"Stephen Harris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> SH: I am not so sure that you followed this thread. So I'm going to > requote Bo Peng, his complaint and suggested solution which has > introduced the "path with spaces" aspect of this discussion. You're right, I have just subscribed to this list recently after installing LyX for my girlfriend and being very impressed with it. What impressed me most is the very clean LaTeX code it produces, in fact I couldn't have written it better myself! > Under Linux, Bo was able to browse to a directory that contained a > customized (downloaded from internet) .bst file and this worked. > > Under Windows, Bo browsed to a directory containing a customized > .bst file and it didn't work. > > Bo thought this behavior was inconsistent and unexpected so that a > warning ought to be included in the Lyx online documentation. > > Do you understand his posts the same way? Yes, more or less. > I think there is very likely an error in Bo's reasoning. Bo placed > the .bst file in a Windows directory which contained spaces. It > didn't work and that is expected. No, that is not expected unless you happen to know about the issue with spaces in file names. And I agree with Bo that when LyX accepts a .bst file you pick in the browser dialog, then it would be nice if that also worked. > [...] How would Bo's warning be implemented? The LyX browse option > would have to analyze the Windows installation directory to see if > it contained spaces. If there are no spaces it works. Yes, exactly that kind of check could be introduced. > [...] If a poweruser elects to ignore installation recommendation > and change the default install directory of Miktex/texmf then that > user assumes the responsibility of knowing the consequences of such > a change, and to implement a deviation from the default in such a > way that the install is not defeated by his interventions. It is not > the responsibility of Lyx online documentation to warn the user of > his oversights/mistakes in modifying another program's defaults. But it is a standard feature of LaTeX, BibTeX, and friends that the current directory is searched first, and indeed it works nicely in LyX with images. So I really think that users are justified in expecting it to work for .bst files too, powerusers or not. And when it doesn't work it should be documented in the LyX documentation -- not that I have looked at it, I still think the best documentation would be right in browse dialogbox where you need it. > This is not a LyX problem. A .lyx file can be installed to My > Documents without a path with spaces problem. This is a Miktex > "limitation". If the Lyx developers are expected to fix Miktex > path with spaces problem why not other problems with the other > helper programs, Ghostscript, Python, etc.? Actually, considering that LyX is a kind of mitigator between all those tools, then I think that it would be nice if LyX tried its best to work around those problems. Of course bug reports should be submitted to the upstream authors, but with LyX being the frontend to many tools, LyX will also get the user complaints. I understand that this is unfortunate since the number of LyX developers most probably is limited (like in any other open-source effort). -- Martin Geisler GnuPG Key: 0x7E45DD38 PHP Exif Library | PHP Weather | PHP Shell http://pel.sf.net/ | http://phpweather.net/ | http://mgeisler.net/ Read/write Exif data | Show current weather | A shell in a browser
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