file input not updating.
I'm using the lyx "file input" control to input a child.lyx document within a master foo.lyx The child is being worked on and updated elswhere. The only way I can get the master, foo.pdf, output to find changes in the child.lyx is to restart lyx. q. Is there an easier way? Rob
Re: APA6 class with LyX?
Hi Wolfgang, I'm glad they were helpful: On Tue, 2012-12-11 at 10:36 +0100, Wolfgang Engelmann wrote: > Am Montag, 10. Dezember 2012, 21:31:25 schrieben Sie: > > Hi, Rob, > > has this been done already: > > TeXLive 2009 is included with Ubuntu 10.04, if you are able to update your > Linux distribution. If not, it is possible to install newer versions of > TeXLive alongside an existing install. I am currently working on a blog > post that explains how this is done and I will post it when finished. A lot of those entries have gotten a bit long in the tooth (though I think everything is still applicable, one of the really nice thing about TeX and LyX, it never feels like there is a system of planned obsolescence). Regarding how to upgrade TeX Live, I did write a post describing how to do it: http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/07/15/latex-custom Though it talks about LaTeX 2010, the instructions can be adapted to nearly any LaTeX distribution, as far as I know. I used the same procedure recently to install TeXLive 2012. (Speaking of which, if you use TeXLive 2012 and luaTeX, be very careful. They've made some big changes, and it's caused a bunch of things to break. Or, at least none of my luaTeX documents will compile anymore; both from LyX and pure TeX. I haven't yet had time to sort out where the problem is.) I'd love to link to a more updated set of instructions. When you finish your post, let me know, I'll to post a link. Cheers, Rob
Re: APA6 class with LyX?
If you're going to go the customization route, this might be of help: http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2009/11/02/custom-lyx-nih It talks about creating a custom layout for an existing document class. Related posts with more examples can be found at: http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2009/11/14/customize-lyx-character-styles (Character styles) http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/05/19/latex-cv-part4 (Second example of how to create a layout for an existing document class. The other posts in the same series how to write a custom document class.) Best of luck in the endeavor!
Re: Getting rid of "You cannot type two spaces this way" message?
On Wed, 2012-11-21 at 16:36 +0100, Liviu Andronic wrote: > On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 4:08 PM, Alan R. Bleier wrote: > > I agree completely with Trevor. > > > I completely disagree with Trevor. Hitting double space [to get a full > stop] is as unnatural and unhelpful as it gets. This may make some > sense for a mobile platform, but is utterly unneeded on the desktop. I > very much hope that LyX doesn't go the way of the iThingies. It isn't just unhelpful, it's also wrong. From a typographical, stylistic, and grammatical point of view (see Grammar girl's take, who also cites the Chicago Manual of Style, the AP stylebook, and MLA to back herself up [1]). One of the things I particularly like about LyX is that it forces me into structure. I've invested enough time to create templates, modules, and classes for my work. LyX makes my writing fit into those classes, which saves me lots and lots of time. Little things, like not typing two spaces, are a feature as far as I'm concerned. If I need the ability to type multiple spaces, this can be created via a special style. LyX code, for example, allows control over white space; which means it's there when I need it. I would much prefer that LyX default to the stylistically accepted way of things, with other methods available via styles. Which is to say, I like how it works now. [1] http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/spaces-period-end-of-sentence.aspx
LaTeX Question
Dear Group, This is more of a LaTeX question rather than a LyX question, but I know there are many LaTeX experts here, too, so here goes. I'm currently working with a set of fluids equations which have both velocity and volume terms. Given how frequently the variable v appears in both (by convention), I would like to somehow distinguish them in my notes. (Right now, I've been using an uppercase V for volume and lowercase v for velocity.) I've seen several texts use a variant of the V character, however, to make the distinction more clear. Any idea how this might be done? What is the best way to use a variant character in a math expression, or is there a standard LaTeX symbol for volume? (Regular V appears to be used for velocity, variant V for volume.) I've already looked through the general LaTeX symbols list and the LyX menus, but wasn't able to find the symbols used in the text. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Cheers, Rob
Re: SageTeX and LyX
Hi Scott, On Wed, 2012-10-03 at 06:16 -0400, Scott Kostyshak wrote: > I've been meaning to checkout SAGE + LyX so if no one comes along to > help you I might take a look. I appreciate the offer. After some quality time looking into how the module works and how SageTeX processes documents, I was able to get it up and running. I found this page to be extremely helpful: http://www.sagemath.org/doc/tutorial/sagetex.html Of course, like all things, I was hoping to get a quick response via the list. I decided last year that I wanted to go back to school to improve my mechanical engineering skills and was hoping to get Sage working for a lab report. (Why I decided more education would be desirable is completely beyond me. I've forgotten how thoroughly miserable it is to be a student. While I frequently have to work late, it's been years since I've had to pull an all-night session to finish homework. It's every bit as bad as I remember. It might even be worse, if you factor in age.) > How did you install SAGE? In the past > I've compiled from source which was very smooth but took a while. > There is also a PPA: https://launchpad.net/~aims/+archive/sagemath To get Sage installed, I used the PPA. I thought about compiling from source so that I could integrate it with the system Python, and then thought better of it. The installation from the PPA was quick and I haven't had any issues, so far. To install the SageTeX module (which has to be done separately from installing Sage), I copied the sagetex folder into my LaTeX path and ran texhash. > Which version do you have installed? I'm running version 5.1. > Does the terminal output or View Messages toolbar give any useful > output that you could share? The output was helpful, but didn't make much sense until I read more about how SageTeX works. Sage processes files in two steps. You write your document, then you run LaTeX (pdflatex, xelatex, lualatex, or regular latex) on it. This creates a second file, with the Sage processing instructions in it. This has a *.sagetex.sage file extension. At this point, you have to run Sage on this secondary file, which generates your equations, plots and other elements so that they can be incorporated into your original LaTeX file. At that point, you run LaTeX on the original file a second time to produce the typeset document. The problem I was having is that I was only running LaTeX on my new documents. The converters I set up didn't follow the appropriate pathway of LaTeX -> Sage -> LaTeX. Once I added in the Sage processing step, everything started to work. > Do you have a minimum working example that you could send or link to? Absolutely, attached is a simple example that I'm working up into a template. I'm just getting started with Sage, but now that it's working, I'm quite impressed with what I've seen. For the past 10 years or so, I've been using aging copies of Maple for symbolic computation, and this looks like it will allow me to modernize. (I don't actually have to do much symbolic math, so it hasn't been that big of a deal.) Being able to work from within LyX, in a manner very similar to the way I work with R code via Knitr/Sweave, is going to be very nice. Knowing that it's all open is even better. Cheers, Rob PS, when I get time, I'm going to try and update the instructions on the Wiki to make a couple of things clearer. I'll also probably write a blog post about it, just so I've got a record of how I got things working. If you'd like, I'll send you a link when it's finished. Sage Report.lyx Description: application/lyx
SageTeX and LyX
Dear LyX Users, I've just started playing around with SAGE (www.sagemath.org) and was very happy to see that there is a module which can be used with LyX. However, in trying to get the module to work, I've run into a snag. I have it installed, and I can even successfully compile the example document from the Wiki. However, when I try and create my own documents, it appears as though I'm not getting any output back from SAGE. Other than adding the module to a new LyX document, is there some configuration step that I am missing? Also, any explanation as to why the example would appear to compile, but new documents might not? I'm using LyX 2.1 (SVN) on Ubuntu 12.04, with a custom TeX Live 2011 install. Cheers, Rob
Re: Longtable captions
On 5/8/2012 8:45 AM, John Tapsell wrote: > At the moment adding captions to longtables requires manually adding lyx > code. Hi John, While the offer is much appreciated, in this case, it's unnecessary. You *can* add captions to longtables. It's available from the Table properties dialog. Right click on the Table > Settings > Longtable (Tab). >From there, you'll see an option for Caption at the bottom of the "Row" settings. Just enable "Use long table" box, and then click on the "Caption" box. It will add in a label for you to fill out. Hope that helps. Cheers, Rob PS, if you post other annoyances to the list, I'm sure that the developers would be happy to jump on them.
Re: Spaces in the title of descriptions
Hi Manolo,
On 4/20/2012 9:34 AM, Manolo Martínez wrote:
> This has probably been discussed before, although I don't quite recall the
> suggestion I'm about to make.
>
> As most LyXers, I use a short space (C-Space) as a substitute for spaces in
> the
> title of descriptions in LyX. As many, I take this to be not the most
> beautiful
> of hacks.
>
> I was wondering if the following would not be a better solution: telling LyX,
> MarkDown-style, that whatever goes into the first, outermost pair of brackets
> in a definition is its title. One would write:
>
> (Title) This is blah.
>
> If one needs brackets in the title, she should write:
>
> ((Title in Brackets)) Blah.
>
> This would provide cleaner .tex files. If a description does not start with a
> bracketed title, LyX would complain.
I largely agree with your point that the way we handle spaces in the
list and description environments is suboptimal (control-space isn't the
most intuitive way of adding a space to a description title, to my own
embarrassment I only learned about it recently). With that said ... (my
apologies up front, this email comes dangerously close to rant)
I much prefer it to needing to make use of markup or markdown in an
environment that is otherwise WYSIWYG. By much prefer, I mean to say, I
think it would be a horrible thing if we suddenly start requiring users
to make use of syntax in a visual environment.
I am very sympathetic to the need for clean output. (I've ranted about
some of the choices made in XHTML export, for example.) But, to me,
that's secondary to the cleanliness of the writing experience. If LyX is
complaining because I'm not including parentheses or brackets, that is
not a step forward. We don't use them anywhere else inside of LyX, and I
don't think we should. If I wanted to write with markup (any markup), I
would write with markup directly. That would give me the exact
representation of my thoughts that I want. I use LyX so that I don't
have to do that and can still have a high level of control over the output.
It also seems as though there is a solution to this issue that doesn't
require the use of markup inside LyX itself: add a TeX inset to the
title. Once added, I can type a title without needing to control-space
and it produces very clean TeX output. E.g.:
\begin{description}
\item [{Item Title}] This is the first item.
...
\end{description}
There are also several other places where I am *very* particular about
my markup. In all of these places, you can use the TeX inset to produce
exactly what you want to appear in the output.
It's still a workaround, but I think it's much cleaner than requiring
markup/markdown/chickenscratch inside of LyX (even if the option is
complete optional controlled by a deeply buried preference somewhere).
Cheers,
Rob
Re: LyX on Ubuntu Precise (12.04): big download size!
