Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Helge Hafting]

John Pye wrote:


Hellmut Weber wrote:

 


For business reasons I'm obliged to produce some documents in
Word-Format. The copy/paste-comfort offered by Windows is to be
considered THE reference for any system which wants to compete.

   


I think that the 'rich' copy/paste technology clearly exists on Linux,
but it seems that only a few applications are using it effectively: it
works fine for 'rich' text from open office to thunderbird, and from
firefox to thunderbird. It works for copying rich text with graphics and
tables from firefox to openoffice. It works for copying bitmap
selections from Kolour Paint to Open Office. It doesn't for the GIMP,
and it doesn't work for DIA. It appears not to work from Inkscape to
OpenOffice. I haven't tried AbiWord either.

I found that there is a reference to cut/paste in freedesktop.org, which
ties together KDE and GNOME common functionality:
http://freedesktop.org/wiki/ClipboardManager

That in turn refers to
http://tronche.com/gui/x/icccm/sec-2.html#s-2.6.3

So it seems that it's a case of getting Lyx to be a bit aware of how
this is done and hopefully reproduce some of that functionality. I'm
sure it's not simple, but maybe it's something that could get put on the
list if enough people would use it.
 


Good copy/paste between lyx instances as well as lyx and
others is a wish of many, including developers. The problem is
more to find a volunteer to do it. There is so much to do,
so people tend to pick their favourite feature to implement.

Helge Hafting

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX (rambling)

[Yaron Y. Goland]

I don't think you were aware, when writing your review, that
the strength of LyX is generating mathematical equations as
LyX is a front-end to (La)TeX.


Actually my example article did use a mathematical equation to  
illustrate the power of LyX, in fact, that was the very first example  
I gave and for the reasons you site, TeX's background. In fact, in my  
article I state TEX, the underlying technology for LyX, was original  
invented in order to produce beautiful mathematical equations. So it  
would appear we are in agreement.



Why compare LyX in the
category of liberal arts html page-makers?
I'm afraid I don't understand your point. As I state in my conclusion  
The only reason I put up with LyX is that it makes handling the  
formulas and bibliography issues with my book on retirement planning  
much easier to deal with. In other words, the reason I used LyX at  
all was because I'm writing a book on retirement planning that I'm  
posting on my website that involves a large number of equations and  
an extensive bibliography, two areas where TeX especially shines.


Thanks,

Yaron

P.S. The article says TEX instead of TeX due to a quirk of the  
HTML generation I forgot to fix.


On Jan 30, 2006, at 7:27 PM, Stephen Harris wrote:



- Original Message - From: Yaron Y. Goland  
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

To: Rich Shepard [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: lyx-users@lists.lyx.org
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 12:27 PM
Subject: Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX


Ligatures result in bizarre character choices in HTML if a font  
other  than AE is used - I suspect this is just ignorance on my  
part. When I  generate HTML directly form inside of LyX I don't  
have the ligature  issue. It should shows up when I use htlatex  
(e.g. TeX4ht) directly.  But I have to use htlatex because LyX  
doesn't have BibTeX support for  HTML. If I could just find the  
right argument for htlatex I'm  guessing this problem would go away.

Yaron


As you may know, LyX was designed for Linux and later ported
to Windows. During the installation LyX checks for Latex2html
and hevea and one other I forget. These choices are not very
easy to configure for Windows; but htlatex certainly is. So I
think exporting to Latex and then running htlatex is the way to go,  
which is a minor inconvenience=WinLyx imperfection.


I don't think you were aware, when writing your review, that
the strength of LyX is generating mathematical equations as
LyX is a front-end to (La)TeX. Until about FrameMaker 5.5
for Windows appeared which is good, the only excellent equation  
generator was Tex which ran on *nix platforms

until it was ported; from a technical writer pov, for docs
over 200 pages. Word had the very worst evaluation.

You are smart intelligent writer. But I think your review
should have used a math equation or diagram example file
for html conversion and it didn't because you didn't know
that was the strenght of LyX. Why compare LyX in the
category of liberal arts html page-makers? It isn't special
in that category and makes no claim to be special. So
your article should have at most given a one/two-line
dismissal to LyX as a textual html generating tool, and
instead informed the reader about how great LyX was
in generating a technically oriented document. Your
article isn't written correctly as a sample of your tech
writing expertise (in which I believe you want to excel).
I think you should have said what LyX is really good at.

The file below (xypic.tex) is a good example of a more
technical example of writing that demonstrates LyX.

http://www.mathematik.uni-marburg.de/~gumm/LyX/xypic/

The file does use the ae fontscheme. The high quality conversion
took seconds, while the ($450) Acrobat conversion was a flop.
I was certainly wrong about that. The conversion had a problem
with one png file that came with the document.

So to make it perfect I had to edit the source .htm file after
htlatex produced it. You can see the source htm code under
View/Source on Internet Explorer. That file needed to be edited
with a text editor. I replaced the bad htlatex generated code
Original bad code: src=xypic0x.png alt=PIC class=graphics
!--tex4ht:graphics  name=xypic0x.png src=xyfigure.PNG

with
constructed, displayed and interactively edited inside LY X. !--l.  
74--

P class=indentIMG class=graphics alt=PIC
src=Using_XYpic_in_LyX_files/xyfigure.png!--tex4ht:graphics
name=xyfigure.png src=xyfigure.png

and it took about 15 minutes to proofread it and fix hypen errors.
I think a good article should contain a produced example, maybe not  
in a blog though. My impression was that both you and Rich

produce very few equations so don't fathom a critical field area.
The LyX learning curve is less steep than (X)Emacs which is good
because complex Latex can make early inroads on LyX competence.
Just so you don't think I'm being too critical, I think you are bright
and a very good writer with a flair for computer literacy

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX (rambling)

[Stephen Harris]

- Original Message - 
From: Yaron Y. Goland [EMAIL PROTECTED]

To: Stephen Harris [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: lyx-users@lists.lyx.org
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2006 8:28 AM
Subject: Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX (rambling)



I don't think you were aware, when writing your review, that
the strength of LyX is generating mathematical equations as
LyX is a front-end to (La)TeX.


Actually my example article did use a mathematical equation to  illustrate 
the power of LyX, in fact, that was the very first example  I gave and for 
the reasons you site, TeX's background. In fact, in my  article I state 
TEX, the underlying technology for LyX, was original  invented in order 
to produce beautiful mathematical equations. So it  would appear we are 
in agreement.




I didn't see the equation. I used Internet Explorer which leaves a
large space before showing the equation, then I quit reading. When
I looked at it with Firefox the page shows up as very readable.


Why compare LyX in the
category of liberal arts html page-makers?


I'm afraid I don't understand your point. As I state in my conclusion 
The only reason I put up with LyX is that it makes handling the  formulas 
and bibliography issues with my book on retirement planning  much easier 
to deal with. In other words, the reason I used LyX at  all was because 
I'm writing a book on retirement planning that I'm  posting on my website 
that involves a large number of equations and  an extensive bibliography, 
two areas where TeX especially shines.


Thanks,

Yaron



My remark is in conjunction with your earlier comment:

But I think if you review the issues I list you will find that I am
trying to create a static document that can be 'reasonably' outputted
as HTML in the same sense that one uses LyX to create a document that
can be 'reasonably' outputted as a PDF. The key issue of course is
what is 'reasonable'? I'd argue that any basic formatting that one
would normally associate with a static document should be available
for HTML formatting.

SH: I see a lot of webpages that have links/contain documents that were
created with *tex as a typesetting engine that could have been created
with LyX. They are usually in .pdf, .ps or .dvi format, and they retain
right justification. So the conversion to textual html removes kerning.
I've always thought of that typsetting aspect of LyX as basic so that I
never thought of LyX as a tool to make webpages. I suppose the html
converters work better on *nix-like systems. The only one that worked
for me on Windows was htlatex and it isn't one of the converters that
Lyx checks for. I suppose it could added in the new converter section.
I don't think LyX is supposed to be good at converting to html because
Tex and early Latex were designed before webpages were a priority, so
there is no inbuilt compatibility. It seems like it should be easier than it
is. I've seen LyX recommended for ragged right with short stories though.

So I suppose Rich was right, it's a matter of opinion,
Stephen

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Helge Hafting]

John Pye wrote:


Hellmut Weber wrote:

 


For business reasons I'm obliged to produce some documents in
Word-Format. The copy/paste-comfort offered by Windows is to be
considered THE reference for any system which wants to compete.

   


I think that the 'rich' copy/paste technology clearly exists on Linux,
but it seems that only a few applications are using it effectively: it
works fine for 'rich' text from open office to thunderbird, and from
firefox to thunderbird. It works for copying rich text with graphics and
tables from firefox to openoffice. It works for copying bitmap
selections from Kolour Paint to Open Office. It doesn't for the GIMP,
and it doesn't work for DIA. It appears not to work from Inkscape to
OpenOffice. I haven't tried AbiWord either.

I found that there is a reference to cut/paste in freedesktop.org, which
ties together KDE and GNOME common functionality:
http://freedesktop.org/wiki/ClipboardManager

That in turn refers to
http://tronche.com/gui/x/icccm/sec-2.html#s-2.6.3

So it seems that it's a case of getting Lyx to be a bit aware of how
this is done and hopefully reproduce some of that functionality. I'm
sure it's not simple, but maybe it's something that could get put on the
list if enough people would use it.
 


Good copy/paste between lyx instances as well as lyx and
others is a wish of many, including developers. The problem is
more to find a volunteer to do it. There is so much to do,
so people tend to pick their favourite feature to implement.

Helge Hafting

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX (rambling)

[Yaron Y. Goland]

I don't think you were aware, when writing your review, that
the strength of LyX is generating mathematical equations as
LyX is a front-end to (La)TeX.


Actually my example article did use a mathematical equation to  
illustrate the power of LyX, in fact, that was the very first example  
I gave and for the reasons you site, TeX's background. In fact, in my  
article I state TEX, the underlying technology for LyX, was original  
invented in order to produce beautiful mathematical equations. So it  
would appear we are in agreement.



Why compare LyX in the
category of liberal arts html page-makers?
I'm afraid I don't understand your point. As I state in my conclusion  
The only reason I put up with LyX is that it makes handling the  
formulas and bibliography issues with my book on retirement planning  
much easier to deal with. In other words, the reason I used LyX at  
all was because I'm writing a book on retirement planning that I'm  
posting on my website that involves a large number of equations and  
an extensive bibliography, two areas where TeX especially shines.


Thanks,

Yaron

P.S. The article says TEX instead of TeX due to a quirk of the  
HTML generation I forgot to fix.


On Jan 30, 2006, at 7:27 PM, Stephen Harris wrote:



- Original Message - From: Yaron Y. Goland  
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

To: Rich Shepard [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: lyx-users@lists.lyx.org
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 12:27 PM
Subject: Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX


Ligatures result in bizarre character choices in HTML if a font  
other  than AE is used - I suspect this is just ignorance on my  
part. When I  generate HTML directly form inside of LyX I don't  
have the ligature  issue. It should shows up when I use htlatex  
(e.g. TeX4ht) directly.  But I have to use htlatex because LyX  
doesn't have BibTeX support for  HTML. If I could just find the  
right argument for htlatex I'm  guessing this problem would go away.

Yaron


As you may know, LyX was designed for Linux and later ported
to Windows. During the installation LyX checks for Latex2html
and hevea and one other I forget. These choices are not very
easy to configure for Windows; but htlatex certainly is. So I
think exporting to Latex and then running htlatex is the way to go,  
which is a minor inconvenience=WinLyx imperfection.


I don't think you were aware, when writing your review, that
the strength of LyX is generating mathematical equations as
LyX is a front-end to (La)TeX. Until about FrameMaker 5.5
for Windows appeared which is good, the only excellent equation  
generator was Tex which ran on *nix platforms

until it was ported; from a technical writer pov, for docs
over 200 pages. Word had the very worst evaluation.

You are smart intelligent writer. But I think your review
should have used a math equation or diagram example file
for html conversion and it didn't because you didn't know
that was the strenght of LyX. Why compare LyX in the
category of liberal arts html page-makers? It isn't special
in that category and makes no claim to be special. So
your article should have at most given a one/two-line
dismissal to LyX as a textual html generating tool, and
instead informed the reader about how great LyX was
in generating a technically oriented document. Your
article isn't written correctly as a sample of your tech
writing expertise (in which I believe you want to excel).
I think you should have said what LyX is really good at.

The file below (xypic.tex) is a good example of a more
technical example of writing that demonstrates LyX.

http://www.mathematik.uni-marburg.de/~gumm/LyX/xypic/

The file does use the ae fontscheme. The high quality conversion
took seconds, while the ($450) Acrobat conversion was a flop.
I was certainly wrong about that. The conversion had a problem
with one png file that came with the document.

So to make it perfect I had to edit the source .htm file after
htlatex produced it. You can see the source htm code under
View/Source on Internet Explorer. That file needed to be edited
with a text editor. I replaced the bad htlatex generated code
Original bad code: src=xypic0x.png alt=PIC class=graphics
!--tex4ht:graphics  name=xypic0x.png src=xyfigure.PNG

with
constructed, displayed and interactively edited inside LY X. !--l.  
74--

P class=indentIMG class=graphics alt=PIC
src=Using_XYpic_in_LyX_files/xyfigure.png!--tex4ht:graphics
name=xyfigure.png src=xyfigure.png

and it took about 15 minutes to proofread it and fix hypen errors.
I think a good article should contain a produced example, maybe not  
in a blog though. My impression was that both you and Rich

produce very few equations so don't fathom a critical field area.
The LyX learning curve is less steep than (X)Emacs which is good
because complex Latex can make early inroads on LyX competence.
Just so you don't think I'm being too critical, I think you are bright
and a very good writer with a flair for computer literacy

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX (rambling)

[Stephen Harris]

- Original Message - 
From: Yaron Y. Goland [EMAIL PROTECTED]

To: Stephen Harris [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: lyx-users@lists.lyx.org
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2006 8:28 AM
Subject: Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX (rambling)



I don't think you were aware, when writing your review, that
the strength of LyX is generating mathematical equations as
LyX is a front-end to (La)TeX.


