To get View>HTML working (to be committed soon), I had to change one of the flags. I took the opportunity then to expand the very minimal documentation about this. I've pasted it below as text. Comments welcome. I'd like to make sure in particular that this is correct, especially the bits about $$s, etc.
rh ===== 3.5 Converters, Formats, and Copiers LyX has a powerful mechanism to convert to and from any file format using external programs. 3.5.1 Formats The first step is to define your file formats, e.g. PDF, if they are not already defined. To do so, open the ToolsPreferences:Converters dialog. Enter a new format name; a new GUI name (used in, e.g., the View and Export menus); and a file extension. These are required. There are also two flags that can be set using the checkboxes in the dialog. The document flag tells LyX that a format is suitable for document export. If this flag is set for a format, and if a suitable conversion route exists, then the format will appear in the FileExport menu. The format will also appear in the View menu if it has a viewer associated with it. (See below.) Pure image formats (e.g.png) should not have this flag set; formats that can both represent vector graphics and documents (e.g.pdf) should have it set. The vector flag tells LyX whether a format can contain vector graphics. This information is used to determine the target format of included graphics for pdflatex export. Included graphics may need to be converted to either pdf, png or jpg, since pdflatex cannot handle other image formats. If an included graphic is not already in pdf, png or jpg format, it is converted to pdf if the vector flag of the format is set, and otherwise to png. A Format can have a Viewer associated with it. For example, you might want to use ghostview to look at PostScript® files, or xdvi to preview the LaTeX output. You can enter the program to use as a viewer (and what options to pass to it) in the Viewer field. You can also modify the viewer associated with a pre-defined format simply by changing what you find in this field, clicking the Modify button, and then (if you're sure you want to do this) clicking the Apply or Save button. For example, to change the dvi viewer, select the DVI format in the dialog, change the viewer to be kdvi (or whatever), and hit Modify. If the operating system has a default viewer associated to a format, this viewer is used instead of the one defined here in the Windows® and OS X versions of LyX. (It is planned to implement this feature on other platforms.) Editors are like viewers: Each Format can have an Editor associated to it, entered in the Editor field, and the editor associated with a format can be altered via the ToolsPreferences:Converters dialog. LyX will launch the associated editor whenever an included file needs to be edited. 3.5.2 Copiers Each Format can have a Copier associated with it. These are defined in the ToolsPreferences:Copiers dialog. Since all conversions from one Format to another take place in a temporary directory, it is sometimes necessary to modify a file before copying it to the temporary directory in order that the conversion may be performed. This is done by the Copier: It copies a file to (or from) the temporary directory and may modify it in the process. 3.5.3 Converters To define a converter from one format to another---e.g., LaTeX to PDF---select the Converters panel. Choose the `From' and `To' formats, and then enter the program to be used in the conversion in the Converter field. You do not have to define converters between all the Formats between which you want to convert. For example, you will note that there is no `LyX to PostScript®' converter, but LyX will export PostScript®. It does so by first creating a LaTeX file (no converter needs to be defined for this) which it then converts to DVI using the `LaTeX to DVI' converter, and then it converts the resulting DVI file to PostScript®. LyX finds such `chains' of converters automatically, and it will always choose the shortest chain possible. You can, though, still define multiple conversion methods between file formats. For example, the standard LyX configuration provides three ways to convert LaTeX to PDF: Directly, using pdflatex; via (DVI and) PostScript®, using ps2pdf; or via DVI, using dvipdfm. To define such alternate chains, you must define multiple target `file formats'. In the standard configuration, for example, formats named `pdf', `pdf2', and `pdf3' are defined, all of which share the extension `pdf'. Several variables can be used in the definition of converters: 00.00.0000 $$s The LyX system directory (e.g., /usr/share/lyx). 00.00.0000 $$i The input file 00.00.0000 $$o The output file 00.00.0000 $$b The base filename of the input file 00.00.0000 $$p The path to the input file In the `Extra Flag' field you can enter as many of the following flags as you wish, separated by commas: 00.00.0000 latex Needs a LaTeX run before conversion. 00.00.0000 needaux Needs the LaTeX .aux file for the conversion. 00.00.0000 xml Output is XML. 00.00.0000 usetempdir Use a separate temporary directory for the converted files rather than putting them all in LyX's temporary directory. This is useful in cases when the converter outputs a large number of files that need to be kept together (as does the htlatex converter, for example). When this is used, FileExport will copy this directory to the directory in which the LyX file being converted resides to that, again, the files generated by the converter will be kept together. So it's probably a good idea to set this flag whenever the converter generates more than one file. The following three variables are not really flags at all but take an argument in the key= value format. 00.00.0000 parselog If set, the converter's standard error will be redirected to a file infile.out, and the script given as argument will be run as: script <infile.out >infile.log. The argument may contain $$s. 00.00.0000 resultdir The name of the directory in which the converter will dump the generated files. LyX will not create this directory, and it does not copy anything into it, though it will copy this directory to the destination. The argument may contain $$b, which will be replaced by the basename of the input and output files, respectively, when the directory is copied.Note that resultdir and usetempdir make no sense together. The latter will be ignored if the former is given. 00.00.0000 resultfile Determines the output filename and may, again, contain $$b. Sensible only with resultdir, and optional even then; if not given, it defaults to `index'. None of these last three are presently used in any of the converters that are installed with LyX. But see section of the Extended Features guide for some examples of how you might use parselog. -- ================================================================== Richard G Heck, Jr Professor of Philosophy Brown University http://frege.brown.edu/heck/ ================================================================== Get my public key from http://sks.keyserver.penguin.de Hash: 0x1DE91F1E66FFBDEC Learn how to sign your email using Thunderbird and GnuPG at: http://dudu.dyn.2-h.org/nist/gpg-enigmail-howto