On 4/3/2012 10:01 AM, BOB Merhebi wrote: > Hello all, > > I've been testing Ubuntu12.04 lately & just now I was thinking of > using LyX on it. TO my big surprise the LyX requires a large download > of ~450 MB+. I am shocked!!! IS that the true size? If not mistaken I > recall that on 10.04 it required ~ 25MB. Am I mistaken? Is there > something wrong? Hi Bob, The download from Ubuntu was probably a debug build. These are much larger than the release build. You might want to contact the Ubuntu project and let them know that the build is much larger than expected. Liviu Andronic manages a PPA with an unofficial build, which might be less damaging to your Internet quota (https://launchpad.net/~lyx-devel/+archive/release). I'm not sure he's added support for Precise Penguin, yet, though. Another idea is that they may have changed the LaTeX dependencies. If so, it might be downloading a lot of extra TeX packages that aren't needed. Regardless, I would definitely get in touch with the Ubuntu project. To the best of my knowledge, they don't subscribe to this list, and it's something that they will want to hear about. Cheers, Rob
Re: word2lyx (Word to LyX Translator): Status Update
On 3/9/2012 7:04 AM, Steve Litt wrote: > Can one import HTML, with its styles, into MSWord or Libreoffice? If > so, then it sounds to me like eLyXer has already accomplished this, > without any added work from you, Alex. You've already done the hard > part, and Rob's done the other end of the hard part, and it sounds to > me like if there's an MSWord HTML import, it's just a matter of a > small script that anybody can do, completely separate from yours and > Rob's work. Kind of like my lyx2kindle, three quarters of which is > just a front-end to eLyXer. I agree, I don't think that it needs to be very difficult. Writing a Word XML document is a pain, but it's not very hard. There's plenty of well documented examples for supporting a wide variety of features. What it lacks is someone who is willing to pick it up and run with it. I might have a student who would be interested, and I could help with portions. Is there anyone from the users list who might be interested in tackling it? I can provide support on the writing of doc and Alex on the parsing of LyX, it sounds like it's a matter of gluing pieces together. As a first pass, I'd recommend supporting paragraph and character styles, tables, images, and footnotes. Once you've got the basics started, it's pretty to add additional features as you go (or at least, that's what I've found). Cheers, Rob
word2lyx Fixes: Python Import Error
Dear Users, If you were trying to test word2lyx and got an import error, I've fixed the underlying issue (I hope). You can download the updated sources from http://oak-tree.us/stuff/LyX/word2lyx-01.zip. I've also posted all of the source code and revision history to: https://code.launchpad.net/~lyx-outline-devel/lyx-outline/lyx-word If there is anyone who might be interested in helping work on the code, please let me know and I'll give you access to the repository. merge requests are very welcome. Cheers, Rob
Re: word2lyx (Word to LyX Translator): Status Update
On Mar 8, 2012, at 2:21 AM, Rainer M Krug wrote: > -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- > Hash: SHA1 > I would love to agree, but round-trip is what is needed most of the > time. An import word2lyx is perfect, but in most cases only half the > story. I would use it extensively if the round trip is possible. > Obviously, we can not deal with the word-editing side (whatever > program is used for that). I'm sympathetic to this point. I understand that having a way to go from one to the other is important. I've deliberately avoided creating an export to Word option, though, because it would essentially require that I recode large portions of LyX in Python. I'm resistant to doing that because it's a a lot of extra code to maintain. There are already two implementations of LyX document parsing libraries: eLyXer and that found in LyX itself. Adding a third and trying to keep it in some sort of synchronization would be a huge pain. I'm looking into using eLyXer for Word conversion from LyX, but that is lesser priority than making Word import work correctly. (At least at the moment.) If there is someone (maybe Alex or another eLyXer dev) who would be interest in collaborating and handling the export part, I'd be happy to coordinate with them so that we're able to round-trip. >> People will take this as a promise and complain that it does not >> work well enough. > > Well - one could state that the round-trip works for MS word version > abcd, and other versions can / will / might cause problems which are > not in our hands. I've already taken that position. I'm willing to work with Word versions 2007 and 2010, and only files saved in docx. I'm not going to even try and parse doc binary files. word2lyx is about a 1000 lines of code. The doc parsing libraries I've looked at are easily 10 times that long. Python has excellent libraries for parsing XML that do nearly all the heavy lifting. I would have to write my own parsing library for doc. >> The difference of structure between word and lyx are too important >> to be able to work in a word<->LyX collaboration IMO. > > There are obviously basic difference in how LyX and word are viewing > documents, and these lead to principal differences how the files are > saved. > > But I am thinking that if one can import a docx file into LyX, one > should be able to do the reverse. And one should be able to define a > robust subset of features which are maintained when doing a round-trip. > In the same way that certain features are not converted in word2lyx, > lyx2word would also only support a subset of features which are > exported. But if these subsets include the most important features > used in the editing process on both sides, a round trip should be > possible. I agree that it is possible, but there's a lot of code needed to make it work correctly. It's also a larger problem set that I want to right now. Once I've got the Word import working, including track changes and notes (and probably maths, too), I'll be more willing to come back and take a look at it. But as I said earlier, if there's someone who would like to jump on board and work with Word export (lyx2word), I'll be happy to coordinate and work with them, too. Cheers, Rob
Re: word2lyx: Word to LyX Document Converter
On Mar 8, 2012, at 6:56 AM, BH wrote: > I'm very interested in this -- thanks for undertaking the project. > However, I can't even get it started. On Mac (10.6.8), calling > word2lyx from the Terminal, I get the following: > >> ./word2lyx.py ./Example-Word2LyX.docx test.lyx > Traceback (most recent call last): > File "./word2lyx.py", line 13, in >from docx import read as docxread > File "/Users/bennett/Downloads/word2lyx/docx/read.py", line 10, in >from parser import ElementTree as etree > File "/Users/bennett/Downloads/word2lyx/docx/parser.py", line 13, in >class etree_element(ElementTree.Element): > TypeError: Error when calling the metaclass bases >function() argument 1 must be code, not str No, I think that the problem may be due to the version that you are using. Snow Leopard uses Python 2.6, whereas I tested it against Python 2.7 (which can be found in Lion and in most Linux distributions). The problem is how I'm importing the XML module and needs to be reworked. I'll get to this a little bit later today and post a fix as soon as I can. Cheers, Rob
word2lyx: Word to LyX Document Converter
Dear Users and Developers, First off, thank you to everyone who sent me documents over the weekend. I was able to make a lot of tweaks to word2lyx based on what you sent me. With that hurdle out of the way, I think it's ready to release it into the wild. If you'd like to download a copy of it, you can download the code from: http://oak-tree.us/stuff/LyX/word2lyx-01.zip A brief write-up of the features and usage can be found at: http://www.oak-tree.us/2012/03/07/word2lyx01-2/ If you download it and find it useful, please let me know. If you download it and have problems, also please let me know. (Mostly so I can fix the problems.) Cheers, Rob
Re: word2lyx (Word to LyX Translator): Status Update
On 3/5/2012 2:01 AM, Rainer M Krug wrote: > Actualy one more question - it might have been mentioned, but are you > also looking into a lyx2word converter which would provide > round-trips with track changes and notes? I'd really like to provide for that, yes. However, there is something of a hang-up. Going from Word to LyX is pretty straightforward. It will even be possible to maintain track changes. (I still need to implement this, but it's on the radar for 0.2). Going back to Word from LyX, though, is a bit more complicated. Maintaining fidelity so that you can exchange the same file with a colleague and track the whole change history, that's very, very difficult. Possible, but really hard. Cheers, Rob
Import/Export Error Information (word2lyx)
Dear Developers, I'm getting ready to publish the source for Word2LyX, but ran into one last problem. I created an input filter/filetype to completely automate the conversion of Word documents. However, when run, I'm getting an error: An error occurred while running: python "inputfile.docx" "outputfile.lyx" Is there any way to look at the debug output to try and track what might be causing the error. Cheers, Rob
Re: word2lyx (Word to LyX Translator): Status Update
Hi James, On 3/2/2012 4:18 PM, James Sutherland wrote: > This sounds very nice! Thanks. I appreciate that. > Any ideas about whether you will be able to support cross references > and translate that into LyX/LaTeX labels/references? > James Short answer, yes. It's one of the three or four things I still have yet to implement. It will be in the 0.1 release, though. I'm also planning on translating embedded data (such as traveling EndNote bibliographies or Zotero inserts) into BibTeX databases and adding citation commands. That, however, will have to be a 0.2 feature as it requires quite a bit more infrastructure to support. Cheers, Rob
word2lyx (Word to LyX Translator): Status Update
Dear Users and Developers, I wanted to give everyone a quick status update on what I've been doing with the Word to LyX importer. Over the past couple of weeks, I've been working on it full steam and it's now pretty functional. It supports: 1. Translating Word paragraph and character styles to LyX paragraph and character styles. In the case of character styles that aren't defined, it will write entries for them into the local layout (including basic LaTeX commands). 2. Importing Word tables, including those with merged rows or columns. It will also do its best with the table borders. 3. Enumerated and itemized lists. 4. Importing images from the Word document. (It skips over embedded objects, such as charts from Excel.) 5. The use of custom templates, which allows you to fine tune importing your documents. I've created templates for article.cls and book.cls. I'll also probably create one for memoir.cls as well. Before release, I still need to implement support for footnotes and endnotes (which is pretty easy). Which brings me to the main reason I'm writing. Before releasing the code, I'd really like to test it on a couple of "in the wild" documents. It does pretty well on the test documents I've thrown at it from my own library. But ... that's just me. I use Word in a very particular way. If there's anyone who wouldn't mind, I'd really like to throw other test documents at it. If you would be willing to donate one, please let me know. This would allow me to check a wide variety of work and nail down a couple more issues before a public test. I will keep all documents confidential and delete after I've finished testing. If everything goes well, I'll release the 0.1 version (which will still need quite some cleaning up) early next week. Cheers, Rob
Re: eLyXer for Document Parsing
On 2/9/2012 11:42 AM, Alex Fernandez wrote: > Ah, OK. Always hated DOM. eLyXer's in-memory representation is for the > LyX document, not of the resulting HTML document. Much tighter this > way, IMHO. Is there an example of how I might be able to access the in-memory representation for the LyX document? If possible, I'd like to be able to get some sort of iterable object that could be used to translate the structure into the XML structure used by Microsoft Word. Cheers, Rob
Re: eLyXer for Document Parsing
