

[Rich Shepard]

On Wed, 23 Mar 2011, John Kane wrote:


Logic splitting here but I would be coming, well am,  from an
SGML,OOo/AmiPro, FullWrite Professional background and there still seem to
be quite a few WordPerfect people still out there.

Agreed that the majority of people are likely to be Word or Latex but not
all,


  I'll throw in my opinion, too. It's free and well worth the price. About
15 years ago we had this same discussion about linux: how do we get more
people to defenestrate and adopt linux or the *BSDs. The consensus settled
down to: don't do anything. Those who want to work in a better, more secure
computing environment will do so. Those who want to
point-and-click/drag-and-drool, and not learn how to type at a CLI are not
candidates for the unices. And Microsoft is welcome to support them.

  It's the same with LyX/LaTeX. Not everyone cares about typeset output (but
put a page from OO.o Writer next to the same text from TeX and everyone can
see the difference), and not everyone wants to understand what's going on
underneath the hood. To use LyX you need to know LaTeX. For most of us, too,
we accept that we're not expert typographers, page layout gurus, or document
structure experts. So we leave those to the professionals and we just
produce our documents while focusing on content (the substantive) and
ignoring the superficial. Yes, we sometimes need to change appearances, but
we can do this very easily with the KOMA-script and Memoir classes. However,
many in the Microsoft Word world just don't care. And, frankly, I don't want
them to switch unless they're willing to take the time to learn a different
paradigm and understand what is underneath what they do.

  On may other open source software mail lists I see the struggles of those
who want to run the applications on Windoze. They don't understand the need
to know the tool since all their experience is in using tools that are
totally opaque to them because they are proprietary.

  I had this discussion earlier today with a colleague who does forest
analytics and he was explaining how limiting SAS is compared to R, but folks
still resist change because it means learning something new.

  The LyX-using community keeps growing. New users will find it just like
the rest of us did.

Rich

LyX Promotion

[Rob Oakes]

Dear Users and Developers,

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

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

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

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

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

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

For example:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers,

Rob

Re: LyX Promotion

[Rich Shepard]

On Tue, 22 Mar 2011, Rob Oakes wrote:


When I talk to people about LyX, they seem to think of it as a specialized
academic writing tool. Basically, a program which helps professors and
students write a thesis or articles. (To be even more narrow, it seems
like many think it is for math and physics people to write a thesis or
article.) Which is to say, a specialized program with an incredibly small
user base and use.

While that stereotype may be somewhat true (I don't think anyone would
argue that many of the developers and users are within academics),


  Feh! I do most of my writing with LyX: proposals, reports, letters,
newsletter, white papers, etc. I use OO Writer under duress; it's too
Microsoftish for me. If you look on our Web site at the downloadable
documents, almost all are typeset by TeX and I escaped academia 30 years
ago.

Rich

Re: LyX Promotion

[Manolo Martínez]

There is something that might help: wouldn't it be possible to add a
made with LyX tag alongside TeX and pdfTeX in the properties of the
resulting pdf?

It'd be an easy way to communicate that a nice document -that gets you
looking into its properties- was made with LyX.

M

Re: LyX Promotion

[Liviu Andronic]

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 5:04 PM, Manolo Martínez
man...@austrohungaro.com wrote:
 There is something that might help: wouldn't it be possible to add a
 made with LyX tag alongside TeX and pdfTeX in the properties of the
 resulting pdf?

Yes, I always thought that LyX should tag PDFs by 'Created with LyX'.
Is it difficult to achieve?
Liviu


 It'd be an easy way to communicate that a nice document -that gets you
 looking into its properties- was made with LyX.

 M





-- 
Do you know how to read?
http://www.alienetworks.com/srtest.cfm
http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfce4-dict#speed-reader
Do you know how to write?
http://garbl.home.comcast.net/~garbl/stylemanual/e.htm#e-mail

tutorials / slides for seminars or workshops (was: 'Re: LyX Promotion')

[Liviu Andronic]

Dear all
I think this is a very good idea.


