On Wed, Feb 13, 2002 at 12:16:09PM +1000, Allan Rae wrote: > On Mon, 4 Feb 2002, Jules Bean wrote: > > > Unless dia is *far* better than it was when I last looked, it's still > > essentially a graphical tool. WYSIWYG, in other words. I search for > > a more formal, logical, WYSIWYM approach. I just specify the data of > > the commutative diagram in LaTeX, the diagram packages handle the > > layout. > > You do realize that this is a different request to your original > don't you? Nobody else commented on this. What you originally > requested was exactly what Dia would you provide you if set > snap-to-grid and set the grid spacing appropriately.
[Aha! Allan has stormed through my thread and made many excellent points. I'm glad to say that I agree with most of them. However...] Well, likely I should re-examine Dia. But, let me answer that question as a LaTeX user, before considering how the answer might transfer to LyX: I use LaTeX not Dia for the following reasons: 1) Because if I use LaTeX, the labels at the points, and on the arrows, can be arbitrary math objects. Can Dia do a blackboard bold R to the power of n? 2) Because if I use LaTeX I can make (paramaterised) macros for certain commonly used diagrams (e.g. the ajoint pair -----> C D <----- ). Now, the idea was that a LyX plug-ing would get advantage (1) because it would be able to embed a mathed object somehow. This is important. (I dunno, maybe 'Dia' has a way of embedding LaTeX? I know that sketch does. But even if Dia does have a way of embedding LaTeX, I still wouldn't be able to edit it in the nice mathed way) Furthermore, it's not impossible to imagine that LyX could get advantage (2), with a slightly enhanced math-macro code. > Mathed does) then someone has a lot of work ahead of them. Otherwise > a similar approach to what I suggested for graphviz above (the .dot > file) could be used for supporting any arbitrary LaTeX package -- you > type the raw LaTeX but LyX is able to show a converted eps of the > output. That would be better than nothing, certainly. Let me re-explain my position: Currently I use LaTeX, not LyX, for my mathematical work. In some ways I'd rather use LyX, and I think you would rather I used LyX ;) I'm trying to explain the kind of things I do that I can't conveniently do in LyX, and think of possible solutions.. Jules