On Feb 5, 2012, at 2:04 AM, Abdelrazak Younes wrote: > Strong suggestion: use LyX proper. I am quite sure you already know that > because I saw some patches from you in this area but I'll explain anyway: > LyX's html own export is so good and fast because it effectively knows the > in-memory representation of the document. You can't be faster nor more > accurate than that. I mean, unless you want to rewrite LyX in python. Extremely good point, I'm also more comfortable with the HTML export available in LyX. I initially was interested in eLyXer because I thought I might be able to use it to help with an import filter as well. I'm not sure that it can, though. As you note in your email, it doesn't create a document model. > IIUC you want a single module in python for both import and export in python. > But I don't think this is a valid argument. As for the word to lyx format > conversion, if you want to use this epub library there must be a way to use > that in C++ I'm sure… I though about using Python because I'd found a tool capable of generating docx for me. After working with it a little more, though, I'm less enamored with it. docx is a pretty straightforward file format, and there's quite a few things that are sloppily implemented. > AFAIK, eLyXer doesn't construct a document model. So you'd better spend this > time reading the C++ code for exporting to html/xhtml ;-) Following Steve's suggestion, I decided to try the "easy" way and directly parse the XHTML created by eLyXer. Turns out that it's not only easy, but probably the best way forward. There are some excellent libraries for reading XML in python. Using lxml, in particular, looks like a good solution. You generate the XHTML, parse it with lxml, and then iterate over the elements, translating as you go. My current script is about 50 lines long, and can be used with either native XHTML or eLyXer. To add new features, you add additional cases describing how to translate the XHTML. Which brings us to an important point: there's already a pretty good LyX -> XHTML -> LibreOffice -> Word pathway for translating documents. Unless I directly implement Word as another backend (which, while a lot of work, isn't difficult), I'm not sure there's much reason for a direct MS Word export. The real need seems to be for an MS Word import, anyway. Cheers, Rob
Re: eLyXer for Document Parsing
Hi Steve, > Not only possible but easy if you do things the Steve Litt way. eLyXer > quickly punches out HTML that's clean enough to read with an XML > parser, I think. So, eLyXer converts to HTML, and then your program's > DOMbuilder module converts that HTML to in-memory DOM. No muss, no > fuss, no bother, no picking apart eLyXer code (it's big and not > immediately obvious, not a single weekend task). Thanks for the recommendations. I'll need to look into this further. It's definitely the easiest way to go, and easy is usually the best. So says the Zen of Python (sort of): If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea. If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea. Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those! I was hoping for a slightly more direct route, though. That would allow me to maintain some of the internal data, such as cross-links. But, as I don't have months to implement, easy is always better than hard. > One more question: You sure you want to go in-memory? What happens if a > guy has a 1200 page book with 100 chapters each containing 10 sections, > each containing 10 subsections, and tries to parse it on a machine with 512 > MB RAM? I pity this poor man's decision to convert the whole mess to Word, rather than splitting it out into individual chapters. But, I appreciate the voice for reason answer sanity and best practice. Short answer, no, not convinced that I want to go in memory. My first pass was to just to become comfortable with eLyXer to see if it might meet my needs. I'm still try to get comfortable with the structure of LyX documents and .docx documents. I've found a nice little python library with support for basic docx features and was going to try and refine that to something slightly more usable. > You in a heap of trouble son. He'll be swapped half way into the next > century. If > instead you used an event parser (e.g SAX) with a few stacks, it will > probably be slower, and it will be much more hard to write, but for > practical purposes there won't be an upper limit on input file size. Good points. The python library makes use of lxml, which supports sax. After I've got a better handle on my constraints, I'll spend the time required to design something more robust. Cheers, Rob
eLyXer for Document Parsing
Dear eLyXer Users and Developers, I'm still at work on the import/export module for Microsoft Word documents. I'm making pretty good progress. I've got a rough prototype that works pretty well and I'm now starting to refine it. My approach up to now has been to use regular expressions to match portions of the document and then use a library to translate those to the corresponding Word XML structures. It's working pretty well with my simple test documents. Before going too far with this approach, though, I wanted to post (another general query). In the eLyXer library, there is already a robust set of tools used for converting LyX documents to HTML. Does anyone know if the library is written in such as way that getting a generic in-memory representation of the document would be possible? It would be awesome to re-use as much existing code for the Word document export as possible. That would allow me to support a broader number of features, and gives me a framework for working with maths. Any thoughts Alex (and others)? I've downloaded the sources and have begun to work through them, but before spending hours to days trying to wrap my head around them, I thought I would ask. Cheers, Rob
Request for Feedback (OpenSource Materials)
In addition to the other request for feedback, I was wondering if I might pester the community for one other favor. I'm currently putting together materials for a workshop. It's meant to introduce students (math, science, graduate, medical) to open tools and how they can be used for writing. It's based on the never-ending book project. I'm hoping to use both videos and handouts. All of the workshop materials will be released under the GPL (or the open documentation license, I haven't decided which). Here is a brief outline: 1.) Word processors versus document processors and why you should be using the latter (Workshop Discussion) 2.) Preparing major documents, such as your thesis or book, with LyX and LaTeX (Workshop Discussion) 4.) Setup and installation of LyX, LaTeX, and related tools (R, Sweave, Knitr) (Video Series) 3.) Creating and maintaining a bibliographic database (Zotero, BibTeX) (Video Series) 5.) Collaboration with version control systems, such as Subversion (Handout) While I'm still working on the first four points of the outline, I've managed to get most of the Version Control handout written. I was wondering if I could solicit feedback on what's been produced so far: 1.) Part 1: Why You Should be Using Version Control (http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2009/02/13/subversion1) 2.) Part 2: Advanced Stuff (http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2012/01/20/subversion2) 3.) Part 3.1: Collaboration Fundamentals (http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2012/01/24/subversion31) 4.) Part 3.2: Locks and Idea Ownership (http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2012/01/25/subversion32) 5.) Part 3.3: Communication and Logs (http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2012/01/27/subversion33) 6.) Part 3.4: Using Branches for Review (http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2012/01/30/subversion34) 7.) Part 4: Handling Conflicts and Errors (http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2012/02/01/subversion4) Thoughts related to style, structure, and content would all be appreciated. As the project is only tangentially related to LyX, though, I would appreciate comments on the posts or private mail. (I don't want to spam uninterested parties.) Cheers, Rob
Re: Import into LyX
On Feb 2, 2012, at 11:26 AM, Les Denham wrote: > Supporting Styles and Figures is a major achievement as far as I am > concerned. I assume you don't do much in deciphering the fingerpainting > favored by most Word users. Such crass formatting is probably best left > as Standard in LyX anyway. Right, I'm not getting into the game where I'm going to try and support all of the formatting combinations that Word users can come up with. But I do intend to support styles in all of their incarnations: paragraph, character, and otherwise. To make this possible, what I'll probably do is use the book/article classes as a basis for the import and then generate placeholder entries for other styles in the LyX local layout. That will prevent errors and problems and allow for you to convert to the document class of your choice without problems. Once there, you remove the placeholder entries, or define them further. Cheers, Rob
Re: Import into LyX
Thank you everyone for the comments so far. I really appreciate hearing from others as it helps me to build out a more detailed use-case. In addition to the earlier questions, I have one more: How important is support of .doc? I know that it is the standard upon which the publishing industry is built, but … It's a real pain to parse. In contrast, docx (the default file format in Word 2007 and 2010) is very parse. It's basically an XML document in a zipped folder with assets. I've already got a working prototype that can take a very simple LyX document and converts it to docx. Here's what supported: 1.) Syles 2.) Images/Figures Expanding this prototype is pretty easy. Trying to support doc is hard (painfully hard). There are pretty good import filters for OpenOffice and AbiWord for docx. docx is supported in Microsoft Word 2007 and 2010, and users of 2003 can download a plugin which is capable of reading it. If I go ahead with support for docx, I think I can write a full featured import/export plugin, including: 1.) Bibliographies using Word's native format and (maybe) Endnote (I've found a python library that can parse BibTeX and building export for these two formats is do-able) 2.) Cross-references (I still need to figure out how this is done in Word, but so-far, the docx standard is pretty easy to follow) 3.) Comments and Change Tracking How to deal with maths is still up in the air. LyX offers the ability to typeset nearly anything mathematical, which means there's a very large set of markup to support. Exporting to MathML might be one option, but that would require Word users to install a plugin. Exporting to Office Math Language (the new math language in Office 2007 and 2010) is another, but proprietary. Exporting to MathType is a third, which is both proprietary and requires that users install an add-in (which they have to pay for). I'm not particularly thrilled about any of the above. I'll continue to research and report what I find. In the meantime, hearing about what features should be supported would be very nice. Hearing your opinions about doc support (versus only docx support) would also be very helpful. Cheers, Rob
Import into LyX
Dear Users and Developers, Some time ago, I was experimenting with importing documents into LyX (specifically about how to crack the import MS Word to LyX nut). In the process, I got really excited about using OpenOffice to convert the word document to HTML, running tidy on the HTML and then importing that way. (The original blog article about this can be found at http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/05/14/msword-lyx-import.) Since I'm (re)writing a book chapter about this topic, I thought that I would look at alternative strategies for importing Word (and other file formats) into LyX. While doing research, I came across a (potentially) much better solution. Somewhat recently (in 2010), a group of Python libraries were written that handle document conversions. They are part of the epub-tools library (http://code.google.com/p/epub-tools/). (I've been experimenting with ePub document creation from LyX, which is how I found them.) One of the tools in the library is able to parse Microsoft word documents and convert them to XHTML in preparation for generating an ePub file. I think that the tool can be adapted for directly converting Word docs to LyX. Not to LaTeX and then to LyX, but /directly to LyX/. I'm putting together a library to experiment with direct conversions (this is ostensibly being done for the never-ending book project, but will be released as open code), but before getting too deep into development, I wanted to poll: 1. Is this a tool that would prove useful to yourselves, your collaborators, and others? 2. What features would you consider essential? (Right now, styles based conversion looks pretty easy -- going from Heading 1 in Word to Chapter, for example. But I'm not sure how well it would convert maths. This is something I'll still need to look at, and may require writing an additional module.) 3. What is the best tool to look at for guidance in creating a new script for word2lyx? tex2lyx? 4. Does the script need to support special cases, such as importing Word "track changes"? 5. Just how important do you consider "round-tripping" a document, e.g., going from LyX to Word and back to LyX. 6. Is there anyone who might be interested in collaborating on this? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Cheers, Rob Oakes
Updated Kindle Tools
Dear LyX Users, Given the recent discussion about publishing to the Kindle format, I thought that this announcement might be of interest to you. Amazon just recently updated its suite of KindleGen tools to support HTML5 and CSS. http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_357613402_1?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765211&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-3&pf_rd_r=0VB74HFFHHNP48JT0NZ3&pf_rd_t=1401&pf_rd_p=1343256902&pf_rd_i=1000729511 The main tool, KindleGen, is both cross platform and command line, which means that it might be possible to add converters to LyX. One of the input formats is HTML/XHTML. It would probably be pretty easy to add a converter for it. Cheers, Rob
Re: HTML Footnotes as Endnotes
Hi Richard,
Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it.
On Dec 6, 2011, at 4:39 PM, Richard Heck wrote:
> I wonder if we'd be better just outputting footnotes as endnotes
> all the time. The inline version we now use is cool, but maybe it's too
> cool for it's own good.