On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us wrote:
 4.) It seems that there are people willing to help promote/evangelize LyX, 
 but I'm not sure we offer much in the way of promotional materials to help. 
 Would it be worthwhile to create a limited number of tutorials for people, 
 like Venom, who will be holding seminars or workshops? (I've also thought 
 about teaching a design workshop through my local library, and these 
 materials would help provide a curriculum.)

I will be holding a workshop on LyX to graduate types at my university
and I'm not very sure where from to begin. Some ready materials
(slides on the advantages of LyX/LaTeX over MS Word and the hord, step
by step tutorials for creating your first document in LyX, using
bibliography and fancier features) would be of enormous help.

At the moment I plan to start with the 'Help  Documentation' in
preparing my tutorial. Perhaps some of you have already passed through
this experience and have some materials readily available? If so,
please post them here.

Regards
Liviu

Re: LyX Promotion

[Steve Litt]

On Tuesday 22 March 2011 11:58:22 Rich Shepard wrote:
 On Tue, 22 Mar 2011, Rob Oakes wrote:
  When I talk to people about LyX, they seem to think of it as a
  specialized academic writing tool. Basically, a program which helps
  professors and students write a thesis or articles. (To be even more
  narrow, it seems like many think it is for math and physics people to
  write a thesis or article.) Which is to say, a specialized program with
  an incredibly small user base and use.
  
  While that stereotype may be somewhat true (I don't think anyone would
  argue that many of the developers and users are within academics),
 
Feh! I do most of my writing with LyX: proposals, reports, letters,
 newsletter, white papers, etc. I use OO Writer under duress; it's too
 Microsoftish for me.

Oh don't I wish it were too Microsoftish! If it were just like Word/Powerpoint 
I'd use it all the time -- Powerpoint is decent and Word is actually a good 
program. But N, OO imports word docs and changes all styles to 
fingerpainting. An OO made Powerpoint has stuff walking off the screen viewed 
in Powerpoint. I try never to use OO on anything more than three pages long, 
because I end up putting my fist through the wall. OO is utter junk.

The only time I use OO is the anding of the following:

1) The other guy simply MUST work in MS Office
2) The document is relatively simple
3) Exact appearance isn't important

An example is when my editor made queries to my book, and I responded to the 
queries, and the editor responded to my responses, ... I just kept making 
styles to accommodate ever increasing levels of response, and somehow the 
styles survived the round trip from MSWord to OO and back.

The next major revision of my courseware will be All-Beamer-All-The-Time (no 
LyX, just Beamer LaTeX). It's 1000 times easier to maintain and personalize 
than OOImpress viewed on MS Powerpoint.

Nowadays, all my letters are LyX letter template. Yeah, it's a PITA, and I 
think it's a silly use of LyX, but it's a whole lot better than OOWriter.

When writing a paper 5 pages or less, I use Abiword to get it done in a few 
minutes. Beyond 5 pages, I use LyX. LyX can be a PITA, but at least you know 
it will work.

And of course, when writing anything over 50 pages I use LyX. This is LyX's 
intended usage, and who in their right mind would use anything else for 50+ 
page docs?

OO has the worlds ugliest native file format. Several XML files zipped up. 
These files resemble a severely denormalized database -- everything depends on 
everything else, and any given change can affect four or five different XML 
sections and maybe multiple files. As a practical matter, I find it impossible 
to work with OO native format. Contrast this with LyX, which so far is fairly 
easy to write and parse from a Perl or Lua program.

Friends don't let friends use OO.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt

Re: LyX Promotion - use outside academia

[Paul Sutton]

On 22/03/11 15:51, Rob Oakes wrote:
 Dear Users and Developers,
 
 Thank you to both Pavel and Stefano for ollowing up with Google about why the 
 GSoC application was turned down. Is there any way that I could help in that 
 review? Stefano, will you be attending the IRC meeting to be held later 
 today? I think it's very important that we understand why LyX was rejected as 
 a mentoring organization, and I'd be willing to hep in any way necessary.
 
 While I have some ideas about why it may have happened, I think that Pavel 
 hit the nail on the head. When I talk to people about LyX, they seem to think 
 of it as a specialized academic writing tool. Basically, a program which 
 helps professors and students write a thesis or articles. (To be even more 
 narrow, it seems like many think it is for math and physics people to write a 
 thesis or article.) Which is to say, a specialized program with an incredibly 
 small user base and use.
 
