It would be much better to open a dialog box that allows PDF and other images to be viewed, and with crosshairs, select a bounding box, adjustable to the image and user taste. This is much better means in view of user interface goals, I should think.
I do not seem to be able to find means to cause a single overscore bar to span more than one character. For instance, I would like to represent the regular expression 1(01)* in the form reminiscent of the mathematical mark of repetition. When I use 1\bar{01} the mark has width of one character, and spans the space between zero and one, not the space from outer edges of both characters. It is possible for me to select a stretch of text, and to assign some kind of special character, such as italic, bold, etc. Why can I not also add the character of underline, overscore, strike-through? It is not always clear from the user interface when I should use ERT, insert math directly, use TeX commands, and the like. Experience will likely ease this uncertainty but, I wonder about finding means to ease the utility of TeX and LaTeX knowledge, such as to zero. Some things are already handled in this fashion, like emboldening text, or centering it. My suspicion is that many more such knobs can be added. The one knob of ERT, as desirable as it may be to forever retain it, should be a mechanism of last resort; is this not a goal of the team, that ERT be a last resort? Anybody know of a good open-source compendium of TeX assembly language? wrb