Actually my example article did use a mathematical equation to  illustrate 
the power of LyX, in fact, that was the very first example  I gave and for 
the reasons you site, TeX's background. In fact, in my  article I state 
TEX, the underlying technology for LyX, was original  invented in order 
to produce beautiful mathematical equations. So it  would appear we are 
in agreement.




I didn't see the equation. I used Internet Explorer which leaves a
large space before showing the equation, then I quit reading. When
I looked at it with Firefox the page shows up as very readable.


Why compare LyX in the
category of liberal arts html page-makers?


I'm afraid I don't understand your point. As I state in my conclusion 
The only reason I put up with LyX is that it makes handling the  formulas 
and bibliography issues with my book on retirement planning  much easier 
to deal with. In other words, the reason I used LyX at  all was because 
I'm writing a book on retirement planning that I'm  posting on my website 
that involves a large number of equations and  an extensive bibliography, 
two areas where TeX especially shines.


Thanks,

Yaron



My remark is in conjunction with your earlier comment:

But I think if you review the issues I list you will find that I am
trying to create a static document that can be 'reasonably' outputted
as HTML in the same sense that one uses LyX to create a document that
can be 'reasonably' outputted as a PDF. The key issue of course is
what is 'reasonable'? I'd argue that any basic formatting that one
would normally associate with a static document should be available
for HTML formatting.

SH: I see a lot of webpages that have links/contain documents that were
created with *tex as a typesetting engine that could have been created
with LyX. They are usually in .pdf, .ps or .dvi format, and they retain
right justification. So the conversion to textual html removes kerning.
I've always thought of that typsetting aspect of LyX as basic so that I
never thought of LyX as a tool to make webpages. I suppose the html
converters work better on *nix-like systems. The only one that worked
for me on Windows was htlatex and it isn't one of the converters that
Lyx checks for. I suppose it could added in the new converter section.
I don't think LyX is supposed to be good at converting to html because
Tex and early Latex were designed before webpages were a priority, so
there is no inbuilt compatibility. It seems like it should be easier than it
is. I've seen LyX recommended for ragged right with short stories though.

So I suppose Rich was right, it's a matter of opinion,
Stephen

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Helge Hafting]

John Pye wrote:


Hellmut Weber wrote:

 


For business reasons I'm obliged to produce some documents in
Word-Format. The copy/paste-comfort offered by Windows is to be
considered THE reference for any system which wants to compete.

   


I think that the 'rich' copy/paste technology clearly exists on Linux,
but it seems that only a few applications are using it effectively: it
works fine for 'rich' text from open office to thunderbird, and from
firefox to thunderbird. It works for copying rich text with graphics and
tables from firefox to openoffice. It works for copying bitmap
selections from Kolour Paint to Open Office. It doesn't for the GIMP,
and it doesn't work for DIA. It appears not to work from Inkscape to
OpenOffice. I haven't tried AbiWord either.

I found that there is a reference to cut/paste in freedesktop.org, which
ties together KDE and GNOME common functionality:
http://freedesktop.org/wiki/ClipboardManager

That in turn refers to
http://tronche.com/gui/x/icccm/sec-2.html#s-2.6.3

So it seems that it's a case of getting Lyx to be a bit aware of how
this is done and hopefully reproduce some of that functionality. I'm
sure it's not simple, but maybe it's something that could get put on the
list if enough people would use it.
 


Good copy/paste between lyx instances as well as lyx and
others is a wish of many, including developers. The problem is
more to find a volunteer to do it. There is so much to do,
so people tend to pick their favourite feature to implement.

Helge Hafting

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX (rambling)

[Yaron Y. Goland]

I don't think you were aware, when writing your review, that
the strength of LyX is generating mathematical equations as
LyX is a front-end to (La)TeX.


Actually my example article did use a mathematical equation to  
illustrate the power of LyX, in fact, that was the very first example  
I gave and for the reasons you site, TeX's background. In fact, in my  
article I state "TEX, the underlying technology for LyX, was original  
invented in order to produce beautiful mathematical equations." So it  
would appear we are in agreement.



Why compare LyX in the
category of liberal arts html page-makers?
I'm afraid I don't understand your point. As I state in my conclusion  
"The only reason I put up with LyX is that it makes handling the  
formulas and bibliography issues with my book on retirement planning  
much easier to deal with." In other words, the reason I used LyX at  
all was because I'm writing a book on retirement planning that I'm  
posting on my website that involves a large number of equations and  
an extensive bibliography, two areas where TeX especially shines.


Thanks,

Yaron

P.S. The article says "TEX" instead of "TeX" due to a quirk of the  
HTML generation I forgot to fix.


On Jan 30, 2006, at 7:27 PM, Stephen Harris wrote:



- Original Message - From: "Yaron Y. Goland"  
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: "Rich Shepard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <lyx-users@lists.lyx.org>
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 12:27 PM
Subject: Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX


Ligatures result in bizarre character choices in HTML if a font  
other  than AE is used - I suspect this is just ignorance on my  
part. When I  generate HTML directly form inside of LyX I don't  
have the ligature  issue. It should shows up when I use htlatex  
(e.g. TeX4ht) directly.  But I have to use htlatex because LyX  
doesn't have BibTeX support for  HTML. If I could just find the  
right argument for htlatex I'm  guessing this problem would go away.

Yaron


As you may know, LyX was designed for Linux and later ported
to Windows. During the installation LyX checks for Latex2html
and hevea and one other I forget. These choices are not very
easy to configure for Windows; but htlatex certainly is. So I
think exporting to Latex and then running htlatex is the way to go,  
which is a minor inconvenience=WinLyx imperfection.


I don't think you were aware, when writing your review, that
the strength of LyX is generating mathematical equations as
LyX is a front-end to (La)TeX. Until about FrameMaker 5.5
for Windows appeared which is good, the only excellent equation  
generator was Tex which ran on *nix platforms

until it was ported; from a technical writer pov, for docs
over 200 pages. Word had the very worst evaluation.

You are smart intelligent writer. But I think your review
should have used a math equation or diagram example file
for html conversion and it didn't because you didn't know
that was the strenght of LyX. Why compare LyX in the
category of liberal arts html page-makers? It isn't special
in that category and makes no claim to be special. So
your article "should" have at most given a one/two-line
dismissal to LyX as a textual html generating tool, and
instead informed the reader about how great LyX was
in generating a technically oriented document. Your
article isn't written correctly as a sample of your tech
writing expertise (in which I believe you want to excel).
I think you should have said what LyX is really good at.

The file below (xypic.tex) is a good example of a more
technical example of writing that demonstrates LyX.

http://www.mathematik.uni-marburg.de/~gumm/LyX/xypic/

The file does use the ae fontscheme. The high quality conversion
took seconds, while the ($450) Acrobat conversion was a flop.
I was certainly wrong about that. The conversion had a problem
with one png file that came with the document.

So to make it perfect I had to edit the source .htm file after
htlatex produced it. You can see the source htm code under
View/Source on Internet Explorer. That file needed to be edited
with a text editor. I replaced the bad htlatex generated code
Original bad code: src="xypic0x.png" alt="PIC" class="graphics">

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX (rambling)

[Stephen Harris]

- Original Message - 
From: "Yaron Y. Goland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: "Stephen Harris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <lyx-users@lists.lyx.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2006 8:28 AM
Subject: Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX (rambling)



I don't think you were aware, when writing your review, that
the strength of LyX is generating mathematical equations as
LyX is a front-end to (La)TeX.


Actually my example article did use a mathematical equation to  illustrate 
the power of LyX, in fact, that was the very first example  I gave and for 
the reasons you site, TeX's background. In fact, in my  article I state 
"TEX, the underlying technology for LyX, was original  invented in order 
to produce beautiful mathematical equations." So it  would appear we are 
in agreement.




I didn't see the equation. I used Internet Explorer which leaves a
large space before showing the equation, then I quit reading. When
I looked at it with Firefox the page shows up as very readable.


Why compare LyX in the
category of liberal arts html page-makers?


I'm afraid I don't understand your point. As I state in my conclusion 
"The only reason I put up with LyX is that it makes handling the  formulas 
and bibliography issues with my book on retirement planning  much easier 
to deal with." In other words, the reason I used LyX at  all was because 
I'm writing a book on retirement planning that I'm  posting on my website 
that involves a large number of equations and  an extensive bibliography, 
two areas where TeX especially shines.


Thanks,

Yaron



My remark is in conjunction with your earlier comment:

"But I think if you review the issues I list you will find that I am
trying to create a static document that can be 'reasonably' outputted
as HTML in the same sense that one uses LyX to create a document that
can be 'reasonably' outputted as a PDF. The key issue of course is
what is 'reasonable'? I'd argue that any basic formatting that one
would normally associate with a static document should be available
for HTML formatting."

SH: I see a lot of webpages that have links/contain documents that were
created with *tex as a typesetting engine that could have been created
with LyX. They are usually in .pdf, .ps or .dvi format, and they retain
right justification. So the conversion to textual html removes kerning.
I've always thought of that typsetting aspect of LyX as basic so that I
never thought of LyX as a tool to make webpages. I suppose the html
converters work better on *nix-like systems. The only one that worked
for me on Windows was htlatex and it isn't one of the converters that
Lyx checks for. I suppose it could added in the new converter section.
I don't think LyX is supposed to be good at converting to html because
Tex and early Latex were designed before webpages were a priority, so
there is no inbuilt compatibility. It seems like it should be easier than it
is. I've seen LyX recommended for ragged right with short stories though.

So I suppose Rich was right, it's a matter of opinion,
Stephen

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Helge Hafting]

Bo Peng wrote:


I was talking about the same thing as Yaron, Cutting  Pasting from
Non-LyX Windows.
   



And another session of lyx. If you have two lyx windows open, you can
not paste selection from another window.
 


That'd be nice to have, yes.

Fortunately, there is a workaround for this particular problem.
Open both files with the same instance of lyx, then
you can cut and paste between them.  You can only see one
file on the screen at a time though. And of course this
technique doesn't help those of us who run lyx on
several computers and display them all on one display. But
then - you'd have a hard time doing that with other
word processors anyway.

Helge Hafting

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Kevin Pfeiffer]

John Pye writes:
 Sven Schreiber wrote:
 If other users are also concerned about the copypaste-situation,
  please make your opinion visible on this list as well. (in a
  friendly way, of course)

 This has been an issue for me too.

For me, too, but I've said nothing as I assumed that this had already 
been fixed in 1.4.

Perhaps I should mention my other pet peeve (in the hope that it has 
been fixed in 1.4): the search command that is not smart enough to 
start at the beginning when at the bottom of the file. It doesn't have 
to happen automatically, but even kdvi pops up a small menu with the 
question and default yes answer: Reached bottom of file, shall I 
continue from beginning?

(And I'd love to have:

1. regexes within the LyX search function 
2. search/replace that will also handle ERTs
3. or at least a search/replace wild card option:  find Joh*son  (for 
example).

But, I will wait until I upgrade to 1.4 (or at least 1.3.7) before 
offering any other suggestions (and will then post them to the bugzilla 
as well).

-Kevin


-- 
Kevin Pfeiffer [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tiros-Translations

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[John Pye]

Mistakenly sent off-list by Dr. Hellmut Weber:

 Hi list,

 If other users are also concerned about the copypaste-situation,
 please
 make your opinion visible on this list as well. (in a friendly way, of
 course)


 I've been a LaTeX user for many years until I found LyX which is now
 my favorite already for several years.

 Quite often I encounter the copy/paste-problem, since for raw text or
 program code I'm an old vi- (now ViM-) addict.
 So in the case ViM -- LyX ihave first to mark the area (which
 requires careful selction of the area) then I can paste it with ctrl-v
 into LyX loosing the line breaks.

 Not understanding the details, I suppose nevertheless the reason for
 the  copy/paste-problem is the neither LyX nor ViM are really
 integrated into KDE. Is this assumption correct?


 For business reasons I'm obliged to produce some documents in
 Word-Format. The copy/paste-comfort offered by Windows is to be
 considered THE reference for any system which wants to compete.

 I'm very sorry about that but that's one of the arguments I hear often
 when discussing Windows/Linux even with people who are intereseted and
 willing to consider a move.


 I'm working on an IBM T22 Laptop with gentoo-Linux, KDE-3.5.0,
 tetex-2.0.2, LyX-1.3.5, Word 2000 under Windows 98 running in a
 Win4Lin-5.0 box.


 Greetings from Munich

 Hellmut

 -- 
 Dr. Hellmut Weber
 Degenfeldstraße 2, D - 80803 München-Schwabing
 tel (+49 89) 3081172, mobil (+49 172) 8450321
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 --

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[John Pye]

Hellmut Weber wrote:

 For business reasons I'm obliged to produce some documents in
 Word-Format. The copy/paste-comfort offered by Windows is to be
 considered THE reference for any system which wants to compete.

I think that the 'rich' copy/paste technology clearly exists on Linux,
but it seems that only a few applications are using it effectively: it
works fine for 'rich' text from open office to thunderbird, and from
firefox to thunderbird. It works for copying rich text with graphics and
tables from firefox to openoffice. It works for copying bitmap
selections from Kolour Paint to Open Office. It doesn't for the GIMP,
and it doesn't work for DIA. It appears not to work from Inkscape to
OpenOffice. I haven't tried AbiWord either.

I found that there is a reference to cut/paste in freedesktop.org, which
ties together KDE and GNOME common functionality:
http://freedesktop.org/wiki/ClipboardManager

That in turn refers to
http://tronche.com/gui/x/icccm/sec-2.html#s-2.6.3

So it seems that it's a case of getting Lyx to be a bit aware of how
this is done and hopefully reproduce some of that functionality. I'm
sure it's not simple, but maybe it's something that could get put on the
list if enough people would use it.