I actually think that would be a really good thing. It makes everything much
easier to work with. (Or at least, that's what I think.)
> Second, I've been thinking recently about introducing some sort of
> chapter splitting capability. Not so important for e-books probably, but
> useful for the good old web.
And very useful for eBooks as well. Due to the way that ePub works, at least,
smaller HTML files load faster.
> In that case, one would want to be able to output footnotes per chapter.
> There might be other cases where people
> wanted to print endnotes per chapter, even without the splitting. That
> suggests the idea of "collecting" the footnotes along the way in some
> kind of structure, and then emptying it when it comes time to print
> them, which could then be at any time. Very roughly:
>
> In LaTeXFeatures or some such place:
>std::list footlist;
> In InsetFoot::xhtml():
>op.features.footlist.push_back(this);
> and then in InsetPrintEndnotes::xhtml():
>list & footlist = op.features.footlist;
>while (!footlist.empty()) {
>InsetFoot const * foot = footlist.front();
>footlist.pop_front();
>...
>// Something like this must be legal
>// I think this trick should simplify much of your code...
>xs << foot->InsetFootlike::xhtml();
I'll look into implementing this tonight. Having this stuff working for the
demo I'm doing tomorrow would be great
Cheers,
Rob
Re: Pass LyX comments through eLyXer?
I for one would like for the topic to remain here. I don't follow the discussion on the eLyXer list, but knowing what developments happen with this topic are useful for things I'm working on. Especially if whatever Steve and Alex create can be adapted to work with the native XHTML modifications I'm trying to make. To move it in a new direction, what tags are most important to Kindle? In what ways could the native LyX output be refined (I can create layouts/modules that fix these for testing purposes)? Where does the current implementation cause problems and for what reasons? (I'm currently looking into the situations raised by Steve.) I've been delving into various ePub resources and I'm cleaning up the HTML based on HTML5 best practices, but it would be useful to know where else I can focus my attention. Cheers, Rob
HTML Footnotes as Endnotes
Dear LyX Developers, I've continued working on some of the challenges to getting clean ePub from LyX and have finished an inset that tentatively allows you to move footnotes to endnotes when exporting to HTML. Attached is a patch implementing the change (or the logic of it, at least). I'd appreciate any comments. Cheers, Rob Oakes htmlendnotelist.diff Description: Binary data
Re: LyX and Kindle books
I am working on an ePub compatible module right now (document class at any rate). It's for a talk I'm giving at a publishing conference next week. I will try and post something about it next week. Does anyone know of a visual CSS editor that is open source? I'm trying to find something that can spit out just CSS code. Sent from Rob's Palm On Dec 2, 2011, at 3:12 AM, Steve Litt wrote: > On Friday, December 02, 2011 04:13:53 AM Guenter Milde wrote: >> On 2011-12-02, Steve Litt wrote: >>> LyX plus eLyXer plus a few other tools can make the PERFECT >>> PERFECT PERFECT authoring tool for flowable text eBooks (Kindle, >>> iPad, etc). >> >> The internal HTML output should be usable for eBook creation as >> well. >> >> Any work on "eBook" modules and backands should be compatible with >> both HTML writers. > > OK. I'll make sure any work I do is compatible with both, although I > could swear LyX's internal HTML exporter is simply eLyXer, as it > outputs eLyXer messages. > >> >> ... >> I >> >>> There needs to be a way to insert all info needed by Kindle into >>> the LyX file, and having eLyXer or other similar executables do >>> things like split out the chapters, split out the table of >>> contents and index, make the .opf file and the .ncx file. It >>> might require a special layout file -- I can create that. Or >>> maybe just layout modules. >> >> IMO, LyX (as open source software) should concentrate on supporting >> the open ePub format. > > ePub shouldn't be neglected, but it shouldn't be concentrated either. > A well employed list is a happy and productive list, and Kindle/iPad > provides a revenue stream for authors (most of whom do quite a bit of > open contributions). For example, many of the LyX derived print books > we discussed in this afternoon's thread are proprietary -- you can't > download them and must pay for them. > >> Generating of kindle (or other proprietary) >> eBook formats would then pick up the relevant information from the >> ePub document. > > That sounds good on the surface, but my experience with ePub and > Kindle tells me it's a detour where you'd get complex with the ePub, > only to unwind the ePub back into simple HTML to be used by kindlegen. > > What would be excellent is for some loosely formed group of people > list all the data needed to generate a Kindle, necessary to generate > an iPad book, a Nook book, and an open ePub. If we can get that list > complete, then we have a list of what needs to go in the LyX file or > possibly a companion file. Once we have those specifications, writing > the actual converters would be a secretarial task. As a matter of > fact, if the additional data was put in a companion file, then eLyXer > and the internal converter wouldn't have to change all that much, and > the whole thing might be more modular. > >> >> Splitting a document into several HTML files is non-trivial, as we >> need to consider the cross-links. Maybe we can support a set of >> cross-linked HTML from Master/Child documents? > > Alex -- how does eLyXer work with Master/Child documents? > > Thanks Gunter! > > SteveT > > Steve Litt > Author: The Key to Everyday Excellence > http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/key_excellence.htm > Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt >
Re: LyX-Produced Book
Congratulations on finishing your book. It's beautifully produced and looks very interesting. While I was looking through it, I found myself with a couple of "craft" questions: Did you write the document class from scratch, or is it based on one of the larger classes (e.g., Koma-Script, Memoir, Standard Book)? How did you end up working with the references? Was BibLaTeX somehow involved? Cheers, Rob
Subfigures in Memoir
Does anyone know if it is possible to use memoir's subfloat environment inside of LyX for subfigures and sub-tables? Or if there is a way to override the loading of the subfig pacakge? There appears to be an incompatability between subfig and many of the font customization macros, and I'm not quite sure what the best way to fix it is (short of preventing the package from loading). Cheers, Rob
Re: Lualatex and Lyx.
On Nov 18, 2011, at 9:23 AM, Helge Hafting wrote: > I found it easier to have two latex distributions. I have lyx and texlive > from debian, as well as a direct install of texlive-2011. There is nothing to > manage - the direct install of texlive takes precedence because it is earlier > in my PATH. True, but you still have to set up the path. Which, if you're comfortable with Unix, isn't very difficult. However, I've got a number of friends and colleagues using LyX, and not all of them are comfortable with the esoteric art of editing BASH profiles or modifying system environment variables. Does the TeX live installer modify the path for you? If so, I'll recant everything I said about it being a pain. (I haven't updated my LaTeX install in a while. I mostly just update packages that I want. And even there, I've gone to using my own custom packages for nearly everything, mostly based on memoir.) > Debian's texlive waste some disk space, that's all. The advantage is that > other dependencies is satisifed automatically, such as spellchecker and qt. > > If I removed the packaged lyx, then debian might someday throw out other > stuff I need. I generally solve this problem by using: sudo apt-get install build-dep lyx This downloads all of the other dependencies without downloading LaTeX. Then i don't have to worry about these getting uninstalled, and I can use LyX built from source. (Which matters because I've been testing the outline additions, and it makes updating other people's install of LyX-Outline rather than having to package it, which I haven't had time to work out.) Cheers, Rob
Re: Lualatex and Lyx.
On Nov 15, 2011, at 10:51 AM, stefano franchi wrote: >> Could you point to some specific instructions? I've always wanted to >> try this, but never quite made the first step. I may first test it in >> a Virtual Machine. >> ... > 1. Uninstall all the tex-related packages from the system via synaptic > > 2. Download the texlive installer from tug: > http://tug.org/texlive/acquire-netinstall.html > > 3. Install a full distribution > > 4. I had to play around a bit with system paths to instruct linux to > get to the tex binaries, man pages, etc. (I just followed the > instructions provided in texlive installation instructions) > > 5. Since Lyx 2.0 was not out yet when the project started (although it > came out toward the end of its life), I stuck with Lyx 1.6.7 and > followed the instructions to use LuaTeX from LyX's wiki. To that, I would add an additional piece of advice: compile LyX from source or install a non-packaged binary. In Ubuntu, if you try and install LyX from the package manager, it will download all of the associated LaTeX packages as well. This can be a tremendous pain because you'll have two versions of everything installed and you need to manually manage the packages. Having two LaTeX distributions can be done (see http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/07/15/latex-custom for a description of how), but it's a pain. It's much better to have a single LaTeX distribution installed alongside LyX. > I had some problems with biblatex/biber (which I also used instead of > bibtex) but no problems with Lualatex. I'd be really interested in hearing about using biber and biblatex. I'm really interested in moving away from bibtex to something else, and I've heard really good things. Cheers, Rob
Re: Short Cuts to Document Preamble
Hi Richard, > No, sorry. Shortcuts are global. I can see where it would be cool to be > able to do this, but it seems complicated to me. LyX would have to > reload the shortcuts every time you switched buffers. Good to know. And, now that you mention it, it would be complex thing to implement and probably not worth the trouble. Cheers, Rob
Re: Quotation / invoice in Lyx?