 While that stereotype may be somewhat true (I don't think anyone would argue 
 that many of the developers and users are within academics), it significantly 
 understates LyX's appeal, especially if you consider the enhancements 
 available in the upcoming version. From my own personal experience, I've 
 found LyX to be the most capable pre-press/writing tool I've ever come 
 across. If I were a publishing company or involved in the creation of any 
 type of documentation, I would be looking  at LyX very carefully. It's the 
 only tool that I know that allows you to manage collaboration, typesetting 
 the final output, and target both electronic and print from the same source. 
 With the recent explosion of electronic publishing and eBooks, I think that 
 makes it *highly* relevant.
 
 Yet, I'm not sure that the wider community appreciates that. (Hearing 
 Google's rationale for rejecting the GSoC application will help somewhat in 
 clarifying how LyX is perceived.) Which really brings me to the reason I'm 
 writing.
 
 Would it be worth trying to promote LyX to people who might find it helpful? 
 
 We've talked for a long time about writing a LyX book, which is an excellent 
 and wonderful project. But what if we first tested those waters by tackling 
 some smaller projects first?
 
 For example:
 
 1.) I just learned about a new open design magazine this morning, called 
 LibreGraphics magazine (http://libregraphicsmag.com/). The goal of the 
 publication is to help designers find tools for their work. It seems like an 
 article about using LyX for book design would be a natural fit for their 
 target audience. 
 
 2.) In similar vein, the LibreGraphics meeting is also coming up. This year, 
 it will be held in Montreal. LibreGraphics targets a similar demographic, and 
 it seems like such a presentation would be a natural fit. Even better, they 
 pay the travel expenses of presenters 
 (http://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2011/). Might anyone be interested in 
 talking about using LyX to talk about book design, typography, or writing?
 
 3.) It's been some time since Linux magazine or one of the other trade 
 publications published a general purpose article on LyX. Might it be worth 
 creating and submitting one? We might try and target Linux users magazine 
 (http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/), ZdNet, or one of the large Linux blogs (like 
 OMG!Ubuntu, http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/).
 
 4.) It seems that there are people willing to help promote/evangelize LyX, 
 but I'm not sure we offer much in the way of promotional materials to help. 
 Would it be worthwhile to create a limited number of tutorials for people, 
 like Venom, who will be holding seminars or workshops? (I've also thought 
 about teaching a design workshop through my local library, and these 
 materials would help provide a curriculum.)
 
 The tutorials could address some of the finer points of using LyX that are 
 not covered in the manuals. For example, how do you collaborate using version 
 control? What is the process for creating custom, typeset publications with 
 LyX and LaTeX? We could publish cohesive examples and then walk through how 
 the code works. They might describe principles of design, or typographical 
 effects, and how they can be accomplished using LyX. Maybe we could create a 
 writeup on how to prepare files for multiple output formats (print, web, 
 eBook) using a single source. I'm sure that there are other tutorials that 
 I'm overlooking.
 
 Which really brings me to the point I want to make: if we target the right 
 groups and create nice looking materials, it could go a long ways to 
 clarifying LyX's position in the free-softare world. It's also likely that we 
 might find developers to contribute time and code, businesses who would be 
 willing to support future development, and others who could help grow the LyX 
 user base.
 
 Many of the other projects who were accepted seem to have dedicated 
 marketing/promotion teams. Would it be worth trying to organize such an 
 endeavor for 

Re: LyX Promotion

[Paul Sutton]

 The next major revision of my courseware will be All-Beamer-All-The-Time (no 
 LyX, just Beamer LaTeX). It's 1000 times easier to maintain and personalize 
 than OOImpress viewed on MS Powerpoint.
 
 Nowadays, all my letters are LyX letter template. Yeah, it's a PITA, and I 
 think it's a silly use of LyX, but it's a whole lot better than OOWriter.
 
 When writing a paper 5 pages or less, I use Abiword to get it done in a few 
 minutes. Beyond 5 pages, I use LyX. LyX can be a PITA, but at least you know 
 it will work.
 