Cheers

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Jose' Matos]

On Sunday 29 January 2006 17:20, Rich Shepard wrote:
 I've not read the OP's blog so I cannot directly comment on specific issues
 raised. However, I will share my initial reaction to reading the original
 post: Why use a typesetting system designed for text-heavy printed
 documents to produce HTML for Web pages?

  Because you can worry once about the format and other times about 
content? :-)

  I have used lyx before precisely for this. I am no example in this 
regard. :-D

  My point is just that sometimes it makes sense, it is not a far fetched 
example. As usual the devil is in the details... :-)

-- 
José Abílio

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Sven Schreiber]

Georg Baum schrieb:
 Am Sonntag, 29. Januar 2006 21:55 schrieb Sven Schreiber:
 
So should bug 2138 be broadened to cover external copypaste from other
applications as well, or should a new bug be opened?
 
 
 Do as you like :-) (if you open another bug, please link it as related to 
 2138)
 

Ok, for the rest of the list: I have added the following comment to the
bug (http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2138):

--- Additional Comment #1 From Sven Schreiber 2006-01-30 13:23 ---

If technically possible, it would be great to fix the whole
copy/paste-from-the-OS-clipboard-issue at the same time.

I believe the external-copy/paste shortcoming is very serious because I
cannot
think of any other app with less support for system-wide copying and
pasting.
For most users, the shortcuts Ctrl-c,x,v are the first (and sometimes
the only
ones) they ever learn, no matter whether they are on Linux, Win, or Mac. It
seems likely that many of them discard Lyx after their first
copy/paste-experience. (Ok, this is a bit speculative...)

(obligatory anti-flame disclaimer: apart from that, lyx is great)
-Sven

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Yaron Y. Goland]

Rich, as the Newbie in question, I actually agree with your basic  
premise that if you are doing real web page design then LyX is the  
wrong tool in the exact same sense that you meant it, i.e. don't use  
a spreadsheet when what you need is a relational database.


But I think if you review the issues I list you will find that I am  
trying to create a static document that can be 'reasonably' outputted  
as HTML in the same sense that one uses LyX to create a document that  
can be 'reasonably' outputted as a PDF. The key issue of course is  
what is 'reasonable'? I'd argue that any basic formatting that one  
would normally associate with a static document should be available  
for HTML formatting.


Here's a summary of the key HTML related points I make in my article  
http://www.goland.org/lyx/:


Export-HTML does not properly support BibTex - Given that Export- 
PDF works fine with BibTex I suspect this is just a bug


Cannot create hyperlinked text using URL dialog (e.g. the moral  
equivalent of a href=foobar/a)- The issue seems to be that LyX  
doesn't natively support the \href macro in hyperref, I'm arguing it  
should, especially since PDF generation would also benefit from this  
feature.


\ref  \label don't work at all with HTML - I'm not sure if this is a  
bug in TeX4ht or in how LyX outputs. In either case this request is  
even higher in my personal priority list than the URL issue. Having  
to manually manage cross-references is just a nightmare.


Ligatures result in bizarre character choices in HTML if a font other  
than AE is used - I suspect this is just ignorance on my part. When I  
generate HTML directly form inside of LyX I don't have the ligature  
issue. It should shows up when I use htlatex (e.g. TeX4ht) directly.  
But I have to use htlatex because LyX doesn't have BibTeX support for  
HTML. If I could just find the right argument for htlatex I'm  
guessing this problem would go away.


Yaron











On Jan 29, 2006, at 9:20 AM, Rich Shepard wrote:


On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Martin A. Hansen wrote:

i would love to hear the developers (and others) oppinion on the  
raised

issues.


martin,

  I've not read the OP's blog so I cannot directly comment on  
specific issues
raised. However, I will share my initial reaction to reading the  
original
post: Why use a typesetting system designed for text-heavy printed  
documents

to produce HTML for Web pages?

  IMO, writing HTML is no different in purpose than writing code in  
other
programming languages such as C and Python. I believe that a text  
editor is
the appropriate tool for the task, not LyX or LaTeX. This reminds  
me of
experiences more than a decade ago when I had the misfortune to try  
to work
with people who insisted on using a spreadsheet as a data  
repository and

reporting tool when what they needed was a fully relational database
management system.

  While I'm sure that others will strongly disagree with me, I  
think that LyX
is the wrong tool to prepare Web pages, just as I think it's the  
wrong tool

to do visually intensive page layout (use Scribus for that).

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |   Author of Quantifying  
Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using  
Fuzzy Logic
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax:  
503-667-8863

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Rich Shepard]

On Mon, 30 Jan 2006, Yaron Y. Goland wrote:


But I think if you review the issues I list you will find that I am trying
to create a static document that can be 'reasonably' outputted as HTML in
the same sense that one uses LyX to create a document that can be
'reasonably' outputted as a PDF. The key issue of course is what is
'reasonable'? I'd argue that any basic formatting that one would normally
associate with a static document should be available for HTML formatting.


Yaron,

  My apologies for not reading your entire message before responding. We all
have different needs and prefer different tools to meet those needs. I should
not assume that your needs or preferences should be the same as mine.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |   Author of Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX (rambling)

[Stephen Harris]

- Original Message - 
From: Yaron Y. Goland [EMAIL PROTECTED]

To: Rich Shepard [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: lyx-users@lists.lyx.org
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 12:27 PM
Subject: Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX


Ligatures result in bizarre character choices in HTML if a font other  
than AE is used - I suspect this is just ignorance on my part. When I  
generate HTML directly form inside of LyX I don't have the ligature  
issue. It should shows up when I use htlatex (e.g. TeX4ht) directly.  
But I have to use htlatex because LyX doesn't have BibTeX support for  
HTML. If I could just find the right argument for htlatex I'm  
guessing this problem would go away.


Yaron



As you may know, LyX was designed for Linux and later ported
to Windows. During the installation LyX checks for Latex2html
and hevea and one other I forget. These choices are not very
easy to configure for Windows; but htlatex certainly is. So I
think exporting to Latex and then running htlatex is the way to 
go, which is a minor inconvenience=WinLyx imperfection.


I don't think you were aware, when writing your review, that
the strength of LyX is generating mathematical equations as
LyX is a front-end to (La)TeX. Until about FrameMaker 5.5
for Windows appeared which is good, the only excellent 
equation generator was Tex which ran on *nix platforms

until it was ported; from a technical writer pov, for docs
over 200 pages. Word had the very worst evaluation.

You are smart intelligent writer. But I think your review
should have used a math equation or diagram example file
for html conversion and it didn't because you didn't know
that was the strenght of LyX. Why compare LyX in the
category of liberal arts html page-makers? It isn't special
in that category and makes no claim to be special. So
your article should have at most given a one/two-line
dismissal to LyX as a textual html generating tool, and
instead informed the reader about how great LyX was
in generating a technically oriented document. Your
article isn't written correctly as a sample of your tech
writing expertise (in which I believe you want to excel).
I think you should have said what LyX is really good at.

The file below (xypic.tex) is a good example of a more
technical example of writing that demonstrates LyX.

http://www.mathematik.uni-marburg.de/~gumm/LyX/xypic/

The file does use the ae fontscheme. The high quality conversion
took seconds, while the ($450) Acrobat conversion was a flop.
I was certainly wrong about that. The conversion had a problem
with one png file that came with the document.

So to make it perfect I had to edit the source .htm file after
htlatex produced it. You can see the source htm code under
View/Source on Internet Explorer. That file needed to be edited
with a text editor. I replaced the bad htlatex generated code 


Original bad code: src=xypic0x.png alt=PIC class=graphics
!--tex4ht:graphics  name=xypic0x.png src=xyfigure.PNG

with 


constructed, displayed and interactively edited inside LY X. !--l. 74--
P class=indentIMG class=graphics alt=PIC
src=Using_XYpic_in_LyX_files/xyfigure.png!--tex4ht:graphics
name=xyfigure.png src=xyfigure.png

and it took about 15 minutes to proofread it and fix hypen errors.
I think a good article should contain a produced example, maybe 
not in a blog though. My impression was that both you and Rich

produce very few equations so don't fathom a critical field area.
The LyX learning curve is less steep than (X)Emacs which is good
because complex Latex can make early inroads on LyX competence.
Just so you don't think I'm being too critical, I think you are bright
and a very good writer with a flair for computer literacy/research.. 


I thought your article bordered on the technical category. My post
may be a bit off topic since most comments are about how to do
things when writing with LyX rather than the content, but a tutorial 
written in LyX about  Lyx over-spills the self-referential property
and I think you did post your blog url to engender responses.  
I've used LyX to typeset a right-justified letter, convert to pdf, 
convert to jpeg,  and then insert as picture in an html email wherein
the client never realized it wasn't a text-based missive. So if this 
post seems a bit too finely grained, well I might be obsessive :-).


Cheers,
Stephen 

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Helge Hafting]

Bo Peng wrote:


I was talking about the same thing as Yaron, Cutting  Pasting from
Non-LyX Windows.
   



And another session of lyx. If you have two lyx windows open, you can
not paste selection from another window.
 


That'd be nice to have, yes.

Fortunately, there is a workaround for this particular problem.
Open both files with the same instance of lyx, then
you can cut and paste between them.  You can only see one
file on the screen at a time though. And of course this
technique doesn't help those of us who run lyx on
several computers and display them all on one display. But
then - you'd have a hard time doing that with other
word processors anyway.

Helge Hafting

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Kevin Pfeiffer]

John Pye writes:
 Sven Schreiber wrote:
 If other users are also concerned about the copypaste-situation,
  please make your opinion visible on this list as well. (in a
  friendly way, of course)

 This has been an issue for me too.

For me, too, but I've said nothing as I assumed that this had already 
been fixed in 1.4.

Perhaps I should mention my other pet peeve (in the hope that it has 
been fixed in 1.4): the search command that is not smart enough to 
start at the beginning when at the bottom of the file. It doesn't have 
to happen automatically, but even kdvi pops up a small menu with the 
question and default yes answer: Reached bottom of file, shall I 
continue from beginning?

(And I'd love to have:

1. regexes within the LyX search function 
2. search/replace that will also handle ERTs
3. or at least a search/replace wild card option:  find Joh*son  (for 
example).

But, I will wait until I upgrade to 1.4 (or at least 1.3.7) before 
offering any other suggestions (and will then post them to the bugzilla 
as well).

-Kevin


-- 
Kevin Pfeiffer [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tiros-Translations

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[John Pye]

Mistakenly sent off-list by Dr. Hellmut Weber:

 Hi list,

 If other users are also concerned about the copypaste-situation,
 please
 make your opinion visible on this list as well. (in a friendly way, of
 course)


 I've been a LaTeX user for many years until I found LyX which is now
 my favorite already for several years.

 Quite often I encounter the copy/paste-problem, since for raw text or
 program code I'm an old vi- (now ViM-) addict.
 So in the case ViM -- LyX ihave first to mark the area (which
 requires careful selction of the area) then I can paste it with ctrl-v
 into LyX loosing the line breaks.

 Not understanding the details, I suppose nevertheless the reason for
 the  copy/paste-problem is the neither LyX nor ViM are really
 integrated into KDE. Is this assumption correct?


 For business reasons I'm obliged to produce some documents in
 Word-Format. The copy/paste-comfort offered by Windows is to be
 considered THE reference for any system which wants to compete.

 I'm very sorry about that but that's one of the arguments I hear often
 when discussing Windows/Linux even with people who are intereseted and
 willing to consider a move.


 I'm working on an IBM T22 Laptop with gentoo-Linux, KDE-3.5.0,
 tetex-2.0.2, LyX-1.3.5, Word 2000 under Windows 98 running in a
 Win4Lin-5.0 box.


 Greetings from Munich

 Hellmut

 -- 
 Dr. Hellmut Weber
 Degenfeldstraße 2, D - 80803 München-Schwabing
 tel (+49 89) 3081172, mobil (+49 172) 8450321
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 --

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[John Pye]

Hellmut Weber wrote:

 For business reasons I'm obliged to produce some documents in
 Word-Format. The copy/paste-comfort offered by Windows is to be
 considered THE reference for any system which wants to compete.

I think that the 'rich' copy/paste technology clearly exists on Linux,
but it seems that only a few applications are using it effectively: it
works fine for 'rich' text from open office to thunderbird, and from
firefox to thunderbird. It works for copying rich text with graphics and
tables from firefox to openoffice. It works for copying bitmap
selections from Kolour Paint to Open Office. It doesn't for the GIMP,
and it doesn't work for DIA. It appears not to work from Inkscape to
OpenOffice. I haven't tried AbiWord either.

I found that there is a reference to cut/paste in freedesktop.org, which
ties together KDE and GNOME common functionality:
http://freedesktop.org/wiki/ClipboardManager

That in turn refers to
http://tronche.com/gui/x/icccm/sec-2.html#s-2.6.3

So it seems that it's a case of getting Lyx to be a bit aware of how
this is done and hopefully reproduce some of that functionality. I'm
sure it's not simple, but maybe it's something that could get put on the
list if enough people would use it.

Cheers

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Jose' Matos]

On Sunday 29 January 2006 17:20, Rich Shepard wrote:
 I've not read the OP's blog so I cannot directly comment on specific issues
 raised. However, I will share my initial reaction to reading the original
 post: Why use a typesetting system designed for text-heavy printed
 documents to produce HTML for Web pages?

  Because you can worry once about the format and other times about 
content? :-)

  I have used lyx before precisely for this. I am no example in this 
regard. :-D

  My point is just that sometimes it makes sense, it is not a far fetched 
example. As usual the devil is in the details... :-)

-- 
José Abílio

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Sven Schreiber]

Georg Baum schrieb:
 Am Sonntag, 29. Januar 2006 21:55 schrieb Sven Schreiber:
 
So should bug 2138 be broadened to cover external copypaste from other
applications as well, or should a new bug be opened?
 