Hi Rainer, > I have seen the "invoice" LaTeX package, but didn't manage to get it to work > in LyX. The Invoice package looks (more or less) like it would be great for quotes. Could you elaborate on what you couldn't get to work? It looks like it makes extensive use of commands that require two (or more) input parameters. LyX 2 supports multiple input arguments through the use of the "Short Title" inset, but that may not be the best way to make this package work here. In fact, it might just be best to use pure LaTeX code. I know a couple of packages which might be helpful, but they aren't specifically tied to invoices or quotes. What sorts of features were you specifically looking for. Cheers, Rob
Short Cuts to Document Preamble
I've been working on a custom of custom documents and wanted to check something. Does anyone know if you can add custom keyboard shortcuts to a LyX layout file (or the local layout)? I've created a custom character style inset and going to the Edit menu or right clicking and then selecting the style from the context menu is kind of obnoxious. I'd like to set a custom shortcut for it. But, because the style is only used in this one document class, I don't want to add a general shortcut via the Preferences > Editing > Shortcuts menu. I'd also like to be able to move the shortcut between systems without always needing to create it where I happen to be working. Anyone know if this is possible? Cheers, Rob
Beginner Tutorials
Dear Users, Sorry that I've been incommunicado for the past few months. I've been extraordinarily busy getting married, trying to wrap up a never-ending book project, and digging myself out of enormous holes at work. However, I wanted to raise something I saw on the list last week (I think that it was last week.) Are there any good beginner video tutorials that cover LyX? I followed most of the discussion, but wasn't sure if a consensus emerged. Nor was it really clear if this was a resource that we should invest time in creating. I know that there are several very good guides. Liviu created one which I skimmed, and we have the official documentation (which is excellent); and these are fantastic for users who have already decided to use the program. However, I'm wondering if it might be worthwhile to also create a series of short videos that might also be used for promotion, training, etc. This series could certainly be aimed at helping current users, but I'm also thinking that beginner videos which show how LyX works might be good for brand new users who need a reason to try it out. Something perhaps along the lines of what Apple has done with their iWork Suite [1] For the realm of software, while text is great, video is much better. It may even be best for demonstrating software how-to. Because I've needed extra money to pay for the trappings that accompany weddings, I've started teaching a few technology courses. (Playing with tech is something I enjoy and I found people who will indulge me.) Over the past six months or so, I've found that video tutorials are a great way to demonstrate tech and discuss tech ideas. (Mostly because they require you to script each step of a demonstration and if something refuses to work, you can expand the video to show why in a structured manner. This is much less aggravating than having things break real time.) Might it be worthwhile to produce video tutorials for the current versions of LyX? If so, what topics might we want to cover? I've got several tutorials that I'm working on for the never-ending book project. They will cover: 1.) Installation and Setup 2.) The UI and Productively (LyX-Codes, Shortcuts, Styles) 3.) Bibliographies and Automatically Generated Lists 4.) Using Sweave and Other Advanced Features 5.) Going from Outline to Draft (Outline Tools) Are there any other topic that might be good to include? Are there any special features which would merit their own videos? Is there any budding videographer who might be willing to help produce such videos (see legal note below)? I'm thinking about producing something similar to these [2]. Having help would be marvelous. Any interest? Cheers, Rob _ Legal Note (Since I know someone will ask): I plan on releasing nearly all of the templates, videos and other materials from the book under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Hopefully some of it might even be able to be included in LyX. Perhaps that might include the scripts of the videos, animations, illustrations, etc. so they could then be easily updated for future versions? Notes [1] iWork, Apple.com. https://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/ [2] Networking Video Tutorials. http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/science-and-technology/networking
Lyx Numeric Quotation Style
I have searched and not found and answer, so apologise if there is one. We use Lyx 2.0.1 compiled from source on Ubuntu 10.10 with JabRef to manage biblatex bibliography. In the last few days, in numeric quotation style we use for masters assignments, has started adding the author before the number in text. When using author-year style, adds the title of the book/article/web reference etc. I have recompiled Lyx for source and checked all settings. Any ideas would be greatfully appreciated,
Re: [Pub-forum] ebook follies
> Rob Oakes has also done some work along these lines, but starting with > LyX's internal XHTML export. Yes, and still working on it. For plain vanilla books, LyX does a fantastic job for exporting to XHTML (and from there to ePub). But there are a couple of sticking points that aren't quite as polished yet (mostly due to limitations in the current ePub). Specifically: EndNotes and Footnotes are a mess. I'm a little curious as to how eLyXer handles them. I've written some preliminary support into the branch of LyX I hack on (https://launchpad.net/lyx-outline). When specified, it converts FootNotes to EndNotes and places them at the end of the file with a link. I'd be interested in other strategies for dealing with the content. The other thing that I need to add is a method for resampling and downsizing images, so that you can use LyX to target both Web and Print from the same copy. Right now, I've been doing that via branches. (With slightly different layouts for both.) But this results in some duplicated text, which I consider to be a bad thing. Eventually, I would like to build in native support for ePub right into LyX. We've got most of the machinery all ready, but just need to add a UI to it. Unfortunately, real world work has forced me away from side projects, but it's something that I'm definitely working on. Cheers, Rob
Re: xetex CV
Dear Mauro and Liviu, Sorry for being so quiet through the whole exchange, but I've been buried at work for the past month and I'm still trying to get on top of things. On Jun 14, 2011, at 11:54 PM, Liviu Andronic wrote: > Hello > > On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 4:37 AM, Mauro wrote: >> Hello everyone. >> >> I downloaded LyX a few days ago and then I tried to make a CV. As I surfed >> through the web, I kept finding more and more styles for this so I finally >> decided for one, xetexCV. The thing is that I followed all the steps in this >> website: http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/05/19/latex-cv-part4 and used >> the .zip there provided. After that, I tried to make a PDF output of the >> example >> LyX's file included. Won't compile, the legend "No \title given." pops up. I >> > Yes, I've stumbled upon this myself. Some time ago I reported the > error to Rob, but then he didn't have a ready-to-ship solution. > Perhaps he would have more to add now, or maybe not. Unfortunately, i have not had time to look into the issue yet and come up with a non-hackish workaround. Part of the problem, I think, is that it only appears under certain circumstances. When I downloaded the files and compiled the example document this morning, I didn't have any other problems. Could you provide some additional information? What version of LaTeX are you using? Which operating system? Are you taking out any of the demographic labels (e.g., institution, contact address, phone, fax, email, website)? The more detail you can provide the better I will be able to track down the problem and rectify it. Cheers, Rob
Re: Most suitable image format
Hi Sam, You can use the same version of the document, just place the print image in one branch and the web version in another. (Branches may be LyX's single most awesome, never heard-of feature.) When you want to compile for print, then activate that branch. When you want to compile for web, activate the other. Then you aren't having to maintain two copies of your document. Generally, I prefer jpeg for photographs. If your using Photoshop or GIMP, you can specify the amount of compression you want applied to the picture. PNG would also work, but it's my opinion that it doesn't preserve color quite as well. Cheers, Rob
Re: Most suitable image format
It actually depends on how you intend to use the resulting document. If you will be printing the resulting PDF on a professional press, then you will want to use a lossless format (most likely tiff), or a high quality jpeg. If the PDF is to be put on your website, you will probably want to use a lossy format of some type. It will give a better quality to file size ratio, even though it will introduce some artifacts into the image. But unless your readers will be viewing the image at very high resolution (onscreen), they are not going to notice. Hope that's of some help. Cheers, Rob
Re: OT: Typeface used in The Economist print edition
Hi Liviu, > Completely off-topic, does anyone have an idea what typeface The > Economist uses in its print edition? I was curious, so I spent a little bit of time researching it. It's actually a proprietary font that they commissioned purely for the print magazine, called EcoType. This article talks about the redesign, which was managed by Erik Spiekermann in 2001. To the best of knowledge, it hasn't changed yet. http://www.daidala.com/30nov2003.html I have no idea if the font is available or not. My guess is that it is not, as it is an important part of their "exclusive branding." Cheers, Rob
Re: LyXHTML image resolution
Hi Ramin, > I'm using 2.0 to export html which I can then convert to epub format > with Calibre. I've been playing with the same export. So far I've been really happy. Rather than using Calibre to do the conversion, you might take a look at Sigil. It creates a much cleaner ePub (though Calibre is more than an adequate solution). > The images are horribly pixellated, and there seems to be no option to > increase their resolution. Is it possible to adjust the image resolution? Unfortunately, no. I'm in the process of working on some improvements for XHTML/ePub for LyX 2.1, this is going to be on the of the big ones. Ultimately, I'd like to be able to specify different resolutions for when exporting to print (PDF) versus Web (HTML). For right now, the best work around I've seen is to create different branches. Entitle one "Print" and the other "Web." Then, do the PDF image conversion on your own using Photoshop, Inkscape, Illustrator, or Ghostscript. Put a PNG image in the Web branch and the PDF version in the Print branch. Then, activate the web when exporting to HTML and the print branch when exporting to PDF. I understand this isn't perfect, but it will let you target both print and web with the same text. It also lets you add other components to your web branch that might not make sense in a print document or vice/versa. Cheers, Rob
Re: Timeline generation
There are two latext packages that can be used for timelines: timeslins and chronology. This links discusses both of them, they seem pretty straightforward to use and chronology creates a nicely drawn figure. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/217834/how-to-create-a-timeline-with-latex If your'e feeling more daring, you can also use TKIZ or PGF, which are LaTeX drawing packages.. The same link provides an example of how you might choose to do so. While it would be convenient if LyX provided this functionality, I think it is a more natural fit for Inkscape, gnuPlot, or one of the other plot figure programs. I would much prefer to use the limited development resources of LyX go toward improved XHTML support, easier customization of LaTeX document, a styles editor, or another feature which directly addresses the "customization learning curve." Just my two cents, though. Cheers, Rob
Re: XeTeX (No Math!)