 And of course, when writing anything over 50 pages I use LyX. This is LyX's 
 intended usage, and who in their right mind would use anything else for 50+ 
 page docs?


A book on LyX could be useful but you raise an important point here,
what perhaps needs to be got across is when do you use LyX when does
this stop and LaTeX takes over or perhaps the other way round.

something to think about

Paul

Re: LyX Promotion

[Vincent van Ravesteijn]

 Op 22-3-2011 17:59, Steve Litt schreef:

The next major revision of my courseware will be All-Beamer-All-The-Time (no
LyX, just Beamer LaTeX). It's 1000 times easier to maintain and personalize
than OOImpress viewed on MS Powerpoint.


You would have loved the new LyX Presentation Mode:

http://wiki.lyx.org/Devel/SummerOfCode2011Ideas#toc3

(if we weren't rejected of course ;))

Vincent

Re: tutorials / slides for seminars or workshops (was: 'Re: LyX Promotion')

[Paul Sutton]

On 22/03/11 16:38, Liviu Andronic wrote:
 Dear all
 I think this is a very good idea.
 
 
 On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us wrote:
 4.) It seems that there are people willing to help promote/evangelize LyX, 
 but I'm not sure we offer much in the way of promotional materials to help. 
 Would it be worthwhile to create a limited number of tutorials for people, 
 like Venom, who will be holding seminars or workshops? (I've also thought 
 about teaching a design workshop through my local library, and these 
 materials would help provide a curriculum.)

 I will be holding a workshop on LyX to graduate types at my university
 and I'm not very sure where from to begin. Some ready materials
 (slides on the advantages of LyX/LaTeX over MS Word and the hord, step
 by step tutorials for creating your first document in LyX, using
 bibliography and fancier features) would be of enormous help.
 
 At the moment I plan to start with the 'Help  Documentation' in
 preparing my tutorial. Perhaps some of you have already passed through
 this experience and have some materials readily available? If so,
 please post them here.
 
 Regards
 Liviu


You may want to contact Joseph Wright at the UK TeX user group as they
do introductory courses on LaTeX, for some pointers.  The website below
gives details on what the course covers so perhaps if your course did
the same but using LyX and you are able to collaborate it would be a
useful for people going from one to the other or using both,

http://uk.tug.org/

Hope this helps

Paul Sutton


-- 



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Easter Fest 2011 - Music and production activities for young people 12 - 19
April 11 - 23rd - The Lighthouse,26 Esplanade Road, Paignton
01803 411 812 or e-mail  i...@devonmusiccollective.com for more info.
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Re: tutorials / slides for seminars or workshops (was: 'Re: LyX Promotion')

[Ronen Abravanel]

How long should it be? A year ago I had one hour workshop on LyX in my
department, and I started with very short into on LaTeX and in what scene
LyX is different from word, and then about 40 minutes of demonstration of
what can I do and how can I do that.

If there is nothing better, I can translate my tutorial to English (few
beamer-slides, and 3 pages of do that in order to achieve this... list...

Ronen

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 6:38 PM, Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.comwrote:

 Dear all
 I think this is a very good idea.


 On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us wrote:
  4.) It seems that there are people willing to help promote/evangelize
 LyX, but I'm not sure we offer much in the way of promotional materials to
 help. Would it be worthwhile to create a limited number of tutorials for
 people, like Venom, who will be holding seminars or workshops? (I've also
 thought about teaching a design workshop through my local library, and these
 materials would help provide a curriculum.)
 
 I will be holding a workshop on LyX to graduate types at my university
 and I'm not very sure where from to begin. Some ready materials
 (slides on the advantages of LyX/LaTeX over MS Word and the hord, step
 by step tutorials for creating your first document in LyX, using
 bibliography and fancier features) would be of enormous help.

 At the moment I plan to start with the 'Help  Documentation' in
 preparing my tutorial. Perhaps some of you have already passed through
 this experience and have some materials readily available? If so,
 please post them here.