 
 Do as you like :-) (if you open another bug, please link it as related to 
 2138)
 

Ok, for the rest of the list: I have added the following comment to the
bug (http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2138):

--- Additional Comment #1 From Sven Schreiber 2006-01-30 13:23 ---

If technically possible, it would be great to fix the whole
copy/paste-from-the-OS-clipboard-issue at the same time.

I believe the external-copy/paste shortcoming is very serious because I
cannot
think of any other app with less support for system-wide copying and
pasting.
For most users, the shortcuts Ctrl-c,x,v are the first (and sometimes
the only
ones) they ever learn, no matter whether they are on Linux, Win, or Mac. It
seems likely that many of them discard Lyx after their first
copy/paste-experience. (Ok, this is a bit speculative...)

(obligatory anti-flame disclaimer: apart from that, lyx is great)
-Sven

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Yaron Y. Goland]

Rich, as the Newbie in question, I actually agree with your basic  
premise that if you are doing real web page design then LyX is the  
wrong tool in the exact same sense that you meant it, i.e. don't use  
a spreadsheet when what you need is a relational database.


But I think if you review the issues I list you will find that I am  
trying to create a static document that can be 'reasonably' outputted  
as HTML in the same sense that one uses LyX to create a document that  
can be 'reasonably' outputted as a PDF. The key issue of course is  
what is 'reasonable'? I'd argue that any basic formatting that one  
would normally associate with a static document should be available  
for HTML formatting.


Here's a summary of the key HTML related points I make in my article  
http://www.goland.org/lyx/:


Export-HTML does not properly support BibTex - Given that Export- 
PDF works fine with BibTex I suspect this is just a bug


Cannot create hyperlinked text using URL dialog (e.g. the moral  
equivalent of a href=foobar/a)- The issue seems to be that LyX  
doesn't natively support the \href macro in hyperref, I'm arguing it  
should, especially since PDF generation would also benefit from this  
feature.


\ref  \label don't work at all with HTML - I'm not sure if this is a  
bug in TeX4ht or in how LyX outputs. In either case this request is  
even higher in my personal priority list than the URL issue. Having  
to manually manage cross-references is just a nightmare.


Ligatures result in bizarre character choices in HTML if a font other  
than AE is used - I suspect this is just ignorance on my part. When I  
generate HTML directly form inside of LyX I don't have the ligature  
issue. It should shows up when I use htlatex (e.g. TeX4ht) directly.  
But I have to use htlatex because LyX doesn't have BibTeX support for  
HTML. If I could just find the right argument for htlatex I'm  
guessing this problem would go away.


Yaron











On Jan 29, 2006, at 9:20 AM, Rich Shepard wrote:


On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Martin A. Hansen wrote:

i would love to hear the developers (and others) oppinion on the  
raised

issues.


martin,

  I've not read the OP's blog so I cannot directly comment on  
specific issues
raised. However, I will share my initial reaction to reading the  
original
post: Why use a typesetting system designed for text-heavy printed  
documents

to produce HTML for Web pages?

  IMO, writing HTML is no different in purpose than writing code in  
other
programming languages such as C and Python. I believe that a text  
editor is
the appropriate tool for the task, not LyX or LaTeX. This reminds  
me of
experiences more than a decade ago when I had the misfortune to try  
to work
with people who insisted on using a spreadsheet as a data  
repository and

reporting tool when what they needed was a fully relational database
management system.

  While I'm sure that others will strongly disagree with me, I  
think that LyX
is the wrong tool to prepare Web pages, just as I think it's the  
wrong tool

to do visually intensive page layout (use Scribus for that).

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |   Author of Quantifying  
Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using  
Fuzzy Logic
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax:  
503-667-8863

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Rich Shepard]

On Mon, 30 Jan 2006, Yaron Y. Goland wrote:


But I think if you review the issues I list you will find that I am trying
to create a static document that can be 'reasonably' outputted as HTML in
the same sense that one uses LyX to create a document that can be
'reasonably' outputted as a PDF. The key issue of course is what is
'reasonable'? I'd argue that any basic formatting that one would normally
associate with a static document should be available for HTML formatting.


Yaron,

  My apologies for not reading your entire message before responding. We all
have different needs and prefer different tools to meet those needs. I should
not assume that your needs or preferences should be the same as mine.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |   Author of Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX (rambling)

[Stephen Harris]

- Original Message - 
From: Yaron Y. Goland [EMAIL PROTECTED]

To: Rich Shepard [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: lyx-users@lists.lyx.org
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 12:27 PM
Subject: Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX


Ligatures result in bizarre character choices in HTML if a font other  
than AE is used - I suspect this is just ignorance on my part. When I  
generate HTML directly form inside of LyX I don't have the ligature  
issue. It should shows up when I use htlatex (e.g. TeX4ht) directly.  
But I have to use htlatex because LyX doesn't have BibTeX support for  
HTML. If I could just find the right argument for htlatex I'm  
guessing this problem would go away.


Yaron



As you may know, LyX was designed for Linux and later ported
to Windows. During the installation LyX checks for Latex2html
and hevea and one other I forget. These choices are not very
easy to configure for Windows; but htlatex certainly is. So I
think exporting to Latex and then running htlatex is the way to 
go, which is a minor inconvenience=WinLyx imperfection.


I don't think you were aware, when writing your review, that
the strength of LyX is generating mathematical equations as
LyX is a front-end to (La)TeX. Until about FrameMaker 5.5
for Windows appeared which is good, the only excellent 
equation generator was Tex which ran on *nix platforms

until it was ported; from a technical writer pov, for docs
over 200 pages. Word had the very worst evaluation.

You are smart intelligent writer. But I think your review
should have used a math equation or diagram example file
for html conversion and it didn't because you didn't know
that was the strenght of LyX. Why compare LyX in the
category of liberal arts html page-makers? It isn't special
in that category and makes no claim to be special. So
your article should have at most given a one/two-line
dismissal to LyX as a textual html generating tool, and
instead informed the reader about how great LyX was
in generating a technically oriented document. Your
article isn't written correctly as a sample of your tech
writing expertise (in which I believe you want to excel).
I think you should have said what LyX is really good at.

The file below (xypic.tex) is a good example of a more
technical example of writing that demonstrates LyX.

http://www.mathematik.uni-marburg.de/~gumm/LyX/xypic/

The file does use the ae fontscheme. The high quality conversion
took seconds, while the ($450) Acrobat conversion was a flop.
I was certainly wrong about that. The conversion had a problem
with one png file that came with the document.

So to make it perfect I had to edit the source .htm file after
htlatex produced it. You can see the source htm code under
View/Source on Internet Explorer. That file needed to be edited
with a text editor. I replaced the bad htlatex generated code 


Original bad code: src=xypic0x.png alt=PIC class=graphics
!--tex4ht:graphics  name=xypic0x.png src=xyfigure.PNG

with 


constructed, displayed and interactively edited inside LY X. !--l. 74--
P class=indentIMG class=graphics alt=PIC
src=Using_XYpic_in_LyX_files/xyfigure.png!--tex4ht:graphics
name=xyfigure.png src=xyfigure.png

and it took about 15 minutes to proofread it and fix hypen errors.
I think a good article should contain a produced example, maybe 
not in a blog though. My impression was that both you and Rich

produce very few equations so don't fathom a critical field area.
The LyX learning curve is less steep than (X)Emacs which is good
because complex Latex can make early inroads on LyX competence.
Just so you don't think I'm being too critical, I think you are bright
and a very good writer with a flair for computer literacy/research.. 


I thought your article bordered on the technical category. My post
may be a bit off topic since most comments are about how to do
things when writing with LyX rather than the content, but a tutorial 
written in LyX about  Lyx over-spills the self-referential property
and I think you did post your blog url to engender responses.  
I've used LyX to typeset a right-justified letter, convert to pdf, 
convert to jpeg,  and then insert as picture in an html email wherein
the client never realized it wasn't a text-based missive. So if this 
post seems a bit too finely grained, well I might be obsessive :-).


Cheers,
Stephen 

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Helge Hafting]

Bo Peng wrote:


I was talking about the same thing as Yaron, "Cutting & Pasting from
Non-LyX Windows".
   



And another session of lyx. If you have two lyx windows open, you can
not paste selection from another window.
 


That'd be nice to have, yes.

Fortunately, there is a workaround for this particular problem.
Open both files with the same instance of lyx, then
you can cut and paste between them.  You can only see one
file on the screen at a time though. And of course this
technique doesn't help those of us who run lyx on
several computers and display them all on one display. But
then - you'd have a hard time doing that with other
word processors anyway.

Helge Hafting

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Kevin Pfeiffer]

John Pye writes:
> Sven Schreiber wrote:
> >If other users are also concerned about the copy,
> > please make your opinion visible on this list as well. (in a
> > friendly way, of course)
>
> This has been an issue for me too.

For me, too, but I've said nothing as I assumed that this had already 
been fixed in 1.4.

Perhaps I should mention my other pet peeve (in the hope that it has 
been fixed in 1.4): the search command that is not smart enough to 
start at the beginning when at the bottom of the file. It doesn't have 
to happen automatically, but even kdvi pops up a small menu with the 
question and default "yes" answer: "Reached bottom of file, shall I 
continue from beginning?"

(And I'd love to have:

1. regexes within the LyX search function 
2. search/replace that will also handle ERTs
3. or at least a search/replace wild card option:  "find "Joh*son"  (for 
example).

But, I will wait until I upgrade to 1.4 (or at least 1.3.7) before 
offering any other suggestions (and will then post them to the bugzilla 
as well).

-Kevin


-- 
Kevin Pfeiffer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Tiros-Translations

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[John Pye]

Mistakenly sent off-list by Dr. Hellmut Weber:

> Hi list,
>
>>> If other users are also concerned about the copy,
>>> please
>>> make your opinion visible on this list as well. (in a friendly way, of
>>> course)
>>
>
> I've been a LaTeX user for many years until I found LyX which is now
> my favorite already for several years.
>
> Quite often I encounter the copy/paste-problem, since for raw text or
> program code I'm an old vi- (now ViM-) addict.
> So in the case ViM --> LyX ihave first to mark the area (which
> requires careful selction of the area) then I can paste it with ctrl-v
> into LyX loosing the line breaks.
>
> Not understanding the details, I suppose nevertheless the reason for
> the  copy/paste-problem is the neither LyX nor ViM are really
> integrated into KDE. Is this assumption correct?
>
>
> For business reasons I'm obliged to produce some documents in
> Word-Format. The copy/paste-comfort offered by Windows is to be
> considered THE reference for any system which wants to compete.
>
> I'm very sorry about that but that's one of the arguments I hear often
> when discussing Windows/Linux even with people who are intereseted and
> willing to consider a move.
>
>
> I'm working on an IBM T22 Laptop with gentoo-Linux, KDE-3.5.0,
> tetex-2.0.2, LyX-1.3.5, Word 2000 under Windows 98 running in a
> Win4Lin-5.0 box.
>
>
> Greetings from Munich
>
> Hellmut
>
> -- 
> Dr. Hellmut Weber
> Degenfeldstraße 2, D - 80803 München-Schwabing
> tel (+49 89) 3081172, mobil (+49 172) 8450321
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> --

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[John Pye]

Hellmut Weber wrote:

> For business reasons I'm obliged to produce some documents in
> Word-Format. The copy/paste-comfort offered by Windows is to be
> considered THE reference for any system which wants to compete.
>
I think that the 'rich' copy/paste technology clearly exists on Linux,
but it seems that only a few applications are using it effectively: it
works fine for 'rich' text from open office to thunderbird, and from
firefox to thunderbird. It works for copying rich text with graphics and
tables from firefox to openoffice. It works for copying bitmap
selections from Kolour Paint to Open Office. It doesn't for the GIMP,
and it doesn't work for DIA. It appears not to work from Inkscape to
OpenOffice. I haven't tried AbiWord either.

I found that there is a reference to cut/paste in freedesktop.org, which
ties together KDE and GNOME common functionality:
http://freedesktop.org/wiki/ClipboardManager

That in turn refers to
http://tronche.com/gui/x/icccm/sec-2.html#s-2.6.3

So it seems that it's a case of getting Lyx to be a bit aware of how
this is done and hopefully reproduce some of that functionality. I'm
sure it's not simple, but maybe it's something that could get put on the
list if enough people would use it.

Cheers

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Jose' Matos]

On Sunday 29 January 2006 17:20, Rich Shepard wrote:
> I've not read the OP's blog so I cannot directly comment on specific issues
> raised. However, I will share my initial reaction to reading the original
> post: Why use a typesetting system designed for text-heavy printed
> documents to produce HTML for Web pages?

  Because you can worry once about the format and other times about 
content? :-)

  I have used lyx before precisely for this. I am no example in this 
regard. :-D

  My point is just that sometimes it makes sense, it is not a far fetched 
example. As usual the devil is in the details... :-)

-- 
José Abílio

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Sven Schreiber]

Georg Baum schrieb:
> Am Sonntag, 29. Januar 2006 21:55 schrieb Sven Schreiber:
> 
>>So should bug 2138 be broadened to cover external copy from other
>>applications as well, or should a new bug be opened?
> 
> 
> Do as you like :-) (if you open another bug, please link it as related to 
> 2138)
> 

Ok, for the rest of the list: I have added the following comment to the
bug (http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2138):

--- Additional Comment #1 From Sven Schreiber 2006-01-30 13:23 ---

If technically possible, it would be great to fix the whole
copy/paste-from-the-OS-clipboard-issue at the same time.

I believe the external-copy/paste shortcoming is very serious because I
cannot
think of any other app with less support for system-wide copying and
pasting.
For most users, the shortcuts Ctrl-c,x,v are the first (and sometimes
the only
ones) they ever learn, no matter whether they are on Linux, Win, or Mac. It
seems likely that many of them discard Lyx after their first
copy/paste-experience. (Ok, this is a bit speculative...)

