José Matos wrote: > Public release of LyX version 1.5.0 (beta 1) > =================================== > > We are glad to announce the release of LyX 1.5.0 (beta 1). > > It is the culmination of 1 year of hard work, and we sincerely hope > you will enjoy the results. The changes are too numerous to > summarize in a few words, with initial unicode support as the flagship > of new features. Jump directly to the end of this message if you want > to know the differences to the latest stable version (1.4.4). > > As usual with major releases, a lot of work that is not directly > visible has taken place. The core of LyX has seen more cleanups and > some of the new features are the direct results of this work. > > See the file RELEASE-NOTES for some known problems in that release. > > In case you are wondering what LyX is, here is what > http://www.lyx.org/ has to say on the subject: > > LyX is a document processor that encourages an approach to writing > based on the structure of your documents, not their appearance. It > is released under a Free Software / Open Source license. > > LyX is for people that write and want their writing to look great, > right out of the box. No more endless tinkering with formatting > details, 'finger painting' font attributes or futzing around with page > boundaries. You just write. In the background, Prof. Knuth's legendary > TeX typesetting engine makes you look good. > > On screen, LyX looks like any word processor; its printed output -- or > richly cross-referenced PDF, just as readily produced -- looks like > nothing else. Gone are the days of industrially bland .docs, all > looking similarly not-quite-right, yet coming out unpredictably > different on different printer drivers. Gone are the crashes 'eating' > your dissertation the evening before going to press. > > LyX is stable and fully featured. It is a multi-platform, fully > internationalized application running natively on Unix/Linux and the > Macintosh and modern Windows platforms. > > You can download LyX 1.5.0beta1 here (the .bz2 are compressed with > bzip2, which yields smaller files): > > ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/lyx/pre/lyx-1.5.0beta1.tar.gz > ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/lyx/pre/lyx-1.5.0beta1.tar.bz2 > > Note that due to the ammount of changes no patch is provided to upgrade >>from version 1.4.4. > > Prebuilt binaries (rpms for linux distributions, Mac OS X and Windows > installers) should soon be available at > ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/pre/
Until then try ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/lyx/pre/ > > > If you find what you think is a bug in LyX 1.5.0beta1, you may either > e-mail the LyX developers' mailing list (lyx-devel @ lists.lyx.org), or open > a bug report at http://bugzilla.lyx.org > > If you're having trouble using the new version of LyX, or have a question, > first check out http://www.lyx.org/help/. If you can't find the answer there, > e-mail the LyX users' list (lyx-users @ lists.lyx.org). > > Enjoy! > > The LyX team. > > > What's new in version 1.5.0 (beta 1)? > ---------------------------- > > * Unicode > > LyX 1.5's big goal was to use unicode internally and so resolve a slew > of existing problems with special characters and non-alphabetic > languages. LyX 1.5 is able to output unicode (in addition to > encodings current available), so that you can use LaTeX's new utf8 > encoding or such brand new typesetting systems as XeTeX. > Since the change to unicode touched much of the code base and some > areas still need a cleanup it is very likely that some bugs related to > the unicode transition still exist. Please have a look at the Known > bugs in LyX 1.5 page if you encounter a bug that seems to be related > to unicode. If it's not there, then please report it to the lyx-devel > mailing list. > > * Multiple views of the same buffer > > LyX can now display multiple views of the same buffer. I.e., you can > now open a single document in multiple windows and work on different > parts of it synchronously. > > * Outliner > > LyX has another long-awaited feature: a basic outliner mode, in which > you can move chapters and sections around in the Table of Contents > dialog. (The outliner has been backported and was released with LyX > 1.4.4.) > > * Session managment > > LyX is now able to remember window size and position and it will > reopen the documents you worked on last time around. If you've > selected the feature in the Preferences dialog, it'll even move the > cursor to the place you were working on last! Furthermore, toolbars > can (finally!) be switched on/off in View->Toolbars and moved about in > the LyX window. The session managment will remember their state. > > * Source code Viewer > > As a kind of "anti-preview-latex", a dialog was implemented that lets > you view the source code of a given paragraph/selection or the whole > document. > > * New Font Selection Interface > > LyX's font selection abilities have been one of its weakest and most > outdated components. A completely new interface was implemented that > provides access to the power of LaTeX's font selection scheme. > > * Tabular extensions > > LyX's table support is certainly less powerful than that of > LaTeX. support for the booktabs package was implemented, which > provides beautiful and elegant tabulars. > > > * Glossaries > > Native LyX support for the nomencl package was implemented. With this, > you can treat your document with all sorts of nomenclatures, > glossaries and fancy notations. > > * Tabbed Widget > > LyX now uses tabbed widgets to display multiple documents. > > * Frontend News > > LyX 1.5 will use the Qt4 toolkit. This is especially good news for > Windows users, since there's an official, GPL version of Qt4. They no > longer have to rely on an unofficial port of the Unix Qt3 library to > Windows. The good old XForms frontend went the way of the dodo. It > was both hated and loved, and certainly shaped the unique look of LyX > in the past. It was finally killed off, however, by the switch to > unicode. The Qt3 frontend was removed. The work on the GTK frontend > has been transfered to a branch because its development has > essentially stalled. > > * Change tracking enhancements > > Major parts of the change tracking code were rewrote addressing > several problems that existed in the existing implementation. > > * Converter file cache > > A cache for converted files, such as included figures, was > implemented. This can speed up LyX's performance considerably when > displaying documents with many included figures that need conversion > to a format that can be rendered on screen. The converter file cache > is disabled by default, and there is no GUI for configuring it yet. If > you want to use it, add the line > \use_converter_cache true > > to your preferences file. The default maximum age of a cached file is > 6 months. You can change that with the line > \converter_cache_maxage xxx > > where xxx is the maximum age in seconds. > > * Unified Windows installer > > The two windows installers are being merged and bug reports regarding > both installers are welcome. > > * Under the hood > > As usual, one big task has been the ongoing code cleanup of the LyX > core. Performing this cleanup makes the code more understandable and > easier to maintain. It also leads inevitably to a more robust > application. Nonetheless, it's an unfortunate fact of life that ugly > code is sometimes faster than pretty code. We're well aware that LyX > 1.4 is slower than LyX 1.3. One important goal of this 1.5 development > series has been to bring this speed back. > > ** Bug fixes > > Lots of long-lasting bugs have been fixed, as documented in LyX > bugzilla. > -- Peter Kümmel
