Den 27. feb. 2015 22:31, skrev Scott Kostyshak:
On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 4:14 PM, aparsloe <apars...@clear.net.nz> wrote:
I've noticed that although LyX may report LaTeX errors and not display a
pdf, nonetheless one is still produced in the temporary directory and can be
displayed by double clicking. For example, create a math inset, insert an
undefined control sequence, e.g. \blah, and a symbol or two, say xyz, and
compile to pdf. LyX reports an undefined control sequence error and stops
without displaying the pdf, but it *is* created in the temporary directory
and will display a nicely typeset xyz.
Indeed. The question is: *should* LyX show the PDF?
In my opinion, the current (released) behaviour is fine. LyX do not
bring up a PDF when something went wrong. But if you have a viewer open,
that viewer might decide on its own to reload the changed pdf from disk.
We should bear in mind that LyX has 2 kinds of user. The simpler ones
don't know about latex, and LyX hides most of the complexity from them.
Of course, they rarely use ERT and are not really supposed to get
compile errors on their documents.
They might get confused from a failed PDF showing up - especially if it
is blank or if it seems ok (just a figure missing on page 103, something
you don't notice casually.)
The other kind knows latex - perhaps a lot - and do a lot of work in
ERT. They get compile errors, expect them, and can fix them. So they
need to see the error message text. Seeing the half-baked PDF is useful
in some cases, it can give a good idea of what went wrong in a TIKZ
figure for example. So these users leave the PDF viewer open, and
wouldn't like having to hunt through /tmp to look at the problems.
Helge Hafting