(obligatory anti-flame disclaimer: apart from that, lyx is great)
-Sven

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Yaron Y. Goland]

Rich, as the Newbie in question, I actually agree with your basic  
premise that if you are doing real web page design then LyX is the  
wrong tool in the exact same sense that you meant it, i.e. don't use  
a spreadsheet when what you need is a relational database.


But I think if you review the issues I list you will find that I am  
trying to create a static document that can be 'reasonably' outputted  
as HTML in the same sense that one uses LyX to create a document that  
can be 'reasonably' outputted as a PDF. The key issue of course is  
what is 'reasonable'? I'd argue that any basic formatting that one  
would normally associate with a static document should be available  
for HTML formatting.


Here's a summary of the key HTML related points I make in my article  
:


Export->HTML does not properly support BibTex - Given that Export- 
>PDF works fine with BibTex I suspect this is just a bug


Cannot create hyperlinked text using URL dialog (e.g. the moral  
equivalent of bar)- The issue seems to be that LyX  
doesn't natively support the \href macro in hyperref, I'm arguing it  
should, especially since PDF generation would also benefit from this  
feature.


\ref & \label don't work at all with HTML - I'm not sure if this is a  
bug in TeX4ht or in how LyX outputs. In either case this request is  
even higher in my personal priority list than the URL issue. Having  
to manually manage cross-references is just a nightmare.


Ligatures result in bizarre character choices in HTML if a font other  
than AE is used - I suspect this is just ignorance on my part. When I  
generate HTML directly form inside of LyX I don't have the ligature  
issue. It should shows up when I use htlatex (e.g. TeX4ht) directly.  
But I have to use htlatex because LyX doesn't have BibTeX support for  
HTML. If I could just find the right argument for htlatex I'm  
guessing this problem would go away.


Yaron











On Jan 29, 2006, at 9:20 AM, Rich Shepard wrote:


On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Martin A. Hansen wrote:

i would love to hear the developers (and others) oppinion on the  
raised

issues.


martin,

  I've not read the OP's blog so I cannot directly comment on  
specific issues
raised. However, I will share my initial reaction to reading the  
original
post: Why use a typesetting system designed for text-heavy printed  
documents

to produce HTML for Web pages?

  IMO, writing HTML is no different in purpose than writing code in  
other
programming languages such as C and Python. I believe that a text  
editor is
the appropriate tool for the task, not LyX or LaTeX. This reminds  
me of
experiences more than a decade ago when I had the misfortune to try  
to work
with people who insisted on using a spreadsheet as a data  
repository and

reporting tool when what they needed was a fully relational database
management system.

  While I'm sure that others will strongly disagree with me, I  
think that LyX
is the wrong tool to prepare Web pages, just as I think it's the  
wrong tool

to do visually intensive page layout (use Scribus for that).

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |   Author of "Quantifying  
Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using  
Fuzzy Logic"
 Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax:  
503-667-8863

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Rich Shepard]

On Mon, 30 Jan 2006, Yaron Y. Goland wrote:


But I think if you review the issues I list you will find that I am trying
to create a static document that can be 'reasonably' outputted as HTML in
the same sense that one uses LyX to create a document that can be
'reasonably' outputted as a PDF. The key issue of course is what is
'reasonable'? I'd argue that any basic formatting that one would normally
associate with a static document should be available for HTML formatting.


Yaron,

  My apologies for not reading your entire message before responding. We all
have different needs and prefer different tools to meet those needs. I should
not assume that your needs or preferences should be the same as mine.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |   Author of "Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic"
 Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX (rambling)

[Stephen Harris]

- Original Message - 
From: "Yaron Y. Goland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: "Rich Shepard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <lyx-users@lists.lyx.org>
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 12:27 PM
Subject: Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX


Ligatures result in bizarre character choices in HTML if a font other  
than AE is used - I suspect this is just ignorance on my part. When I  
generate HTML directly form inside of LyX I don't have the ligature  
issue. It should shows up when I use htlatex (e.g. TeX4ht) directly.  
But I have to use htlatex because LyX doesn't have BibTeX support for  
HTML. If I could just find the right argument for htlatex I'm  
guessing this problem would go away.


Yaron



As you may know, LyX was designed for Linux and later ported
to Windows. During the installation LyX checks for Latex2html
and hevea and one other I forget. These choices are not very
easy to configure for Windows; but htlatex certainly is. So I
think exporting to Latex and then running htlatex is the way to 
go, which is a minor inconvenience=WinLyx imperfection.


I don't think you were aware, when writing your review, that
the strength of LyX is generating mathematical equations as
LyX is a front-end to (La)TeX. Until about FrameMaker 5.5
for Windows appeared which is good, the only excellent 
equation generator was Tex which ran on *nix platforms

until it was ported; from a technical writer pov, for docs
over 200 pages. Word had the very worst evaluation.

You are smart intelligent writer. But I think your review
should have used a math equation or diagram example file
for html conversion and it didn't because you didn't know
that was the strenght of LyX. Why compare LyX in the
category of liberal arts html page-makers? It isn't special
in that category and makes no claim to be special. So
your article "should" have at most given a one/two-line
dismissal to LyX as a textual html generating tool, and
instead informed the reader about how great LyX was
in generating a technically oriented document. Your
article isn't written correctly as a sample of your tech
writing expertise (in which I believe you want to excel).
I think you should have said what LyX is really good at.

The file below (xypic.tex) is a good example of a more
technical example of writing that demonstrates LyX.

http://www.mathematik.uni-marburg.de/~gumm/LyX/xypic/

The file does use the ae fontscheme. The high quality conversion
took seconds, while the ($450) Acrobat conversion was a flop.
I was certainly wrong about that. The conversion had a problem
with one png file that came with the document.

So to make it perfect I had to edit the source .htm file after
htlatex produced it. You can see the source htm code under
View/Source on Internet Explorer. That file needed to be edited
with a text editor. I replaced the bad htlatex generated code 


Original bad code: src="xypic0x.png" alt="PIC" class="graphics">

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[christian . ridderstrom]

On Sat, 28 Jan 2006, Yaron Y. Goland wrote:

 I wrote an article for my blog http://www.goland.org/lyx outlining  
 the various things I had to do in order to get LyX to the point where  
 it could generate decent HTML. I can't help but think that most of  
 the issues I ran into could be fairly easily solved in LyX itself but  
 such is the nature of open source, if you don't like it, fix it.
 
 Anyway, hopefully the article will help others have a slightly easier  
 learning curve than I have had.

Do you think it makes sense to make a copy of your article in the LyX 
wiki? (http://wiki.lyx.org)

/Christian


-- 
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44   http://www.md.kth.se/~chr

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Martin A. Hansen]

i would love to hear the developers (and others) oppinion on the raised
issues.


:o)


martin

On 29/01/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 On Sat, 28 Jan 2006, Yaron Y. Goland wrote:

  I wrote an article for my blog http://www.goland.org/lyx outlining
  the various things I had to do in order to get LyX to the point where
  it could generate decent HTML. I can't help but think that most of
  the issues I ran into could be fairly easily solved in LyX itself but
  such is the nature of open source, if you don't like it, fix it.
 
  Anyway, hopefully the article will help others have a slightly easier
  learning curve than I have had.

 Do you think it makes sense to make a copy of your article in the LyX
 wiki? (http://wiki.lyx.org)

 /Christian


 --
 Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44
 http://www.md.kth.se/~chr

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Rich Shepard]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Martin A. Hansen wrote:


i would love to hear the developers (and others) oppinion on the raised
issues.


martin,

  I've not read the OP's blog so I cannot directly comment on specific issues
raised. However, I will share my initial reaction to reading the original
post: Why use a typesetting system designed for text-heavy printed documents
to produce HTML for Web pages?

  IMO, writing HTML is no different in purpose than writing code in other
programming languages such as C and Python. I believe that a text editor is
the appropriate tool for the task, not LyX or LaTeX. This reminds me of
experiences more than a decade ago when I had the misfortune to try to work
with people who insisted on using a spreadsheet as a data repository and
reporting tool when what they needed was a fully relational database
management system.

  While I'm sure that others will strongly disagree with me, I think that LyX
is the wrong tool to prepare Web pages, just as I think it's the wrong tool
to do visually intensive page layout (use Scribus for that).

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |   Author of Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Lars Gullik Bjønnes]

Rich Shepard [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

|While I'm sure that others will strongly disagree with me, I think that LyX
| is the wrong tool to prepare Web pages, just as I think it's the wrong tool
| to do visually intensive page layout (use Scribus for that).

I might agree with the arguemtents against web pages, but a lot of the
problems there are exactly the same when creating document types that
are hypertext capable: pdf for instance.

-- 
Lgb

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Rich Shepard]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Lars Gullik Bjønnes wrote:


I might agree with the arguemtents against web pages, but a lot of the
problems there are exactly the same when creating document types that are
hypertext capable: pdf for instance.


Lars,

  I certainly appreciate this. I've not yet had a need to generate a pdf file
with working hypertext links. Perhaps someday I will. But, I can understand
how solving the problem would be beneficial to LyX and would allow users to
produce both .html and .pdf output.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |   Author of Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Sven Schreiber]

Martin A. Hansen schrieb:
 i would love to hear the developers (and others) oppinion on the raised
 issues.
 

As a devoted Lyx user I think he is very kind to Lyx when he says
Thankfully I haven't needed to copy anything more complex than a few
URLs so the limited copy/paste functionality is no big deal for me.
Imho it's a very big deal which scares off many potential new users. As
this is not addressed in 1.4.0 (or is it?), I kindly beg the developers
to make it top priority after the release of 1.4.0 -- in the spirit of
fixing basic issues first, before working on fancy new features.
(Although I guess it's less fun to be so reasonable...)

If other users are also concerned about the copypaste-situation, please
make your opinion visible on this list as well. (in a friendly way, of
course)

cheers,
sven

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Lars Gullik Bjønnes]

Sven Schreiber [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

| Martin A. Hansen schrieb:
|  i would love to hear the developers (and others) oppinion on the raised
|  issues.
|  
| 
| As a devoted Lyx user I think he is very kind to Lyx when he says
| Thankfully I haven't needed to copy anything more complex than a few
| URLs so the limited copy/paste functionality is no big deal for me.
| Imho it's a very big deal which scares off many potential new users. As
| this is not addressed in 1.4.0 (or is it?), I kindly beg the developers
| to make it top priority after the release of 1.4.0 -- in the spirit of
| fixing basic issues first, before working on fancy new features.
| (Although I guess it's less fun to be so reasonable...)

Is it copy/paste that you really want or to be able to insert
larger/smaller pieces from other files/documents etc?

-- 
Lgb

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Sven Schreiber]

Lars Gullik Bjønnes schrieb:

 Is it copy/paste that you really want or to be able to insert
 larger/smaller pieces from other files/documents etc?
 

I'm not sure I understand your question; I use copy/paste a lot within
my lyx documents and it works great if that's what your aiming at
(except pasting does not replace the currently selected items as in most
other applications I'm used to -iirc-, but that's a different story). So
I was talking about the same thing as Yaron, Cutting  Pasting from
Non-LyX Windows.
Hope that was the answer to your question
-sven

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Bo Peng]

 I was talking about the same thing as Yaron, Cutting  Pasting from
 Non-LyX Windows.

And another session of lyx. If you have two lyx windows open, you can
not paste selection from another window.

Bo

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Georg Baum]

Am Sonntag, 29. Januar 2006 20:18 schrieb Bo Peng:
  I was talking about the same thing as Yaron, Cutting  Pasting from
  Non-LyX Windows.
 
 And another session of lyx. If you have two lyx windows open, you can
 not paste selection from another window.

These two issues are related if you look from inside LyX: In both cases it 
is external data that comes from the OS clipboard. See 
http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2138 and add comments if 
appropriate.


Georg

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Rich Shepard]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Bo Peng wrote:


I was talking about the same thing as Yaron, Cutting  Pasting from
Non-LyX Windows.


And another session of lyx. If you have two lyx windows open, you can
not paste selection from another window.


Bo,

  I must be missing something here. I can copy from one LyX document to
another; it's the same window but different docs displayed in each. I copy
from text files and other GUI applications into an open LyX document using
the trackball.

  I've not tried invoking two instances of LyX, with a different document in
each, and transferring text from one to the other. Is this where the problem
shows up?

  Please know that I'm not challenging all of you, just trying to understand
under what circumstances you have difficulties.

Thanks,

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |   Author of Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Bo Peng]

I've not tried invoking two instances of LyX, with a different document in
 each, and transferring text from one to the other. Is this where the problem
 shows up?

This is the case. I sometimes open two lyx sessions (instances) when I
need to refer to another file, or another part of a long lyx file.
Copy/paste between two windows becomes impossible! I can not use
middle button, can not even use paste external selection. (If I have
to, I can paste to emacs, copy, and paste to the other lyx session. Of
course formula will be messed up.)

As a side note, it would be nice to be able to display two windows of
the same or different lyx files. This will make copy paste between two
files (or differnt parts of the same file) much easier. Opening two
main windows (like MS word does now) is OK provided that copy/paste
between these two windows is possible.

Bo

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Anders Ekberg]

Bo Peng
I've not tried invoking two instances of LyX, with a different  
document in


 each, and transferring text from one to the other. Is this where  
the problem

 shows up?

This is the case. I sometimes open two lyx sessions (instances) when I
need to refer to another file, or another part of a long lyx file.
Copy/paste between two windows becomes impossible! I can not use
middle button, can not even use paste external selection. (If I have
to, I can paste to emacs, copy, and paste to the other lyx session. Of
course formula will be messed up.)

As a side note, it would be nice to be able to display two windows of
the same or different lyx files. This will make copy paste between two
files (or differnt parts of the same file) much easier. Opening two
main windows (like MS word does now) is OK provided that copy/paste
between these two windows is possible.

