Allan Rae wrote:
>
> On Wed, 18 Aug 1999, Garst R. Reese wrote:
>
> > I am at a loss of how to best solve this problem. At present, it is
> > virtually impossible to use an unpatched LyX to produce a book in the
> > (North American) common 5.5in x 8.5in format. I say virtually, because
> > in order to preview the book I must print a test copy. The closest I
> > can get with LaTeX is a5paper, which is longer and narrower.
>
> Did you try using a custom paper size? Layout->Paper->PaperSize{custom}
> and setting the paper height and width by hand.
Yes, and I just this afternoon tried again with the book.cls from
teTeX-1.0 without my changes. If I simply set a custom papersize, all
looks fine on the LyX screen, but half the text is off screen when I
view postscript. I can get a rough idea of how things will look using
A5, but the difference in length changes the widow/orphan
situation--sometimes disastrously.
> > I gather from lgb that violating a base class is some sort of heresy.
>
> I think Lars' suggestion for having each layout specify what paper sizes
> it supports may be best in the long run. That way we'll at least be able
> to offer support for the a0poster.cls that someone else suggested
> recently. I suspect we'd also need to keep the paper size definitions in
> a file we can read in at start-up rather than continue hardcoding them.
> That would make it infinitely easier to add new paper sizes at a local
> site. It might also mean we could automatically support any papersize for
> any class by automatically filling in the custom paper sizing for those
> classes that need it.
>
> Of course we'd need to know if this actually works first. Garst, could
> you try setting the custom paper size and compare the output to that of
> your modified-for-statement-paper book.cls?
The way I have been handling this is to use psutils to do the printing.
In LyX I did everything in usletter size, then let psbook, psnup, and
psselect sort things out. I can view the results with gv, but then have
to go back to LyX and guess at the best fix for widows and orphans, the
repeat the whole process.
> > My feeling is that it was some sort of gross stupidity on the part of
> > LaTeX developers to ignore this paper size.
>
> You should file a bug report.
Can you suggest a good place to send it to?
Garst
