2009/4/13, Richard Heck <rgh...@bobjweil.com>: > > Etienne lepercq wrote: > >> I am new to LyX, but not as new to LaTeX : I used Kile for quiet a few >> time >> now. I would like to use LyX to work with several people on an article. As >> LyX is >> much more user-friendly than Kile, a pure LaTeX editor, I convinced my >> collaborators to give a try to LyX. >> >> There is te least one thing in LyX (and LaTeX) that is not easy to handle, >> sharing a whole document to make it modifiable by others : one have to >> build >> an archive with all figures and latex source, collaborators have to untar >> it, open LyX, read/modify/etc... and then... rebuild archive, send the >> archive, etc... >> >> This is counter-productive, not easy to use, it is a pain. One simple >> solution I see for this is to give the ability to LyX to open, say .tar >> archives, with a specific tree inside (.yx sources, then >> figures/allFigures.Whatever or something). Such archive could be called >> .lyxZ files ;-) >> >> Does such feature exist already ? I searched over FAQ/Documentation/Asked >> on >> #LyX but did not find anything more than : two implementations were made >> once, but as nobody could say which was the best... none were released !! >> >> This is not _that_ complex to implement, but is there a way to have such >> feature now, or is there a way to at least release one relatively-good >> implementation ? >> >> >> > I agree with you that there is a way to do this that makes it quite simple, > both to implement and to use. But it imposes restrictions on where you can > put files, since you can't (and don't want to) untar to arbitrary locations > in the filesystem. This bothered some people. And so it was disagreements > over how to manage these sorts of issues that led to our not releasing > anything. To my mind, this was a perfect example of the good being > sacrificed for the non-existent best, but, well, I'd really rather not have > that battle again. > > So, at present, the tar-untar routine is about all we can do. > > That said, if enough USERs thought the kind of facility you have mentioned > here was worth implementing, I'd be willing to resurrect the work I did > before and make it functional. > > Richard > > I _really_ think this is a must have: I know someone else that is willing to work with LyX and propose it to her teacher, but having to tar/untar ... will make it _very_ difficult to accept. Of course, you are right about the problem of where to untar temporary files (as with this approach, I think un-tared files should be considered as temporary files from the user's point of view) but currently LyX _does_ use temporary files when working with an unsaved document !
I think that preserving the same temporary path is not decreasing the quality of LyX, and adds a good feature (for some people, a must have, when compared to the workflow some have when working with WYSIWYG applications like OOo or MS-Word). Does such feature-request be proposed (once again ;-) ) in the dev ML to better know if your previous work may be merged now, or if the same disagreements still exist ? Etienne Lepercq -- Sincerily