Bo

Just for me to understand, which platforms are you talking about?
If I understand it correctly, the original observations were for  
MacOSX on which copying from other applications removes line/ 
paragraph breaks (which of course is a big drawback). However copying  
from one LyX-document to another works fine including equations (in  
Mac OSX there's only one LyX-session in one window opposite from most  
other Mac-applications) at least for me with 1.4pre3 on OSX 10.4.4.
Could the problem in the the Mac case stem from the copied text being  
sent through the operating system where (if I remeber correctly) Mac  
uses a different scheme for line-/paragraph-breaks than other platforms?


Anders Ekberg

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Bo Peng]

 Just for me to understand, which platforms are you talking about?

Linux, rhel4, lyx 1.3.7 and 1.4.0cvs, qt frontend.

 However copying
 from one LyX-document to another works fine including equations (in
 Mac

I meant copy/paste between two lyx instances.,

Bo

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Anders Ekberg]

On 29 jan 2006, at 21.42, Bo Peng wrote:


Just for me to understand, which platforms are you talking about?


Linux, rhel4, lyx 1.3.7 and 1.4.0cvs, qt frontend.


However copying
from one LyX-document to another works fine including equations (in
Mac


I meant copy/paste between two lyx instances.,

Bo
OK, if you try to copy from LyX1.3.6 to 1.4pre3 on Mac you get the  
same problem with messed up equations and line breaks (I don't think  
it is possible to start two parallel instances of 1.4pre3 on Mac, at  
least I don't know how to).

/Anders

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Sven Schreiber]

Georg Baum schrieb:
 Am Sonntag, 29. Januar 2006 20:18 schrieb Bo Peng:
 
I was talking about the same thing as Yaron, Cutting  Pasting from
Non-LyX Windows.

And another session of lyx. If you have two lyx windows open, you can
not paste selection from another window.
 
 
 These two issues are related if you look from inside LyX: In both cases it 
 is external data that comes from the OS clipboard. See 
 http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2138 and add comments if 
 appropriate.
 

So should bug 2138 be broadened to cover external copypaste from other
applications as well, or should a new bug be opened?

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Georg Baum]

Am Sonntag, 29. Januar 2006 21:55 schrieb Sven Schreiber:
 So should bug 2138 be broadened to cover external copypaste from other
 applications as well, or should a new bug be opened?

Do as you like :-) (if you open another bug, please link it as related to 
2138)


Georg

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Stephen Harris]

- Original Message - 
From: Rich Shepard [EMAIL PROTECTED]

To: lyx-users@lists.lyx.org
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 9:20 AM
Subject: Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX



On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Martin A. Hansen wrote:


i would love to hear the developers (and others) oppinion on the raised
issues.


martin,

  I've not read the OP's blog so I cannot directly comment on specific 
issues

raised. However, I will share my initial reaction to reading the original
post: Why use a typesetting system designed for text-heavy printed 
documents

to produce HTML for Web pages?

  IMO, writing HTML is no different in purpose than writing code in other
programming languages such as C and Python. I believe that a text editor 
is

the appropriate tool for the task, not LyX or LaTeX. This reminds me of
experiences more than a decade ago when I had the misfortune to try to 
work

with people who insisted on using a spreadsheet as a data repository and
reporting tool when what they needed was a fully relational database
management system.

  While I'm sure that others will strongly disagree with me, I think that 
LyX
is the wrong tool to prepare Web pages, just as I think it's the wrong 
tool

to do visually intensive page layout (use Scribus for that).

Rich



Why use a typesetting system designed for text-heavy printed documents to 
produce HTML for Web pages?



SH: Actually, I think it is a fairly widely held opinion that
TeX-LaTeX-LyX are superb tools for the creation of
documents with mathematical and logical equations. I quote
the LyX Wiki below to support this point of view, but it
is a pov held outside the LyX community as well.

MS Word's equation editor used to be poor as well as there
was a problem with larger docs and Master Document. Even
WordPerfect's equation editor was better. Most technical
writers used costly FrameMaker, usually with Quadralay.

There were thousands of mathematical and logic books typeset
with TeX as mentioned below, but I imagine earlier they used
(X)Emacs. For papers and thesis projects, WinEdt and LyX
are far better tools (than FrameMaker for Unix/Windows) but
LyX is $49 +tax cheaper == free.

There are tens of thousands of webpages related to fractals,
Physics, Maths etc then display equations. The issue is not
editing a webpage in an editor, but creating or converting
webpages which contain mathematical equations and diagrams.
Not every homepage owner wants to load a pdf doc, they
want the option of using .html. If there is a typo it is easier
to fix in .html format than editing a .pdf format doc. And
apparently there is demand for conversion to .html from
customers because Word and Adobe Acrobat ($400+)
offer that feature. So TeX-LaTeX-LyX offer conversion
for free. LyX export as Latex and then htlatex foo(.tex)=html.

Latex2html is not easy to set up on Windows even though
experts like JP can do it. htlatex is easy, and it plays to LyX's
strength of equation typesetting. It took me 30 seconds to
convert xypic.tex and ten minutes to search and replace a
conversion error which produced LY X rather than LyX.
There were no ligature problems (I have seen such though).

H. Peter Gumm wrote a nice LyX tutorial, Using XYpic in LYX
http://www.mathematik.uni-marburg.de/~gumm/LyX/xypic/xypic.pdf
I will send the converted html file (.mht) to anybody who wants it.

Converting a LyX created math/logic/diagram to .html format
is where LyX shines and there is a demand and an appreciation.
Yoland's example didn't demonstrate LyX's major strength which
is when a person does want to create an html doc, _not_ with a
text editor or some specialized html program (poor at equations).
It turned out that Acrobat conversion of xypic.pdf to html failed
very miserably. The free htlatex method involving LyX for math
was nearly perfect.

Because Yoland's example used a text-heavy document in order
to produce html, doesn't weaken LyX's strength for 'math-heavy'
documents in order to produce html. I've seen *many* such pages.
Your criticism seemed to have a more general scope of use, rather
than applying specifically to Yoland's less than optimal leverage.
I didn't see much appreciation for LyX's math capability-html.

-
http://wiki.lyx.org/FAQ/FAQ

What is Tex

Donald E. Knuth, a mathematician and computer scientist,
developed the TeX typesetting system for the creation of
beautiful books--and especially for books that contain a
lot of mathematics. His brilliant work was a resounding
success, and some variant of TeX is now used by most
professional mathematicians. If you pick a random mathematics
book published in the last five years, the chances are good
that it was formatted with TeX.

What is LaTeX

Leslie Lamport created LaTeX as a structured, high-level
interface to TeX. Technically, LaTeX is a large macro
package that loads on top of TeX. ... In particular, the
American Mathematical Society has sponsored the development

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Rich Shepard]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Bo Peng wrote:


This is the case. I sometimes open two lyx sessions (instances) when I need
to refer to another file, or another part of a long lyx file.


Bo,

  Thanks for the insight. I've just used two documents in the same window, or
the navigation menu to move around a single document. That's why I have not
encountered this issue before.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |   Author of Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Rich Shepard]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Anders Ekberg wrote:


Just for me to understand, which platforms are you talking about?


Anders,

   Oooo! Good point. My experiences are with linux only.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |   Author of Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[John Pye]

Sven Schreiber wrote:

If other users are also concerned about the copypaste-situation, please
make your opinion visible on this list as well. (in a friendly way, of
course)
  

This has been an issue for me too. Other programs like ms office,
mozilla/thunderbird and openoffice do a great job of accepting different
text formats in external pasted text. As I understand it, it centers on
the source document making copied data available in a number of
different formats, and then target document chooses and inserts
whichever format of the data it can best utilise, for example bitmap,
text, html, rtf. MS Office and OpenOffice make this process transparent
with their 'Paste Special' commands (which should be the nomenclature
used by LyX, I think -- there shouldn't be a separate internal
clipboard, either, since 'ctrl-v' should *always* paste in the 'best
format' of whatever you just copied, regardless of where it came from).

For me the cut-and-paste text formatting features that would be most
useful would be paragraphs, bold, italic and typewriter styles, followed
by ordered/unordered lists and then tables and then images. This would
useful for cutting and pasting from web pages, wordprocessor documents
and PDFs.

The current 'paste as lines' and 'paste as paragraphs' are good for
pasting in plain text but become frustrating when you start having
bold/italics and other markup in your text.

BTW we are trying to use LyX after migrating some old FrameMaker files
(painfully) for the ASCEND project,
https://pse.cheme.cmu.edu/wiki/view/Ascend/DocumentingAscend

Cheers
JP

http://pye.dyndns.org/

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[christian . ridderstrom]

On Sat, 28 Jan 2006, Yaron Y. Goland wrote:

 I wrote an article for my blog http://www.goland.org/lyx outlining  
 the various things I had to do in order to get LyX to the point where  
 it could generate decent HTML. I can't help but think that most of  
 the issues I ran into could be fairly easily solved in LyX itself but  
 such is the nature of open source, if you don't like it, fix it.
 
 Anyway, hopefully the article will help others have a slightly easier  
 learning curve than I have had.

Do you think it makes sense to make a copy of your article in the LyX 
wiki? (http://wiki.lyx.org)

/Christian


-- 
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44   http://www.md.kth.se/~chr

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Martin A. Hansen]

i would love to hear the developers (and others) oppinion on the raised
issues.


:o)


martin

On 29/01/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 On Sat, 28 Jan 2006, Yaron Y. Goland wrote:

  I wrote an article for my blog http://www.goland.org/lyx outlining
  the various things I had to do in order to get LyX to the point where
  it could generate decent HTML. I can't help but think that most of
  the issues I ran into could be fairly easily solved in LyX itself but
  such is the nature of open source, if you don't like it, fix it.
 
  Anyway, hopefully the article will help others have a slightly easier
  learning curve than I have had.

 Do you think it makes sense to make a copy of your article in the LyX
 wiki? (http://wiki.lyx.org)

 /Christian


 --
 Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44
 http://www.md.kth.se/~chr

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Rich Shepard]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Martin A. Hansen wrote:


i would love to hear the developers (and others) oppinion on the raised
issues.


martin,

  I've not read the OP's blog so I cannot directly comment on specific issues
raised. However, I will share my initial reaction to reading the original
post: Why use a typesetting system designed for text-heavy printed documents
to produce HTML for Web pages?

  IMO, writing HTML is no different in purpose than writing code in other
programming languages such as C and Python. I believe that a text editor is
the appropriate tool for the task, not LyX or LaTeX. This reminds me of
experiences more than a decade ago when I had the misfortune to try to work
with people who insisted on using a spreadsheet as a data repository and
reporting tool when what they needed was a fully relational database
management system.

  While I'm sure that others will strongly disagree with me, I think that LyX
is the wrong tool to prepare Web pages, just as I think it's the wrong tool
to do visually intensive page layout (use Scribus for that).

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |   Author of Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Lars Gullik Bjønnes]

Rich Shepard [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

|While I'm sure that others will strongly disagree with me, I think that LyX
| is the wrong tool to prepare Web pages, just as I think it's the wrong tool
| to do visually intensive page layout (use Scribus for that).

I might agree with the arguemtents against web pages, but a lot of the
problems there are exactly the same when creating document types that
are hypertext capable: pdf for instance.

-- 
Lgb

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Rich Shepard]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Lars Gullik Bjønnes wrote:


I might agree with the arguemtents against web pages, but a lot of the
problems there are exactly the same when creating document types that are
hypertext capable: pdf for instance.


Lars,

  I certainly appreciate this. I've not yet had a need to generate a pdf file
with working hypertext links. Perhaps someday I will. But, I can understand
how solving the problem would be beneficial to LyX and would allow users to
produce both .html and .pdf output.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |   Author of Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Sven Schreiber]

Martin A. Hansen schrieb:
 i would love to hear the developers (and others) oppinion on the raised
 issues.
 

As a devoted Lyx user I think he is very kind to Lyx when he says
Thankfully I haven't needed to copy anything more complex than a few
URLs so the limited copy/paste functionality is no big deal for me.
Imho it's a very big deal which scares off many potential new users. As
this is not addressed in 1.4.0 (or is it?), I kindly beg the developers
to make it top priority after the release of 1.4.0 -- in the spirit of
fixing basic issues first, before working on fancy new features.
(Although I guess it's less fun to be so reasonable...)

If other users are also concerned about the copypaste-situation, please
make your opinion visible on this list as well. (in a friendly way, of
course)

cheers,
sven

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Lars Gullik Bjønnes]

Sven Schreiber [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

| Martin A. Hansen schrieb:
|  i would love to hear the developers (and others) oppinion on the raised
|  issues.
|  
| 
| As a devoted Lyx user I think he is very kind to Lyx when he says
| Thankfully I haven't needed to copy anything more complex than a few
| URLs so the limited copy/paste functionality is no big deal for me.
| Imho it's a very big deal which scares off many potential new users. As
| this is not addressed in 1.4.0 (or is it?), I kindly beg the developers
| to make it top priority after the release of 1.4.0 -- in the spirit of
| fixing basic issues first, before working on fancy new features.
| (Although I guess it's less fun to be so reasonable...)

Is it copy/paste that you really want or to be able to insert
larger/smaller pieces from other files/documents etc?

-- 
Lgb

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Sven Schreiber]

Lars Gullik Bjønnes schrieb:

 Is it copy/paste that you really want or to be able to insert
 larger/smaller pieces from other files/documents etc?
 

I'm not sure I understand your question; I use copy/paste a lot within
my lyx documents and it works great if that's what your aiming at
(except pasting does not replace the currently selected items as in most
other applications I'm used to -iirc-, but that's a different story). So
I was talking about the same thing as Yaron, Cutting  Pasting from
Non-LyX Windows.
Hope that was the answer to your question
-sven

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Bo Peng]

 I was talking about the same thing as Yaron, Cutting  Pasting from
 Non-LyX Windows.