Hi Richard, There is a known bug in older versions of XeTeX which can cause problems with math symbols in some fonts. The bug report for Ubuntu can be found here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/texlive-bin/+bug/364627 I was able to fix the problem by editing a configuration file: /etc/texmf/dvipdfm/dvipdfmx.cfg Comment out: "f pdftex.map" Uncomment: "f dvipdfm.map" I haven't had any trouble with newer versions (either that shipped in TeX Live 2009, or 2010). Cheers, Rob
Re: LyX Promotion
Hi Steve, > I'm not quite sure what you guys mean by "semantic import/export", but if you > mean exporting the text marked up with (empty) styles and the (empty) style > definitions so all I have to do with the MSWord file is fill in the styles, > then I'm on it like a squirrel on a tree. Let me tell you why. > > The (insert your own curse phrase here) fools controlling the various eBook > formats have made it almost necessary to use MSWord as the input to the eBook > conversion process. Saaayyy what??? So let me get this straight. I write > my book in a good software like LyX, and then have to rewrite it in (insert > your favorite phrase meaning "incompetent" here) MSWord in order to put it on > a Kindle? Really? If you're using version 2.0 of LyX, you can also export to XHTML. Kindle and Barnes and Noble PubIt let you upload HTML files without first converting to Word. If you don't mind hacking the layout files, you can also get a huge degree of control over how your document appears. For example, if you wanted to change the heading for chapter style so that it exports to (right now, it exports to ), you could use the following in the local layout of your file. Style Chapter HTMLTag h2 End If you wanted to modify how the CSS appears, you could then use the HTMLStyle tag to do something fancy. For example, the CSS below would allow you to make an off-white headline example with small caps. Style Chapter HTML Tagh2 HTMLStyle "font-family:Georgia,serif: color: #4#443C; font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: none; font-weight 100; margin-bottom: 0;" End You can use this technique to override any of the of default CSS for any document class. it's also a very good way to import a file into Word, since you can specify exactly what you would like for the styles to appear as, and Word will do its best to imitate them (as will OpenOffice). Generally, it does a pretty good job of getting both the styles and the appearance. I've been using it to exchange chapters of the neverending book project with the editors. So far, no major mishaps. It may even be pretty easy to automate using either the Java tool I created for importing Word files or an external tool. What I'm curious about, though, is if there is an HTML import script. That's a part of LyX I haven't played with at all. Cheers, Rob
LyX Promotion
Dear Users and Developers, Thank you to both Pavel and Stefano for ollowing up with Google about why the GSoC application was turned down. Is there any way that I could help in that review? Stefano, will you be attending the IRC meeting to be held later today? I think it's very important that we understand why LyX was rejected as a mentoring organization, and I'd be willing to hep in any way necessary. While I have some ideas about why it may have happened, I think that Pavel hit the nail on the head. When I talk to people about LyX, they seem to think of it as a specialized academic writing tool. Basically, a program which helps professors and students write a thesis or articles. (To be even more narrow, it seems like many think it is for math and physics people to write a thesis or article.) Which is to say, a specialized program with an incredibly small user base and use. While that stereotype may be somewhat true (I don't think anyone would argue that many of the developers and users are within academics), it significantly understates LyX's appeal, especially if you consider the enhancements available in the upcoming version. From my own personal experience, I've found LyX to be the most capable pre-press/writing tool I've ever come across. If I were a publishing company or involved in the creation of any type of documentation, I would be looking at LyX very carefully. It's the only tool that I know that allows you to manage collaboration, typesetting the final output, and target both electronic and print from the same source. With the recent explosion of electronic publishing and eBooks, I think that makes it *highly* relevant. Yet, I'm not sure that the wider community appreciates that. (Hearing Google's rationale for rejecting the GSoC application will help somewhat in clarifying how LyX is perceived.) Which really brings me to the reason I'm writing. Would it be worth trying to promote LyX to people who might find it helpful? We've talked for a long time about writing a LyX book, which is an excellent and wonderful project. But what if we first tested those waters by tackling some smaller projects first? For example: 1.) I just learned about a new open design magazine this morning, called LibreGraphics magazine (http://libregraphicsmag.com/). The goal of the publication is to help designers find tools for their work. It seems like an article about using LyX for book design would be a natural fit for their target audience. 2.) In similar vein, the LibreGraphics meeting is also coming up. This year, it will be held in Montreal. LibreGraphics targets a similar demographic, and it seems like such a presentation would be a natural fit. Even better, they pay the travel expenses of presenters (http://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2011/). Might anyone be interested in talking about using LyX to talk about book design, typography, or writing? 3.) It's been some time since Linux magazine or one of the other trade publications published a general purpose article on LyX. Might it be worth creating and submitting one? We might try and target Linux users magazine (http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/), ZdNet, or one of the large Linux blogs (like OMG!Ubuntu, http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/). 4.) It seems that there are people willing to help promote/evangelize LyX, but I'm not sure we offer much in the way of promotional materials to help. Would it be worthwhile to create a limited number of tutorials for people, like Venom, who will be holding seminars or workshops? (I've also thought about teaching a design workshop through my local library, and these materials would help provide a curriculum.) The tutorials could address some of the finer points of using LyX that are not covered in the manuals. For example, how do you collaborate using version control? What is the process for creating custom, typeset publications with LyX and LaTeX? We could publish cohesive examples and then walk through how the code works. They might describe principles of design, or typographical effects, and how they can be accomplished using LyX. Maybe we could create a writeup on how to prepare files for multiple output formats (print, web, eBook) using a single source. I'm sure that there are other tutorials that I'm overlooking. Which really brings me to the point I want to make: if we target the right groups and create nice looking materials, it could go a long ways to clarifying LyX's position in the free-softare world. It's also likely that we might find developers to contribute time and code, businesses who would be willing to support future development, and others who could help grow the LyX user base. Many of the other projects who were accepted seem to have dedicated marketing/promotion teams. Would it be worth trying to organize such an endeavor for LyX? It might provide a great way for less code savvy types to contribute to the project. Cheers, Rob
Re: Title placement and font size
>
> This is just one man's opinion, but I never use the document class's features
> for the front matter. I just use custom environments and ERT (embedded LaTeX)
> to place all elements of the front matter -- the title, the author, the cover
> image, the copyright page, the dedication and acknowledgements, the "here's
> how you use this book", the "about the author", etc. The way I see it, every
> element of the frontmatter is a one-off thing, and one-off things are ideal
> for fingerpainting.
I actually go one step further. I crate all of the frontmatter using a matching
stylesheet in Scribs. I then add the material using PDFpages.
To that end, I also disable the \maketitle macro so that I can still use
\author, \title, etc. and have all of my headers and footers look correct.
\renewcommand{\maketitle}{}
Epigraph for Memoir
Dear LyX-Developers,
So, after working on the Side Caption style, I got excited and thought that I
would try and make an "epigraph" style for memoir and my custom class.
The epigraph command allows the enterprising author to add a quotation to their
document prior to the start of the chapter (see page 249 of the memoir manual).
It takes arguments:
\epigraph{text}{source}
Here is my layout definition that would enable this for the memoir class:
Style Epigraph
CategorySpecial_Commands
Margin Static
LatexType command
LatexName lyxepigraph
RequiredArgs1
NextNoIndent1
LeftMargin MMM
RightMargin MMM
TopSep 0.5
ParSep 0.5
BottomSep 0.5
Align Block
AlignPossible Block, Left, Right, Center
LabelType No_Label
HTMLTag epigraph
HTMLItemp
Font
Family Roman
Shape Italic
EndFont
Preamble
\newcommand{\lyxepigraph}[2]{\epigraph{#2}{#1}}
End Preamble
End
The preamble line is necessary because LyX places required arguments added
through the "opt" inset before paragraph text. The memoir epigraph command
takes first the paragraph text and then the source.
Like in the case of the last example, is there a way to create a custom "opt"
inset that could have "Epigraph Source" for the label and could be added from
"Insert > Custom > Epgraph Source". I wasn't able to find a readily obvious
answer.
Cheers,
Rob
Re: Side Caption Insets for Memoir
Dear LyX Developers and Users, > I'm trying to create custom insets and environments for the document class > features. One environment that has me stumped though, is how to create an > inset for the memoir "sidecaption" feature. > > The sidecaption environment allows you to typeset the caption of your figure > in the margin (similar to the way that the Tufte handout and book classes > work), and the style guide for this class calls for their use. This is how an > example in LaTeX would work. So I need to RTFM a little more often. After a bit of head scratching, I've been able to create a workable Side Caption style. You simply place it inside of the figure or table float and then use the Opt inset to add the caption. Very smooth and easy to use, and I'm quite happy. Here's the definition I used: Style Side_Caption CategorySpecial_Commands Margin Static LatexType Environment LatexName sidecaption NextNoIndent1 TopSep 0.5 ParSep 0.5 BottomSep 0.5 Align Block AlignPossible Block, Left, Right, Center LabelType No_Label HTMLTag sidecaption HTMLItemp RequiredArgs1 End I've had a questions come up, though: I'm not very happy telling a user to go to "Insert > Short Title" in order to add a caption. This seems confusing, from a usability standpoint. I would prefer to have a custom inset that they can add that says "Custom:Side_Caption". Is there any way to create a custom "opt" inset? Even after RTFMing, I was not able to find one. Thoughts would be appreciated. Cheers, Rob
Side Caption Insets for Memoir
Dear LyX Developers and Users,
For the past couple of days, I've been working on a custom LaTeX document class
for a non-profit. It is based on memoir, and while it is still a work in
progress, I'd like to think that it is rather awesome.
Because the final goal is to use this document class in LyX (version 2.0, they
have already downloaded and started using the release candidate), I'm trying to
create custom insets and environments for the document class features. One
environment that has me stumped though, is how to create an inset for the
memoir "sidecaption" feature.
The sidecaption environment allows you to typeset the caption of your figure in
the margin (similar to the way that the Tufte handout and book classes work),
and the style guide for this class calls for their use. This is how an example
in LaTeX would work.
\begin{figure}
\begin{sidecaption}{A typical learning center in Mexico City.}
\resizebox*{\textwidth}{!}{\includegraphics{learning1.jpg}}
\end{sidecaption}
\end{figure}
Does anyone have any ideas on how I could create an inset that captures all of
this information? The tricky bit seems to be that the caption is specified in
the \begin{sidecaption} statement, rather than as a \caption command. I know
that LyX 2 now supports creating insets for optional arguments, but I'm not
entirely sure how I could use that to solve this difficulty.
I'd greatly appreciate any thoughts. (Also, if it works, this would be a very
nice addition to the memoir layout that currently ships with LyX 2. Would it be
too late to incorporate it?)
Cheers,
Rob
Re: .odt -> .lyx
Hi Tommaso, Sorry to hear about the difficulties. I actually had better luck creating my own import path. ODF -> HTML -> Run tidy on HTML -> HTML2LaTeX-> LyX This made sure that the markup coming into LyX was as clean as possible with no strange ERT or other data that couldn't be converted. I also had good luck with the conversion detailed in the article link that I sent. Again, it produced very clean input, though there were some limitations. Any thoughts on how we might make it more approachable for the casual LyX user? Cheers, Rob
Re: .odt -> .lyx
Hi Tomaso, You may be able to modify this to suit your purposes. http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/05/14/msword-lyx-import You obviously wouldn't need to mess about with the Word step, but the script might be useful for converting from ODF to LaTeX? There are links to the other tools as well so that you can automate the entire process. Cheers, Rob
Separate CSS stylesheet and HTML into separate files
Dear LyX Users and Developers, Does anyone know if LyX's current XHTML export allows for the HTML to be output in one file and for the CSS to be output to another? If this isn't currently possible, does anyone know how hard it might be to implement? I've been working with a non-profit to create eBooks and print volumes from LyX, and so far, it's working very well. (BTW, thanks Richard for adding my little hack to the XHTML image code.) However, I've run into a snag with large documents that have their CSS included with the HTML file. To process these and get them packaged with Sigil is a little onerous. Being able to tell LyX to create a separate stylesheet to which we link would be a much better solution. Cheers, Rob
Resizing Images During XHTML Export
Dear LyX Developers and Users, I've been playing with using LyX as a way to create both print PDFs and ePub documents from a single source document. So far, everything works very, very well. (The XHMTL is extremely clean and easy to modify by tweaking the CSS.) What is not easy, however, is the management of images. For print, it is necessary to have high resolution images (300 dpi +), but for eReaders, the images should be sized for screen (72 dpi). Does anyone know if it is possible to resize JPEG and PNG images at the time of HTML export? If there is no way to resize images, then would it be possible to specify the height and width dimensions in the tag? This data is already present in the document (as it is being fed as LaTeX parameters). Could it be translated to HTML equivalents? Most browsers know how to respect the same units as LaTeX. If not currently supported, would this be a very complicated addition to the existing code, might it be possible to submit a patch (now that we're in beta testing)? If not too complicated, I would be happy to take a stab at implementing a patch. (Unfortunately, I'm not very familiar with the HTML code.) Cheers, Rob
Exporting to a Custom Path
Dear LyX Users, Does anyone know how to export a document to a custom URL with LyX? I've been playing with the creation of e-books using the XHTML export in LyX 2.0 (and it works really well), but would like to export to a directory different than the one which holds my files. I can't seem to find an option in the Document Settings, Preferences or Menus. Cheers, Rob
Re: Problem
This is a stupid question, but I'll go ahead and ask it anyway. What happens when you to export to PDF? Is there any particular reason you need a DVI file? (It's an old format and not very well supported. PDF is a much better alternative.) Cheers, Rob
RE: Font choices.
