On Sun, Sep 30, 2007 at 10:44:37PM +0200, Helge Hafting wrote: > Bo Peng wrote: > >>So if we ship LyX with built-in "emph" and "strong" charstyles, then > >>the users wanting bold and italic gets what they want. And we > >>still have the advantages of charstyles - a special document > >>class can override "strong" to do a color trick, for example. > >> > > > >1. charstyle is more difficult to use than font change. For example, > >if you have abcdef in a charstyle, and you want to change all or part > >of them to normal style, several steps are needed. Toggle-bold etc are > >much easier in this case. So, for simple cases, font-change is easier > >and should be preferred. > > > Nothing stops us from having toggles on our built-in > charstyles.
Backspace at the starting position inside deletes the charstyle. > >2. charstyles are not ready for 1.5.0. There is no default charstyle > >defined anywhere, and there is no easy way to create one. Do you guys > >really expect a normal user to hand-edit a .layout file? > > > Not at all. Which is why I suggested that LyX ships with > "strong" and "emph" charstyles predefined. _We_ can > put those two into the .layouts we distribute so that > the users won't have to! They will only need that > hand-editing if they want _more_ charstyles. > > My impression is that charstyles works in 1.5, there is just no > user-friendly way of adding them. This does not prevent > developers from adding some common styles. Hmmm yes... provided they default to label off. > >3. Bold is needed. In many cases, more than one emphasis style are > >needed so \em alone is not enough. In case that there is no \strong, > >\textbf should be provided. (My opinion is that both should exist). > > > With emph and strong, you do have a bold. Unless you > redefine strong - but if you do that, then you're able to > define some other bold. > The typical use for a different "strong" is if the font > in use is bold already though. Such as in the > headings - they are already bold. > >4. Bold is commonly used so all word processors put them upfront. > >Jurgen argued that lyx is not a word processor, but that was nonsense. "Everybody" may be wrong, and often is. This is one example. > Which is why I suggest to distribute a "strong" that in > all standard classes _will_ be bold. Problem solved - users > then have an emphasis stronger than "emph". > > I don't think calling it "strong" instead of "bold" really will > scare people away. That will just be one of the many little > differences in LyX, the lack of rulers and linebreaking that doesn't match > output surely is a bigger thing to get used to. . . > >5. Trying to force users to use lyx/latex in a certain way is wrong. > >Not able to mark a word bold in 5 minutes is enough for a new user to > >give up lyx. > > > Possibly. Which is why I suggest a predefined "strong" > that indeed does "bold" when using the distributed .layouts. > > Stick it on the toolbar (like emph) for easy access. If the user s > don't understand the word "strong", then perhaps they > understand the bold-looking button. :-) +1 > Helge Hafting - Martin
