M-L wrote:
I will attempt that, though I may have tried it before? I know I have tried just about everything I could think of, and found nothing that worked. I tried that firstfootvpos though I didn't know whether it required a "\" in front of it or not and tried it with that and without and various brackets and a whole lot of other combinations.If I knew more about LaTeX and LyX, would have a crack at re-writing the manual but in a different format. That's not a criticisms, it's simply and observation as to why I, who is in the minority, can't grasp all the concepts. Probably because I left school at the age of 14, and have only used computers for the last decade. For someone like me it really requires an example of the preamble and then an explanation of each line, and why those commands work in letter and not in article, etc., or whatever.
Latex can be tricky. LyX tries to help that, by offering easier dialog boxes for common stuff. You should be able to set the margin sizeswithout any latex commands at all. Some latex will be necessary to make a multiline footer though.
I started reading the scrguien.pdf from the start, but it was hard going, and data overload. Going to the sections was better, but like many of these manuals written by experts, they presume the reader has a greater understanding than may be the case, which chases me back to previous chapters and then I start getting lost again.
Well known problem! This can be fixed by reading books that explains latex from scratch. Kopka and Daly "Guide to Latex" is a good one. Get it from the library to see if it helps, buy it later if you findit useful. It explains what all those other manual writers expect you to know. It certainly helped me.
During my frustrations I wrote in my journal: [quote]Trying to understand something this large with a brain this small is an arrogance of a kind in itself.[end quote]
Not a small brain, just lack of training. Latex package manuals gets easier if you learn the basics first.
I then tried the letter [KOMA v2] template and started adapting it to my needs. I still didn't understand much of what it did, and found things in the preamble were duplicated by the commands that were point and click in LyX, and other preamble entries were not permitted. [Disclaimer - aware that LyX does not take all LaTeX commands and may never do so as stated in the introduction of LyX]There was also a funny thing, when I opened a new document in LyX Letter [KOMA-script v2] and tried to insert some of the preamble from the template, one at a time, they didn't work, or didn't work properly. I couldn't understand that at all. I kept adding things from the template and I'm not certain that I didn't copy the whole preamble into the new LyX document before they worked? But I am not sure any more if this was the case. I have a funny feeling they still didn't work, so the template used something different again?
Letters are a bit special. The letter document class sort of have a
"all or nothing" approach, which isn't very user-friendly. If you
want to use letter, start with the Lyx template and work from there.
It just fails if some of the required fields aren't present.
Other document classes are easier to use, without such hidden requirements.
I have attached a lyx document with a multiline footer,
custom margins, and no more latex than necessary.
Here is how to do it:
1. Create a document, of type koma-script article.
2. Menu Document->settings
3. Click "Page Layout" in the document settings dialog box
4. Set the Page style to "fancy" using the dropdown menu / combobox.
5. Click "Page margins" in the dialog box
6. Uncheck "default margins"
7. Specify other margins, I used 5cm top and bottom margins.
8. Click "LaTeX Preamble" in the dialog box.
9. Enter this text in the preamble:
\lfoot{Test line1\\line2\\line3\\line4}
Put in as many lines as you like. "\lfoot" means "left footer", this
command works because you set the pagestyle to "fancy".
You may also use \rfoot{right footer} \cfoot{center footer}
as well as \lhead, \rhead and \chead for the headers.
10.Click "OK" in the dialog, to get rid of it.
11.Enter normal text in the document, then print or view it.
12.Fine-tune the bottom margin if you need to. A bigger margin has
more room for the footer, a smaller margin will push a big
footer down and possibly across the paper edge.
This footer is the same on all pages. It is possible to get
variable stuff too, such as the page number. Ask again
if you need more tips.
Helge Hafting
footer.lyx
Description: application/lyx