Hi John, Are you looking to use them throughout the entire document, or as character styles? If you want to use them in the entire document, you can simply add the LaTeX code to the preamble (Document > Settings). If you want to create custom character styles, you can create insets which include the needed code. This webpage has a bit more on the latter technique: http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2009/11/14/customize-lyx-character-styles If you don't have font definition files, you could also make use of them using XeLaTeX. The process for doing this in LyX 2.0 is pretty straightforward, but requires a bit of additional work in LyX 1.6. Cheers, Rob
New Page Breaks
Dear LyX-Users, Does anyone know if it is possible to create new types of breaks in LyX? I've just discovered the \clearoddpage and \cleareven page commands in the lhelp package. As I'm currently working on a project which uses illustrations on the even pages opposite chapter heads (e.g. Illustration Here | Chapter Heading), this command is something of a godsend. It would be awesome if I could create an "Even Page" break, in much the same way that the "Clear Double Page" break works now. Anyone have ideas? I didn't see anything on it in the advanced manual. Cheers, Rob
Re: I just lost a footnote in a table
Hi Tim, Footnotes in floats are weird. Floats can migrate from page to page in an effort to balance the page layout. This causes their footnotes to get left behind (or cut out completely). Try placing the table inside a minipage (box) within the float. This will make sure that it stays on the same page. It will also use a different numbering scheme (a,b,c ... if using the standard classes) and not screw up your document footnote numbering. Cheers, Rob Oakes
RE: Custom Title Page in Articles
Hi Tim, <> Good for you! It wasn't until I started creating custom document classes and LyX modules that I really started to think, "Wow, this whole LyX thing is cool. With a little bit of effort, you can literally do anything." << Basically, I want something that goes (Nifty graphics with my company logo) title author abstract (More nifty graphics) >> In short, no, this shouldn't be too bad (or, it wouldn't be too bad for me; I have since learned that my pain threshold is rather high). It will, however, involve some programming in LaTeX. You will need to redefine a few things and modify how the title page macro works. I would also suggest that you create both sets of nifty graphics in either Scribus or Inkscape and export them as a single graphical element. This will get added with \includegraphics. Getting the positioning and layout exactly right in LaTeX can be excruciating. (sermon/ Not merely bad, but excruciatingly painful. Yesterday, I spent nearly an hour and a half modifying the spacing between different graphics so that they would line up correctly in a grid. The fill macros weren't working right, and I didn't want to troubleshoot them. So, I did it manually, instead. Now, I know better techniques for doing this sort of thing. But I kept thinking, it won't take that long. Wrong. It always takes 5 times longer than expected. Avoid this situation, if at all possible. Get it right in Inkscape, which takes about 2 seconds, and then export the vector graphic and include it that way. /sermon) << Where do I start? >> By becoming informed. Read the Customization Manual, and the Advanced Topics manual. Then proceed to the articles below. << Is this something that can be done fairly easily? >> No, but it is worth the effort. << Do I need a template in LaTeX? >> Yes. For a couple of example documents I've created, see here: http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/writing/latex You may be specifically interested in this series (especially article 2), which walks through a (somewhat complicated) CV class. http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2009/11/25/latex-cv-part1 http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2009/11/30/latex-cv-part2 It might be worth taking a look at this, as well: http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/08/02/texmemo Both cover custom document classes I've created and some of the missteps I made along the way. You can also download the full source code. If you'd like it, I also have several other examples that I use for personal things and I would be happy to send the .cls files. I just haven't gotten around to writing them up and posting them yet. << [H]ow do I bind/import/convert/whatever it to work with LyX? >> You need a layout file. It's different than a document class, and much easier to put together. For an overview on how the whole LaTeX/LyX thing works, see here: http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2009/11/02/custom-lyx-nih More about layouts can be found here: http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2009/11/14/customize-lyx-character-styles and http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/07/13/custom-lyx-modules The first LaTeX link at the top includes other relevant stuff. I hope that helps. One last thing. I am writing a pair of book chapters about LyX customization that covers the topic in (probably painful) detail. It's not quite finished, but will be soon. (I really, really hope that it's done today.) If you think that they would be helpful, I would be happy to send them. The flip side of this particular bargain, though, is that I need feedback on their content (cue diabolical music). It would be wonderful to get that from someone in the target audience. If interested, please email me privately and I'll send a download link. Cheers, Rob PS (okay, this will be it) ... as you get a little further along, the list can be a wonderful resource. If you have specific questions about how to implement a particular feature, or accomplish something specific, there are many helpful people who are willing to help you tweak things. Thus, don't feel like you have to mount the learning curve all by yourself. This may not apply to you, but I tend to wait too long before asking questions. It's a very costly and obnoxious habit. (Ask any one of my previous employers.)
Re: Fonts in LyX (and LaTeX and TeX)
Hi Stefano,
> do you have any advice or pointers to sites explaining how to use margin
> kerning in XeTeX? The notes posted by J Kew on the mailing list and on the
> XeTeX wiki are way too cryptic for me.
Short answer, yes. As far as I know, it hasn't yet been discussed much in the
Interwebs, but there are several resources you can find on it. The place to
probably start is the XeTeX Microtypography website:
http://xetex.tk/mediawiki/index.php/Microtype_package_%28preliminary_version%29
There, you can download the latest version of the microtype package that
enables margin kerning with XeTeX. To get things working correctly, you must
use version 2.5 (or newer) of the package. If the manual isn't dated
11/5/2010, then you have the wrong one.
The microtype distributed with TeXLive 2010 *will not work.* (And at the
moment, xetex microtype is pretty limited. It's only margin kerning. Font
expansion doesn't work. Yet.)
After download, process the microtype.ins file with xelatex which will create
the .sty files you need.
xelatex microtype.ins
Copy the entire directory to somewhere in your LaTeX path. Run texhash.
Once you've installed the newest version of the package, you can enable
microtype support by adding:
\usepackage{microtype}
to your preamble (see the attached sample doc). While it is possible to tweak
things, it shouldn't be necessary. In fact, don't. microtype should detect
which version of XeTeX you are using and enable the appropriate options. The
only time I ran into problems is when I tried to tweak the settings.
After that, put together a simple test document (or use mine). To see if
things are working correctly, you might want to turn on the showframes option
of geometry. (Test document also shows how to do this. PDF output also
attached.)
Please keep in mind, you must have XeTeX 0.9997.4 or higher installed for
margin kerning to work. This version of XeTeX comes with TeX Live 2010. I've
been playing with it on my Mac, and it's been pretty stable. As of yet, I have
not looked at how hard it would be to get things up and running on Linux or
Windows.
On another note, in my exuberance yesterday, I might have overstated the
stability of LyX, the new version of XeLaTeX and microtype. In my personal
experience, it has been very, very stable. But I should probably include the
requisite disclaimer: your mileage may vary.
If you have any troubles or if something isn't clear, let me know. I'm off
work this week to try and get the book done and will be watching the list.
Cheers,
Rob
Attached:
1.) Sample LyX document, showing XeTeX microtype features. Requires TeX Live
2010, beta version of microtype package and beta1 of LyX to compile.
2.) Sample PDF output.
TestDoc-XeTeX.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document
TestDoc-XeTeX.lyx
Description: Binary data
Re: Fonts in LyX (and LaTeX and TeX)
On Nov 9, 2010, at 1:33 PM, Guenter Milde wrote: > There is preliminary XeTeX support in the development version. Not > ready for the masses. On this point, I have to disagree. Preliminary as it might be, I've found it very stable. I've been using LyX 2 for nearly a year, and have transitioned to using XeTeX for everything. And quite frankly, I have fewer problems with LyX 2 than I do with LyX 1.6. The entire text for my book and innumerable articles and reports have come out of LyX 2, and while development versions some four or five months ago left much to be desired, the most recent codebase is very stable. I quite literally cannot tell you the last time it crashed on me. I so much prefer it that I will never go back to LyX 1.6. (And the copy I use has my outline bits in it, which presumably destabilize it even more.) I'm not trying to be disagreeable here, but I think you underestimate the quality of your own work. When LyX 2 is finally released, you deserve a party. LyX has gone from being a good program to being an exceptional one and I, for one, applaud you for that. Cheers, Rob
Re: Understanding Lyx
Hi Frederick, > My apologies for not explaining myself adequately -- I'm a content > person, not technical and hence the handicap. Please don't apologize. It would probably be a better world if content people forced technical people to explain themselves. > I know what I want the first pages of my chapters to look like, but > don't have a clue as to how to convert that into Lyx. Okay, it sounds like you are asking about chapter headings and styles. Do I understand correctly? Here is what I would recommend, rather than try and code chapter headings on your own, try taking a look at a few of the packages/document classes that provide them. For starters, check out out the memoir class. It includes a very large number of well defined chapter styles. (This PDF provides a good overview www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/MemoirChapStyles/MemoirChapStyles.pdf). It will be likely that you can find one that matches your needs. If not, all of the memoir examples include the source code, which you might be able to modify. > This is a technical job no doubt, but is there some way to translate from > sketchpage to Lyx formatting? Short answer, yes. But it can be ugly and there is no automated tool that allows you to do this. You will need to write code. Creating a new chapter heading in LyX requires writing style definitions and formatting instructions in LaTeX and base TeX. Due to the work involved, these are then usually packaged as document classes or stand-alone modules. The PDF I link provides several (five or six) examples. There are even more on CTAN (the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network). I notice that you are a publisher or editor. If you need to produce a large number of unique document styles, here is a word of advice. I would recommend hiring a programmer to create the chapter headings for you. Adjusting fonts, spacing, margins, etc. is relatively simple and you could likely do it without too much trouble on your own. Chapter headings are not normally simple. Especially if you will be using ornamentation. Package writing (where this is invariably going) is a different beast than than using LyX or LaTeX to craft your text. And while a programmer can produce a layout in a few hours, if you try and do it yourself, it will likely require *days* of work. Therefore, my recommendation is to develop a style guide and price it out on eLance. The $30 or $40 you will spend on programming time will be saved many times over in frustration, time and productivity. Please note that this advice only applies to chapter headings. For your book cover, the title page, and other front-matter, I would recommend that you use a visual program called Scribus to design them. You can then add them to the body through a package called pdfpages. In LyX, this is done via the Insert > File > External material link in the menu. When the dialog opens, select "PDF" from the available options and locate your file. If you look at the archives of this list, you will find that the subject has been discussed multiple times. There are many good suggestions in those threads. (If you have trouble finding a specific thread, just search for Steve Litt as a contributor. He preaches frontmatter design in a layout tool -- fingerpainting -- as gospel.) Hope this is of some help. Cheers, Rob
XeTeX Updates in TeX Live 2010/MacTeX
