On Thu, 16 Nov 2006, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:

> >>>>> "christian" == christian ridderstrom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
> christian> As I see it, a document should not have to change as an end
> christian> result if it is first converted to another document class
> christian> and then converted back to the original document class.
> 
> We have undo for that...

Except that I thought undo didn't cover this case (which could be 
considered a bug of course). In any case, undo won't help if I have saved 
the document (see further down).

> christian> In other words, the layout of all paragraphs is the same as
> christian> before the initial conversion. This should work with
> christian> arbitrary classes, i.e. the classes shouldn't have to be
> christian> made to interoperate. I also think it should work even if
> christian> the document is saved in between the changes.
> 
> It is not possible: how can the letter class and the hollywood class
> interoperate? How can you do anything useful?

The reason I feel this would be good is because I remember that I used to 
try and change the document class now and then, e.g. between different 
Book classes, just to see if I prefer some other class. In fact, one of 
the things I used to demonstrate when showing off LyX was this ability to 
switch between document classes and get drastically different appearances.

So sometimes I changed the class, but later discovered that I didn't like 
it, or it was not interoperable, i.e. some layouts are missing. At this 
point I could then change back to the original document class, only to 
discover that some of the paragraphs have lost their original layout. It 
has also happened to me that I didn't discover that I lost some of the 
layouts until after I had saved the document and opened it a few days 
later.

I've mostly thought of the document class as something that's orthogonal 
to the content. So I would like to be able to switch the document class, 
just to see if I prefer the new class. However, it's no fun if switching 
class causes an irreversible change.

That's basically it... I do realize that this is a non-trivial problem, 
but I have always found the ability to change document class to be one of 
the most powerful features of LyX. 

I think it's unreasonable to expect document classes to be interoperable 
in general, but at least I don't want to lose information by just 
switching back and forth.

I hope you have a better understanding of the problem now. It is probably 
something better left for the future as it is a complicated problem. 
However, I would find it interesting to discuss the feasibility, and I 
could later add something about it to Bugzilla.

regards
/Christian

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

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