And another session of lyx. If you have two lyx windows open, you can
not paste selection from another window.

Bo

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Georg Baum]

Am Sonntag, 29. Januar 2006 20:18 schrieb Bo Peng:
  I was talking about the same thing as Yaron, Cutting  Pasting from
  Non-LyX Windows.
 
 And another session of lyx. If you have two lyx windows open, you can
 not paste selection from another window.

These two issues are related if you look from inside LyX: In both cases it 
is external data that comes from the OS clipboard. See 
http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2138 and add comments if 
appropriate.


Georg

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Rich Shepard]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Bo Peng wrote:


I was talking about the same thing as Yaron, Cutting  Pasting from
Non-LyX Windows.


And another session of lyx. If you have two lyx windows open, you can
not paste selection from another window.


Bo,

  I must be missing something here. I can copy from one LyX document to
another; it's the same window but different docs displayed in each. I copy
from text files and other GUI applications into an open LyX document using
the trackball.

  I've not tried invoking two instances of LyX, with a different document in
each, and transferring text from one to the other. Is this where the problem
shows up?

  Please know that I'm not challenging all of you, just trying to understand
under what circumstances you have difficulties.

Thanks,

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |   Author of Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Bo Peng]

I've not tried invoking two instances of LyX, with a different document in
 each, and transferring text from one to the other. Is this where the problem
 shows up?

This is the case. I sometimes open two lyx sessions (instances) when I
need to refer to another file, or another part of a long lyx file.
Copy/paste between two windows becomes impossible! I can not use
middle button, can not even use paste external selection. (If I have
to, I can paste to emacs, copy, and paste to the other lyx session. Of
course formula will be messed up.)

As a side note, it would be nice to be able to display two windows of
the same or different lyx files. This will make copy paste between two
files (or differnt parts of the same file) much easier. Opening two
main windows (like MS word does now) is OK provided that copy/paste
between these two windows is possible.

Bo

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Anders Ekberg]

Bo Peng
I've not tried invoking two instances of LyX, with a different  
document in


 each, and transferring text from one to the other. Is this where  
the problem

 shows up?

This is the case. I sometimes open two lyx sessions (instances) when I
need to refer to another file, or another part of a long lyx file.
Copy/paste between two windows becomes impossible! I can not use
middle button, can not even use paste external selection. (If I have
to, I can paste to emacs, copy, and paste to the other lyx session. Of
course formula will be messed up.)

As a side note, it would be nice to be able to display two windows of
the same or different lyx files. This will make copy paste between two
files (or differnt parts of the same file) much easier. Opening two
main windows (like MS word does now) is OK provided that copy/paste
between these two windows is possible.

Bo

Just for me to understand, which platforms are you talking about?
If I understand it correctly, the original observations were for  
MacOSX on which copying from other applications removes line/ 
paragraph breaks (which of course is a big drawback). However copying  
from one LyX-document to another works fine including equations (in  
Mac OSX there's only one LyX-session in one window opposite from most  
other Mac-applications) at least for me with 1.4pre3 on OSX 10.4.4.
Could the problem in the the Mac case stem from the copied text being  
sent through the operating system where (if I remeber correctly) Mac  
uses a different scheme for line-/paragraph-breaks than other platforms?


Anders Ekberg

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Bo Peng]

 Just for me to understand, which platforms are you talking about?

Linux, rhel4, lyx 1.3.7 and 1.4.0cvs, qt frontend.

 However copying
 from one LyX-document to another works fine including equations (in
 Mac

I meant copy/paste between two lyx instances.,

Bo

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Anders Ekberg]

On 29 jan 2006, at 21.42, Bo Peng wrote:


Just for me to understand, which platforms are you talking about?


Linux, rhel4, lyx 1.3.7 and 1.4.0cvs, qt frontend.


However copying
from one LyX-document to another works fine including equations (in
Mac


I meant copy/paste between two lyx instances.,

Bo
OK, if you try to copy from LyX1.3.6 to 1.4pre3 on Mac you get the  
same problem with messed up equations and line breaks (I don't think  
it is possible to start two parallel instances of 1.4pre3 on Mac, at  
least I don't know how to).

/Anders

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Sven Schreiber]

Georg Baum schrieb:
 Am Sonntag, 29. Januar 2006 20:18 schrieb Bo Peng:
 
I was talking about the same thing as Yaron, Cutting  Pasting from
Non-LyX Windows.

And another session of lyx. If you have two lyx windows open, you can
not paste selection from another window.
 
 
 These two issues are related if you look from inside LyX: In both cases it 
 is external data that comes from the OS clipboard. See 
 http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2138 and add comments if 
 appropriate.
 

So should bug 2138 be broadened to cover external copypaste from other
applications as well, or should a new bug be opened?

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Georg Baum]

Am Sonntag, 29. Januar 2006 21:55 schrieb Sven Schreiber:
 So should bug 2138 be broadened to cover external copypaste from other
 applications as well, or should a new bug be opened?

Do as you like :-) (if you open another bug, please link it as related to 
2138)


Georg

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Stephen Harris]

- Original Message - 
From: Rich Shepard [EMAIL PROTECTED]

To: lyx-users@lists.lyx.org
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 9:20 AM
Subject: Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX



On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Martin A. Hansen wrote:


i would love to hear the developers (and others) oppinion on the raised
issues.


martin,

  I've not read the OP's blog so I cannot directly comment on specific 
issues

raised. However, I will share my initial reaction to reading the original
post: Why use a typesetting system designed for text-heavy printed 
documents

to produce HTML for Web pages?

  IMO, writing HTML is no different in purpose than writing code in other
programming languages such as C and Python. I believe that a text editor 
is

the appropriate tool for the task, not LyX or LaTeX. This reminds me of
experiences more than a decade ago when I had the misfortune to try to 
work

with people who insisted on using a spreadsheet as a data repository and
reporting tool when what they needed was a fully relational database
management system.

  While I'm sure that others will strongly disagree with me, I think that 
LyX
is the wrong tool to prepare Web pages, just as I think it's the wrong 
tool

to do visually intensive page layout (use Scribus for that).

Rich



Why use a typesetting system designed for text-heavy printed documents to 
produce HTML for Web pages?



SH: Actually, I think it is a fairly widely held opinion that
TeX-LaTeX-LyX are superb tools for the creation of
documents with mathematical and logical equations. I quote
the LyX Wiki below to support this point of view, but it
is a pov held outside the LyX community as well.

MS Word's equation editor used to be poor as well as there
was a problem with larger docs and Master Document. Even
WordPerfect's equation editor was better. Most technical
writers used costly FrameMaker, usually with Quadralay.

There were thousands of mathematical and logic books typeset
with TeX as mentioned below, but I imagine earlier they used
(X)Emacs. For papers and thesis projects, WinEdt and LyX
are far better tools (than FrameMaker for Unix/Windows) but
LyX is $49 +tax cheaper == free.

There are tens of thousands of webpages related to fractals,
Physics, Maths etc then display equations. The issue is not
editing a webpage in an editor, but creating or converting
webpages which contain mathematical equations and diagrams.
Not every homepage owner wants to load a pdf doc, they
want the option of using .html. If there is a typo it is easier
to fix in .html format than editing a .pdf format doc. And
apparently there is demand for conversion to .html from
customers because Word and Adobe Acrobat ($400+)
offer that feature. So TeX-LaTeX-LyX offer conversion
for free. LyX export as Latex and then htlatex foo(.tex)=html.

Latex2html is not easy to set up on Windows even though
experts like JP can do it. htlatex is easy, and it plays to LyX's
strength of equation typesetting. It took me 30 seconds to
convert xypic.tex and ten minutes to search and replace a
conversion error which produced LY X rather than LyX.
There were no ligature problems (I have seen such though).

H. Peter Gumm wrote a nice LyX tutorial, Using XYpic in LYX
http://www.mathematik.uni-marburg.de/~gumm/LyX/xypic/xypic.pdf
I will send the converted html file (.mht) to anybody who wants it.

Converting a LyX created math/logic/diagram to .html format
is where LyX shines and there is a demand and an appreciation.
Yoland's example didn't demonstrate LyX's major strength which
is when a person does want to create an html doc, _not_ with a
text editor or some specialized html program (poor at equations).
It turned out that Acrobat conversion of xypic.pdf to html failed
very miserably. The free htlatex method involving LyX for math
was nearly perfect.

Because Yoland's example used a text-heavy document in order
to produce html, doesn't weaken LyX's strength for 'math-heavy'
documents in order to produce html. I've seen *many* such pages.
Your criticism seemed to have a more general scope of use, rather
than applying specifically to Yoland's less than optimal leverage.
I didn't see much appreciation for LyX's math capability-html.

-
http://wiki.lyx.org/FAQ/FAQ

What is Tex

Donald E. Knuth, a mathematician and computer scientist,
developed the TeX typesetting system for the creation of
beautiful books--and especially for books that contain a
lot of mathematics. His brilliant work was a resounding
success, and some variant of TeX is now used by most
professional mathematicians. If you pick a random mathematics
book published in the last five years, the chances are good
that it was formatted with TeX.

What is LaTeX

Leslie Lamport created LaTeX as a structured, high-level
interface to TeX. Technically, LaTeX is a large macro
package that loads on top of TeX. ... In particular, the
American Mathematical Society has sponsored the development

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Rich Shepard]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Bo Peng wrote:


This is the case. I sometimes open two lyx sessions (instances) when I need
to refer to another file, or another part of a long lyx file.


Bo,

  Thanks for the insight. I've just used two documents in the same window, or
the navigation menu to move around a single document. That's why I have not
encountered this issue before.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |   Author of Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Rich Shepard]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Anders Ekberg wrote:


Just for me to understand, which platforms are you talking about?


Anders,

   Oooo! Good point. My experiences are with linux only.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |   Author of Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[John Pye]

Sven Schreiber wrote:

If other users are also concerned about the copypaste-situation, please
make your opinion visible on this list as well. (in a friendly way, of
course)
  

This has been an issue for me too. Other programs like ms office,
mozilla/thunderbird and openoffice do a great job of accepting different
text formats in external pasted text. As I understand it, it centers on
the source document making copied data available in a number of
different formats, and then target document chooses and inserts
whichever format of the data it can best utilise, for example bitmap,
text, html, rtf. MS Office and OpenOffice make this process transparent
with their 'Paste Special' commands (which should be the nomenclature
used by LyX, I think -- there shouldn't be a separate internal
clipboard, either, since 'ctrl-v' should *always* paste in the 'best
format' of whatever you just copied, regardless of where it came from).

For me the cut-and-paste text formatting features that would be most
useful would be paragraphs, bold, italic and typewriter styles, followed
by ordered/unordered lists and then tables and then images. This would
useful for cutting and pasting from web pages, wordprocessor documents
and PDFs.

The current 'paste as lines' and 'paste as paragraphs' are good for
pasting in plain text but become frustrating when you start having
bold/italics and other markup in your text.

BTW we are trying to use LyX after migrating some old FrameMaker files
(painfully) for the ASCEND project,
https://pse.cheme.cmu.edu/wiki/view/Ascend/DocumentingAscend

Cheers
JP

http://pye.dyndns.org/

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[christian . ridderstrom]

On Sat, 28 Jan 2006, Yaron Y. Goland wrote:

> I wrote an article for my blog  outlining  
> the various things I had to do in order to get LyX to the point where  
> it could generate decent HTML. I can't help but think that most of  
> the issues I ran into could be fairly easily solved in LyX itself but  
> such is the nature of open source, if you don't like it, fix it.
> 
> Anyway, hopefully the article will help others have a slightly easier  
> learning curve than I have had.

Do you think it makes sense to make a copy of your article in the LyX 
wiki? (http://wiki.lyx.org)

/Christian


-- 
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44   http://www.md.kth.se/~chr

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Martin A. Hansen]

i would love to hear the developers (and others) oppinion on the raised
issues.


:o)


martin

On 29/01/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <
[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 28 Jan 2006, Yaron Y. Goland wrote:
>
> > I wrote an article for my blog  outlining
> > the various things I had to do in order to get LyX to the point where
> > it could generate decent HTML. I can't help but think that most of
> > the issues I ran into could be fairly easily solved in LyX itself but
> > such is the nature of open source, if you don't like it, fix it.
> >
> > Anyway, hopefully the article will help others have a slightly easier
> > learning curve than I have had.
>
> Do you think it makes sense to make a copy of your article in the LyX
> wiki? (http://wiki.lyx.org)
>
> /Christian
>
>
> --
> Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44
> http://www.md.kth.se/~chr
>
>
>

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Rich Shepard]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Martin A. Hansen wrote:


i would love to hear the developers (and others) oppinion on the raised
issues.


martin,

  I've not read the OP's blog so I cannot directly comment on specific issues
raised. However, I will share my initial reaction to reading the original
post: Why use a typesetting system designed for text-heavy printed documents
to produce HTML for Web pages?

  IMO, writing HTML is no different in purpose than writing code in other
programming languages such as C and Python. I believe that a text editor is
the appropriate tool for the task, not LyX or LaTeX. This reminds me of
experiences more than a decade ago when I had the misfortune to try to work
with people who insisted on using a spreadsheet as a data repository and
reporting tool when what they needed was a fully relational database
management system.

  While I'm sure that others will strongly disagree with me, I think that LyX
is the wrong tool to prepare Web pages, just as I think it's the wrong tool
to do visually intensive page layout (use Scribus for that).

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |   Author of "Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic"
 Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Lars Gullik Bjønnes]

Rich Shepard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

|While I'm sure that others will strongly disagree with me, I think that LyX
| is the wrong tool to prepare Web pages, just as I think it's the wrong tool
| to do visually intensive page layout (use Scribus for that).

I might agree with the arguemtents against web pages, but a lot of the
problems there are exactly the same when creating document types that
are hypertext capable: pdf for instance.