 Regards
 Liviu

Re: tutorials / slides for seminars or workshops (was: 'Re: LyX Promotion')

[Liviu Andronic]

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 10:23 PM, Ronen Abravanel ron...@gmail.com wrote:
 How long should it be? A year ago I had one hour workshop on LyX in my

I highly doubt that it would exceed an hour.


 department, and I started with very short into on LaTeX and in what scene
 LyX is different from word, and then about 40 minutes of demonstration of
 what can I do and how can I do that.

 If there is nothing better, I can translate my tutorial to English (few

What is the original language of the tutorial? Maybe I could digest it myself.


 beamer-slides, and 3 pages of do that in order to achieve this... list...

This is a nice idea for a tutorial, too.
Liviu



 Ronen

 On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 6:38 PM, Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Dear all
 I think this is a very good idea.


 On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us wrote:
  4.) It seems that there are people willing to help promote/evangelize
  LyX, but I'm not sure we offer much in the way of promotional materials to
  help. Would it be worthwhile to create a limited number of tutorials for
  people, like Venom, who will be holding seminars or workshops? (I've also
  thought about teaching a design workshop through my local library, and 
  these
  materials would help provide a curriculum.)
 
 I will be holding a workshop on LyX to graduate types at my university
 and I'm not very sure where from to begin. Some ready materials
 (slides on the advantages of LyX/LaTeX over MS Word and the hord, step
 by step tutorials for creating your first document in LyX, using
 bibliography and fancier features) would be of enormous help.

 At the moment I plan to start with the 'Help  Documentation' in
 preparing my tutorial. Perhaps some of you have already passed through
 this experience and have some materials readily available? If so,
 please post them here.

 Regards
 Liviu





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Re: LyX Promotion

[John McCabe-Dansted]

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 11:51 PM, Rob Oakes lyx-de...@oak-tree.us wrote:
 While I have some ideas about why it may have happened, I think that Pavel 
 hit the nail on the head. When I talk to people about LyX, they seem to think 
 of it as a specialized academic writing tool. Basically, a program which 
 helps professors and students write a thesis or articles. (To be even more 
 narrow, it seems like many think it is for math and physics people to write a 
 thesis or article.) Which is to say, a specialized program with an incredibly 
 small user base and use.

 While that stereotype may be somewhat true (I don't think anyone would argue 
 that many of the developers and users are within academics), it significantly 
 understates LyX's appeal, especially if you consider the enhancements 
 available in the

To the extent that the stereotype is true, it may also be worth
considering what the reasons are for this, and if it is reasonable to
remove those reasons. Off-the-top of my head the following could be
issues.

1) Compile Errors. Normal users aren't used to dealing with compile
errors and shouldn't be expected to fix them. Even I don't like
dealing with compile errors all that much.
1a) Perhaps we could do some sort of bisect to determine where the
error is (either over the file itself or some fine-grained history).
1b) Perhaps we could improve the latex export so that compile errors
only occur if the user uses ERT. Particularly with beamer, this isn't
always the case.

2) Compatibility with Word. Typical users expect to be able to open
and save word documents.
2a) It is easy to bundle import/export filters so that the users don't
have to manually set up OOXML and ODF. This export wouldn't work as
well as e.g. OOXML - ODF though. One concern is that it may lead the
user to think this conversion is more supported than it really is.
2b) Normal users probably expect rich text paste as well. I usually
prefer plain text paste myself as I don't want adhoc formatting
showing up in my LyX file. We could have the option of either.

3) Not WYSIWYG.  Normal users clearly expect WYSIWYG. WYSIWYG and
WYSIWYM don't need to be mutually exclusive.  Ignoring the difficulty
in implementing for a while, having a WYSIWYG mode would be great.
After the content is complete, I go though a cycle of: Notice
something weird with the line-breaking in the PDF, muck around with
the LyX source hoping it fixed the problem; recompile PDF. This can
take a while and having a WYSIWYG mode could make this process a
factor of ten times faster.
3a) Psuedo-WYSIWYG. I find it helps to set the size of the LyX window
to be the same width as the PDF, so if I see a problem on the third
line of a paragraph in the PDF I can go straight to the third line of
the paragraph in the LyX window and fix it. Presumably LyX could
approximate the line-breaking algorithm of TeX and do a much better
job than I can by merely adjusting the width of the window. This would
be sufficient for me, but normal users may find another
not-quite-WYSIWYG mode more confusing than reassuring.
3b) LyX could bypass LaTeX. This is clearly what normal users are used
to. However this presumably wouldn't help in my use case where I am
submitting to a journal that provides a LaTeX style file.


