Greetings all - I wanted to offer a suggestion about a portable LyX file format. This was recently brought up on the LyX-users mailing list and has been discussed previously (heatedly?) as documented here - http://wiki.lyx.org/Devel/BundleSuggestions - and here - http://wiki.lyx.org/Devel/BundleRoadmap.
Before reading those pages I devised what seemed to me to be a decent scheme for organizing a portable lyx file format. It is mostly in line with Richard's ideas. The basic differences are (1) a different extension is used (.plyx) and (2) a special file is maintained in the bundle, called manifest.xml, which contains information about where external copies of the documents reside. This has the distinct advantage that two collaborators, on possibly different operating systems, could have LyX properly link the internal file with their local copy of the external file. This allows for a lossless .lyx -> .plyx -> .lyx conversion. Although .plyx -> .lyx -> .plyx could be lossy, a script could be used to update the manifest of a new .plyx file based on an old .plyx file to minimize the loss. The goal for my specification is making document collaboration among two LyX users as simple and painless as possible. I have attached a file that summarized my thoughts on the specification. Comments and constructive criticism are welcome. David
plyx
Description: Binary data