-- 
Lgb

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Rich Shepard]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Lars Gullik Bjønnes wrote:


I might agree with the arguemtents against web pages, but a lot of the
problems there are exactly the same when creating document types that are
hypertext capable: pdf for instance.


Lars,

  I certainly appreciate this. I've not yet had a need to generate a pdf file
with working hypertext links. Perhaps someday I will. But, I can understand
how solving the problem would be beneficial to LyX and would allow users to
produce both .html and .pdf output.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |   Author of "Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic"
 Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Sven Schreiber]

Martin A. Hansen schrieb:
> i would love to hear the developers (and others) oppinion on the raised
> issues.
> 

As a devoted Lyx user I think he is very kind to Lyx when he says
"Thankfully I haven't needed to copy anything more complex than a few
URLs so the limited copy/paste functionality is no big deal for me."
Imho it's a very big deal which scares off many potential new users. As
this is not addressed in 1.4.0 (or is it?), I kindly beg the developers
to make it top priority after the release of 1.4.0 -- in the spirit of
fixing basic issues first, before working on fancy new features.
(Although I guess it's less fun to be so reasonable...)

If other users are also concerned about the copy, please
make your opinion visible on this list as well. (in a friendly way, of
course)

cheers,
sven

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Lars Gullik Bjønnes]

Sven Schreiber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

| Martin A. Hansen schrieb:
| > i would love to hear the developers (and others) oppinion on the raised
| > issues.
| > 
| 
| As a devoted Lyx user I think he is very kind to Lyx when he says
| "Thankfully I haven't needed to copy anything more complex than a few
| URLs so the limited copy/paste functionality is no big deal for me."
| Imho it's a very big deal which scares off many potential new users. As
| this is not addressed in 1.4.0 (or is it?), I kindly beg the developers
| to make it top priority after the release of 1.4.0 -- in the spirit of
| fixing basic issues first, before working on fancy new features.
| (Although I guess it's less fun to be so reasonable...)

Is it copy/paste that you really want or to be able to insert
larger/smaller pieces from other files/documents etc?

-- 
Lgb

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Sven Schreiber]

Lars Gullik Bjønnes schrieb:

> Is it copy/paste that you really want or to be able to insert
> larger/smaller pieces from other files/documents etc?
> 

I'm not sure I understand your question; I use copy/paste a lot within
my lyx documents and it works great if that's what your aiming at
(except pasting does not replace the currently selected items as in most
other applications I'm used to -iirc-, but that's a different story). So
I was talking about the same thing as Yaron, "Cutting & Pasting from
Non-LyX Windows".
Hope that was the answer to your question
-sven

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Bo Peng]

> I was talking about the same thing as Yaron, "Cutting & Pasting from
> Non-LyX Windows".

And another session of lyx. If you have two lyx windows open, you can
not paste selection from another window.

Bo

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Georg Baum]

Am Sonntag, 29. Januar 2006 20:18 schrieb Bo Peng:
> > I was talking about the same thing as Yaron, "Cutting & Pasting from
> > Non-LyX Windows".
> 
> And another session of lyx. If you have two lyx windows open, you can
> not paste selection from another window.

These two issues are related if you look from inside LyX: In both cases it 
is external data that comes from the OS clipboard. See 
http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2138 and add comments if 
appropriate.


Georg

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Rich Shepard]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Bo Peng wrote:


I was talking about the same thing as Yaron, "Cutting & Pasting from
Non-LyX Windows".


And another session of lyx. If you have two lyx windows open, you can
not paste selection from another window.


Bo,

  I must be missing something here. I can copy from one LyX document to
another; it's the same window but different docs displayed in each. I copy
from text files and other GUI applications into an open LyX document using
the trackball.

  I've not tried invoking two instances of LyX, with a different document in
each, and transferring text from one to the other. Is this where the problem
shows up?

  Please know that I'm not challenging all of you, just trying to understand
under what circumstances you have difficulties.

Thanks,

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |   Author of "Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic"
 Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Bo Peng]

>I've not tried invoking two instances of LyX, with a different document in
> each, and transferring text from one to the other. Is this where the problem
> shows up?

This is the case. I sometimes open two lyx sessions (instances) when I
need to refer to another file, or another part of a long lyx file.
Copy/paste between two windows becomes impossible! I can not use
middle button, can not even use paste external selection. (If I have
to, I can paste to emacs, copy, and paste to the other lyx session. Of
course formula will be messed up.)

As a side note, it would be nice to be able to display two windows of
the same or different lyx files. This will make copy paste between two
files (or differnt parts of the same file) much easier. Opening two
main windows (like MS word does now) is OK provided that copy/paste
between these two windows is possible.

Bo

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Anders Ekberg]

Bo Peng
>I've not tried invoking two instances of LyX, with a different  
document in


> each, and transferring text from one to the other. Is this where  
the problem

> shows up?

This is the case. I sometimes open two lyx sessions (instances) when I
need to refer to another file, or another part of a long lyx file.
Copy/paste between two windows becomes impossible! I can not use
middle button, can not even use paste external selection. (If I have
to, I can paste to emacs, copy, and paste to the other lyx session. Of
course formula will be messed up.)

As a side note, it would be nice to be able to display two windows of
the same or different lyx files. This will make copy paste between two
files (or differnt parts of the same file) much easier. Opening two
main windows (like MS word does now) is OK provided that copy/paste
between these two windows is possible.

Bo

Just for me to understand, which platforms are you talking about?
If I understand it correctly, the original observations were for  
MacOSX on which copying from other applications removes line/ 
paragraph breaks (which of course is a big drawback). However copying  
from one LyX-document to another works fine including equations (in  
Mac OSX there's only one LyX-session in one window opposite from most  
other Mac-applications) at least for me with 1.4pre3 on OSX 10.4.4.
Could the problem in the the Mac case stem from the copied text being  
sent through the operating system where (if I remeber correctly) Mac  
uses a different scheme for line-/paragraph-breaks than other platforms?


Anders Ekberg

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Bo Peng]

> Just for me to understand, which platforms are you talking about?

Linux, rhel4, lyx 1.3.7 and 1.4.0cvs, qt frontend.

> However copying
> from one LyX-document to another works fine including equations (in
> Mac

I meant copy/paste between two lyx instances.,

Bo

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Anders Ekberg]

On 29 jan 2006, at 21.42, Bo Peng wrote:


Just for me to understand, which platforms are you talking about?


Linux, rhel4, lyx 1.3.7 and 1.4.0cvs, qt frontend.


However copying
from one LyX-document to another works fine including equations (in
Mac


I meant copy/paste between two lyx instances.,

Bo
OK, if you try to copy from LyX1.3.6 to 1.4pre3 on Mac you get the  
same problem with messed up equations and line breaks (I don't think  
it is possible to start two parallel instances of 1.4pre3 on Mac, at  
least I don't know how to).

/Anders

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Sven Schreiber]

Georg Baum schrieb:
> Am Sonntag, 29. Januar 2006 20:18 schrieb Bo Peng:
> 
>>>I was talking about the same thing as Yaron, "Cutting & Pasting from
>>>Non-LyX Windows".
>>
>>And another session of lyx. If you have two lyx windows open, you can
>>not paste selection from another window.
> 
> 
> These two issues are related if you look from inside LyX: In both cases it 
> is external data that comes from the OS clipboard. See 
> http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2138 and add comments if 
> appropriate.
> 

So should bug 2138 be broadened to cover external copy from other
applications as well, or should a new bug be opened?

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Georg Baum]

Am Sonntag, 29. Januar 2006 21:55 schrieb Sven Schreiber:
> So should bug 2138 be broadened to cover external copy from other
> applications as well, or should a new bug be opened?

Do as you like :-) (if you open another bug, please link it as related to 
2138)


Georg

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Stephen Harris]

- Original Message - 
From: "Rich Shepard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: <lyx-users@lists.lyx.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 9:20 AM
Subject: Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX



On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Martin A. Hansen wrote:


i would love to hear the developers (and others) oppinion on the raised
issues.


martin,

  I've not read the OP's blog so I cannot directly comment on specific 
issues

raised. However, I will share my initial reaction to reading the original
post: Why use a typesetting system designed for text-heavy printed 
documents

to produce HTML for Web pages?

  IMO, writing HTML is no different in purpose than writing code in other
programming languages such as C and Python. I believe that a text editor 
is

the appropriate tool for the task, not LyX or LaTeX. This reminds me of
experiences more than a decade ago when I had the misfortune to try to 
work

with people who insisted on using a spreadsheet as a data repository and
reporting tool when what they needed was a fully relational database
management system.

  While I'm sure that others will strongly disagree with me, I think that 
LyX
is the wrong tool to prepare Web pages, just as I think it's the wrong 
tool

to do visually intensive page layout (use Scribus for that).

Rich



Why use a typesetting system designed for text-heavy printed documents to 
produce HTML for Web pages?



SH: Actually, I think it is a fairly widely held opinion that
TeX->LaTeX->LyX are superb tools for the creation of
documents with mathematical and logical equations. I quote
the LyX Wiki below to support this point of view, but it
is a pov held outside the LyX community as well.

MS Word's equation editor used to be poor as well as there
was a problem with larger docs and Master Document. Even
WordPerfect's equation editor was better. Most technical
writers used costly FrameMaker, usually with Quadralay.

There were thousands of mathematical and logic books typeset
with TeX as mentioned below, but I imagine earlier they used
(X)Emacs. For papers and thesis projects, WinEdt and LyX
are far better tools (than FrameMaker for Unix/Windows) but
LyX is $49 +tax cheaper == free.

There are tens of thousands of webpages related to fractals,
Physics, Maths etc then display equations. The issue is not
editing a webpage in an editor, but creating or converting
webpages which contain mathematical equations and diagrams.
Not every homepage owner wants to load a pdf doc, they
want the option of using .html. If there is a typo it is easier
to fix in .html format than editing a .pdf format doc. And
apparently there is demand for conversion to .html from
customers because Word and Adobe Acrobat ($400+)
offer that feature. So TeX->LaTeX->LyX offer conversion
for free. LyX export as Latex and then htlatex foo(.tex)=html.

Latex2html is not easy to set up on Windows even though
experts like JP can do it. htlatex is easy, and it plays to LyX's
strength of equation typesetting. It took me 30 seconds to
convert xypic.tex and ten minutes to search and replace a
conversion error which produced "LY X" rather than LyX.
There were no ligature problems (I have seen such though).

H. Peter Gumm wrote a nice LyX tutorial, "Using XYpic in LYX"
http://www.mathematik.uni-marburg.de/~gumm/LyX/xypic/xypic.pdf
I will send the converted html file (.mht) to anybody who wants it.

Converting a LyX created math/logic/diagram to .html format
is where LyX shines and there is a demand and an appreciation.
Yoland's example didn't demonstrate LyX's major strength which
is when a person does want to create an html doc, _not_ with a
text editor or some specialized html program (poor at equations).
It turned out that Acrobat conversion of xypic.pdf to html failed
very miserably. The free htlatex method involving LyX for math
was nearly perfect.

Because Yoland's example used a "text-heavy" document in order
to produce html, doesn't weaken LyX's strength for 'math-heavy'
documents in order to produce html. I've seen *many* such pages.
Your criticism seemed to have a more general scope of use, rather
than applying specifically to Yoland's less than optimal leverage.
I didn't see much appreciation for LyX's math capability->html.

-
http://wiki.lyx.org/FAQ/FAQ

What is Tex

"Donald E. Knuth, a mathematician and computer scientist,
developed the TeX typesetting system "for the creation of
beautiful books--and especially for books that contain a
lot of mathematics." His brilliant work was a resounding
success, and some variant of TeX is now used by most
professional mathematicians. If you pick a random mathematics
book published in the last five years, the chances are good
that it was formatted with TeX.

What is LaTeX

Leslie Lamport created LaTeX as a structured, high-level
interface to TeX. Technically, LaTeX is a large macro
package 

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Rich Shepard]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Bo Peng wrote:


This is the case. I sometimes open two lyx sessions (instances) when I need
to refer to another file, or another part of a long lyx file.


Bo,

  Thanks for the insight. I've just used two documents in the same window, or
the navigation menu to move around a single document. That's why I have not
encountered this issue before.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |   Author of "Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic"
 Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[Rich Shepard]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006, Anders Ekberg wrote:


Just for me to understand, which platforms are you talking about?


Anders,

   Oooo! Good point. My experiences are with linux only.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |   Author of "Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic"
 Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: A Newbie's Experience with LyX

[John Pye]

Sven Schreiber wrote:

>If other users are also concerned about the copy, please
>make your opinion visible on this list as well. (in a friendly way, of
>course)
>  
>
This has been an issue for me too. Other programs like ms office,
mozilla/thunderbird and openoffice do a great job of accepting different
text formats in external pasted text. As I understand it, it centers on
the source document making copied data available in a number of
different formats, and then target document chooses and inserts
whichever format of the data it can best utilise, for example bitmap,
text, html, rtf. MS Office and OpenOffice make this process transparent
with their 'Paste Special' commands (which should be the nomenclature
used by LyX, I think -- there shouldn't be a separate internal
clipboard, either, since 'ctrl-v' should *always* paste in the 'best
format' of whatever you just copied, regardless of where it came from).

For me the cut-and-paste text formatting features that would be most
useful would be paragraphs, bold, italic and typewriter styles, followed
by ordered/unordered lists and then tables and then images. This would
useful for cutting and pasting from web pages, wordprocessor documents
and PDFs.

The current 'paste as lines' and 'paste as paragraphs' are good for
pasting in plain text but become frustrating when you start having
bold/italics and other markup in your text.

BTW we are trying to use LyX after migrating some old FrameMaker files
(painfully) for the ASCEND project,
https://pse.cheme.cmu.edu/wiki/view/Ascend/DocumentingAscend

Cheers
JP

http://pye.dyndns.org/