So it seems to me that e.g. (1) should be fixed, and should be perhaps
be dealt with before we market LyX as being for normal users. Even (3)
could be fixed, and it would be good if it could, but it doesn't seem
worth the effort at the moment. (It certainly doesn't seem like
something that we should sit on our hands waiting for, and may in fact
dilute the WYSIWYM message).


-- 
John C. McCabe-Dansted

Re: LyX Promotion

[David L. Johnson]

On 03/22/2011 10:58 PM, John McCabe-Dansted wrote:


1) Compile Errors. Normal users aren't used to dealing with compile
errors and shouldn't be expected to fix them. Even I don't like
dealing with compile errors all that much.


With LyX you should not get compile errors unless you are doing 
something fancy.  It should be the case that no ERT = smooth 
compilation.  I can't recall the last time that was not the case with LyX.



1a) Perhaps we could do some sort of bisect to determine where the
error is (either over the file itself or some fine-grained history).


That is hard because sometimes TeX gets royally confused, and doesn't 
really understand what's wrong until far past the real mistake.



1b) Perhaps we could improve the latex export so that compile errors
only occur if the user uses ERT. Particularly with beamer, this isn't
always the case.


Well, AFAIK beamer is a new addition to LyX, and is not yet mature.


2) Compatibility with Word. Typical users expect to be able to open
and save word documents.
2a) It is easy to bundle import/export filters so that the users don't
have to manually set up OOXML and ODF. This export wouldn't work as
well as e.g. OOXML-  ODF though.


I really don't think this will work, since LyX documents have a lot more 
structure than word documents.  You can certainly import word documents 
successfully, but exporting them is going to lose a lot of structure. 
You don't want to be saving to word format and expect to get the right 
file when you import it into LyX again.



3) Not WYSIWYG.  Normal users clearly expect WYSIWYG. WYSIWYG and
WYSIWYM don't need to be mutually exclusive.


They are to an extent, since WYSIWYG really means that all the document 
contains is what you see on the screen, without additional structure 
that properly formats it for a number of different export situations.


Think about writing a document in word.  You spend time getting the 
spacing right, the margins to look right, and align all the bits of text 
by hand.  I never have to worry about that in LyX, since I trust TeX to 
get it right.


Ignoring the difficulty

in implementing for a while, having a WYSIWYG mode would be great.
After the content is complete, I go though a cycle of: Notice
something weird with the line-breaking in the PDF, muck around with
the LyX source hoping it fixed the problem;


No.  TeX handles all that, don't ask users to spend effort in dealing 
with how lines break.  Write the paper, let TeX format it.  I would not 
want to worry about how it looks on the page while writing, that is a 
bad habit that you can avoid with LyX.



recompile PDF. This can

take a while and having a WYSIWYG mode could make this process a
factor of ten times faster.


No, in my experience it creates the takes a while part.

--

David L. Johnson

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by
little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

LyX Promotion

[Rob Oakes]

Dear Users and Developers,

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

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

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

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

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

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

For example:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers,

Rob

Re: LyX Promotion

[Rich Shepard]

On Tue, 22 Mar 2011, Rob Oakes wrote:


When I talk to people about LyX, they seem to think of it as a specialized
academic writing tool. Basically, a program which helps professors and
students write a thesis or articles. (To be even more narrow, it seems
like many think it is for math and physics people to write a thesis or
article.) Which is to say, a specialized program with an incredibly small
user base and use.

While that stereotype may be somewhat true (I don't think anyone would
argue that many of the developers and users are within academics),


  Feh! I do most of my writing with LyX: proposals, reports, letters,
newsletter, white papers, etc. I use OO Writer under duress; it's too
Microsoftish for me. If you look on our Web site at the downloadable
documents, almost all are typeset by TeX and I escaped academia 30 years
ago.

Rich