Am Dienstag, 8. November 2005 18:32 schrieb hagit lev: > Hi > I have lots of material - such as Surfer maps, Origin graphs etc. and I > wondered if I can import them directly to Lyx or need to export them > first to jpeg and only then import ?
You can import any figure material directly if you have a tool that can convert it (from the command line) to a format that LyX knows of. You then need to define this tool as a converter. The Wiki and Customization guide tell you how this works. If such a tool is not available you need to export the figures. I recommend the following formats: EPS or PDF for vector graphics (i. e. some graphs) PNG for bitmap figures with a small number of colors (e. g. scanned material) JPEG for bitmals with a lot of colors (e. g. photos), but keep in mind that the JPEG format is lossy > Cause I tried to export surfer to EMF, but the result in the DVI file > was a huge picture, and when I tried to minimize it (scaling it to only > 20% in the figure dialog box) the quality was horrible. In theory EMF would work well for vector graphics. In practice the EMF -> EPS converters available on Linux don't work well enough (because EMF and WMF formats are no real file formats, but simply a recording of the windows API calls that are needed to produce the figure on screen or on printer). The situation might be better if you are on windows, I have been told that better converters are available on that OS. You might get good results with EMF if you specify such a tool as EMF -> EPS converter. Georg
