KimberlyQ wrote:
I am a new Lyx user, hoping to write a technical manual using this wonderful
program. Beyond the introduction and first chapter, most of the entire
manual consists of a table on every page. The table covers the full page.
The table itself is the same on every page. Only the data within the table
changes from page to page. I have created all the table pages and data in
Ms Word. I can insert them into Lyx as a screenshot image.
The body of the manual will be one or more text boxes overlaying the table
on each page. The text boxes explain the changing data in the table. Of
course, I could finish my book by adding the text boxes to the tables in
Word, but I was hoping to take advantage of the formatting, indexing, and
cross-referencing ease of Lyx.
My research as a novice Lyx user indicates that adding a text box to an
image can't be done. Before I give up and stick with Word for this project,
I wanted to ask the group of experts if it is possible, or if any workable
alternatives come to mind.
I assume your table-images doesn't cover the width of the page, so that
there is room for text on the side? Or at least some of the image is
blank, so you want text to go there?
One approach:
Insert a box, and put the image inside that. Set the box width to
something less than 100% of the line length. (For example, 60%)
This leave room for another box beside it, whose width you set to the
remaining (such as 40% of the line length.) Don't use "textwidth"
because that includes margins. But boxes are not supposed to stick
into the margins. Type your text inside the second box.
Note that the table-image can be wider than the box containing the
image. In that case, the box of text will partially overlay the image.
This will work if your image is blank in the overlapping region. Or if
you don't mind text on top of the image. (Lightly colored image with
low detail doesn't ruin the text.)
I would not recommend combining word & lyx this way, as LyX can do
better most of what word can do anyway. But since you already has these
table-images . . . perhaps you don't want to re-create the tables in
LyX. You may want to consider a LyX-only solution the next time though,
as LyX has good support for tables.
Using boxes is only one way of setting text and images/tables side by
side. The box way doesn't work well with page breaking, but I got the
impression that the text on one page is supposed to match the
image on that page. So you probably don't want automatic page breaking here
anyway?
Some other ways:
* Use the multicol package, have images in one column and text in
another.
* Use a float per table-image, and put the accompagnying text inside
the float. Either under the image, or to the side by using boxes.
Useful to get automatic cross-referencing, as figure references
(almost) require floats.
* use text-wrap floats to put text to the side of images. This doesn't
always work though, so might be trick for a book that contain lots
of these constructs.
* Use a two-cell table. Put the image inside one cell, and the text in
the cell beside it.
* If you re-do the tables in LyX, simply have an extra table cell
with the text inside it. This text-cell could be large.
Helge Hafting