Dear LyX Users, Not sure if this is of interest to many LyX users, but I think I'll post it anyway. TeX Live 2010/MacTeX were released a few weeks ago (maybe months ago, I haven't really been paying attention). Anyway, I updated this morning and wanted to send a general report for Mac users. Here's my report: if you are thinking about upgrading, do it. Now. MacTeX 2010 is a big improvement over MacTeX 2009. Particularly if you're a XeTeX user. The feature that has me *really* jazzed is that XeTeX has added support for margin kerning. This means that several microtypographical goodies, like hanging punctuation (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hanging_punctuation), finally work right. The new default version of PDF is also now 1.5, which means that it no longer mangles my illustrations. Yay! When I compiled several of my test documents this morning, they looked noticeably better. (Which isn't to say they looked poor last night.) Also, it seems to work very well with LyX. I have not yet had any trouble, even when compiling absurdly complicated things (like my book draft). Anyway, I thought I would let you know. Cheers, Rob
Re: LyX and LuaTeX
Thanks for the link. I was able to get LuaTeX working with normal pdfTeX documents via following the instructions on the wiki (using the MacTeX 2010 distribution and LyX 2.0). I'm running into problems using fontspec, though. I think that is due to the lack of a fontspec database. (Described in the fontspec2010 docs.) To generate the database, you need to download and run a script. I'll have to experiment with it when I have a bit more time. But, initial experiments show that it was easy to get up and running, and that it works with LyX 2.0 very well. Take care with UTF characters, though. I probably could have gotten it sorted out, but didn't really want to fuss with it. I will update the wiki when I get a moment. (I'm also going to have a go with fontspec and see if I can get the problems sorted). Cheers, Rob
Re: Understanding Lyx
Hi Frederick, This is a very large question. To narrow the scope (and provide better references), what specifically are you looking to do? When you say, sharable templates, what do you mean by that (templates are just LyX documents)? What do you mean, "convert a design from the drawingboard to a lyx template"? Are you talking about using a LaTeX document class that already exists, or writing your own classes and styles? Ditto for installing templates, as they are just documents, you mostly need to select a folder to keep them all together. There is a templates folder included with LyX, but I would advise having a user templates folder and copying the best/most used items there. When you say, bring two comps together, what are you looking to do? If you mean syncing documents between the computers, have a look at dropbox. Version control also works nicely (Subversion is best supported in LyX). As far as examples, I would take a look at the TeX showcase (http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/). That will give you an idea of what can be accomplished with LaTeX (and by extension, LyX). There are many resources. The first and most significant are the LyX manuals (available from the help menu). Start with the Tutorial, and then take a gander at the User's Guide, Additional Features and any Specific manuals that look interesting. Then, wander by the LyX wiki: wiki.lyx.org. The wiki is a treasure trove of information about how to better mesh LyX with LaTeX, and by extension, how to create documents which bring a childlike sense of wonder to the world. From there, you might consider wandering over to Steve Litt's LyX Library (http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/). It includes some marvelous information, though some is a bit dated. I've also written information about customizing LyX and how to use/create custom document classes. You can find the links to those articles, and a brief summary of them at http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/writing/latex. Finally, I happen to be working on a book that covers this exact subject. (I happen to be working through the advanced LyX/LaTeX chapter right now and hope to finish it today, actually) If you would be willing to provide feedback on the chapters, I would be happy to make the LyX/LaTeX chapters/appendix available for your review. If you can be more specific with your earlier questions, i will also try and provide additional help for those as well. Cheers, Rob
LyX and LuaTeX
Dear LyX Users, I am currently slogging my way through a book chapter on advanced methods in LyX/LaTeX and just had a quick question. Does anyone know if there is documentation on how to use LyX with luaTeX? I know that it isn't officially supported, and things would probably break terribly, and that it might corrupt my mind and force me to sacrifice my first born. But I'm kind of curious to experiment. Has anyone spent any time using luaTeX from within LyX? Care to comment on just how broken things were? Cheers, Rob
Re: Linking
Hi Edward,
I don't believe that LyX has this built-in, but you can use the package
directly from within LyX, exactly as you would use it in LaTeX. Add the
package name to the LaTeX preamble (Documet > Settings > LaTeX preamble):
\usepackage{...}
Then, you can create links by inserting code with the TeX Code Inset (Insert >
TeX Code). I've never really used this particular package, so I don't know how
complicated it is. If it's somewhat ugly, I could possibly help create a module
to simplify things.
Cheers,
Rob Oakes
Re: OT: should learning materials be hard to read?
Hi Liviu, I can't help but weigh in on this one. I think it really depends on who the audience is, how much they are motivated, and the medium through which you are delivering the message. > My personal experience from the bench suggests something similar. > Whenever I spend too much time trying to figure out what was written > (say, on the blackboard) I have much less time to focus on what was > meant. This is my experience as well. Making a lecture or presentation difficult to understand is a terrible, terrible idea. Verbal communication is already inefficient (people speak much slower than they read) and our "working memory" for speech is smaller than it is for written text. Combine it with the fact that people can only focus on one thing at a time and you have disaster. If you become distracted reading text and miss what the speaker is saying, , you might miss something important. If that something important is part of the logical chain of the argument (say you missed an important step in the derivation of a formula), it can greatly change how you understand everything that comes afterward. These limitations are mitigated by the fact that presentations are interactive, which means that a good presenter can repeat and gauge the understanding of the audience in real time. With written text, there is the advantage that you can deliver much more information and provide it at much higher resolution than you ever could in a presentation. If there is a point of confusion, the reader simply returns to re-read earlier passages. But density can also have its problems. If the words on the page appear too dense, people will refrain from reading them unless there is some motivation to do otherwise. It's important to note that it doesn't actually matter what the words say, if the line length is too long, or the word forms appear convoluted, or the layout is poor, it all has the same effect. This paper does a pretty good job of discussing the ways that different layout features influence letter detection and readability. Denis G. Pelli et al., “Feature detection and letter identification,” Vision Research 46, no. 28 (December 2006): 4646-4674. if you can't access the message of the article, it doesn't really matter what it says. I agree with one point in the economist article, it is good to make people think deeply about things. Challenging the mind and forcing it to process information will result in long-term retention. All of the study's observation can probably be explained by one thing: the slightly more difficult text caused people to slow down as they read, taking more time to digest But isn't that the point of exercises, engaging stories and other rhetorical devices? But the tolerances for "making the text harder to read" are probably so narrow, that the technique may as well be worthless. At what point does effective become convoluted? In all of his books, Tufte makes the point that "dense" does not mean "well designed." I think it better to achieve the same result through other means. Striking examples, well drawn illustrations, anecdotes, intelligent graphs can all accomplish exactly the same thing while keeping the text clean and readable. The goal should be to focus attention, not create additional work. Just my two cents, though. Cheers, Rob
New PDF Conversions on Windows
Dear LyX Users, I've run into a bit of a problem and I am wondering if anyone else has seen it before. I'm trying to compile test documents on Windows with LyX 2.0 and MikTeX 2.8. The documents all compile without trouble, but I'm having a devil of a time with PDF images. The document converter is being tremendously finicky with any PDF that is greater than version 1.4. Versions 1.5 and 1.6 (which are created by most applications by default) are simply not included in the output. When I look at the output (from LyX debug window), it says that it is unable to find a compatible converter. In the final PDF, there is a space for the graphic that is the right size, but the actual graphic does not appear. It's just a big white rectangle. Does anyone know what the root of the problem is? Is this is LyX issue, or a MikTeX issue, or a Ghostscript issue? Or do I need to add a converter somewhere? (Converting all of the offending PDFs to version 1.4 really isn't an option, there are several hundred of them.) This problem only appears on Windows. Compiling the exact same document in Ubuntu or Mac OS X works just fine. (Which makes me believe its a MikTeX problem.) Anyone seen something similar and come up with a way to remedy the problem? Any thoughts would be appreciated. Cheers, Rob
Re: Default Fonts in KOMA-Script
Hi Uwe, Thanks for the response. My question doesn't really have much to do with LyX, but rather about the defaults selected by particular LaTeX distributions. I asked it on the users list mostly because it's where I know the most people and there are multiple TeX experts who hang out here. On Oct 13, 2010, at 7:48 AM, Uwe Stöhr wrote: > Seems that you misunderstood me. A document class defines how a document > should look, e.g. if the title uses a sans serif font in size "huge". I think part of the reason for the misunderstanding is that we think about document "appearance" differently (very, very differently as it turns out) and I was operating under a serious misunderstanding. When you say that document classes define "how a document should look" (please correct me if I'm wrong), you appear to be referring to styles (family [roman, sans, typewriter], weight [bold, medium, light], italics, small caps, etc.), margins, indentation, spacing. but not the typeface itself? I know that the default typeface for LaTeX is CM, and from your comments it sounds as though the default typeface is determined at the level of LaTeX distribution and not at the level of document class. Is that right? > What font you are using for sans serif is your decision. Here's my background. I mostly come to LyX from a somewhat traditional printing background (I worked in a printer's shop part of my time during college and later did a turn as the production editor for a journal), though I am hardly an expert on anything. But in that environment, when someone uses the word "appearance", they are referring to all of the properties you describe in addition to the font. Perhaps most especially the font. > Note that the default font depends on the settings of your > LaTeX-distribution. It is possible that the default fonts are set to Latin > modern or CM super instead of Computer modern. So when you want to have a > certain font, you should select one in the LyX document settings. To find out that document classes don't provide a recommendation for the default, which has been chosen to match the spacing and design of a particular class, is a little shocking. It's like learning that a composer had no preference of instruments and that a concerto for flute could also be played on an oboe, or violin without causing people to raise an eyebrow. Certainly, you are free to change it, but the default typeface is the default typeface. And I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea that such an important decision is apparently left up to the packagers of the LaTeX distribution. (With the assumption that Computer Modern will be right in nearly all instances.) In most publishing houses, that decision is made at the level of design template (which would be roughly analogous to document class). If you told a publication designer that there is a default typeface that is right for all documents, I think most would look at you like you were crazy. (That would be the response of most I've known, at least.) > KOMA-script doesn't hardcode things. When you create a KOMA-script document > and set in LyX the fonts to "default" you get usually computer modern for the > fonts. This I was aware of, but I still assumed that all document classes provided a recommendation of font, in addition to paper size, margins, spacing and all the rest. After all, they all build on themselves. A document that has been carefully designed to use CM or LM won't necessarily look good when typeset with Palatino. Changing a font is a big modification to the document's design, and usually requires that you adjust several others so that things look "right." Because of my previous experience, I just assumed that LaTeX functioned according to similar principles. I knew that CM was the default for LaTeX in general, but I had thought that class/package authors also made individual design choices based upon the goals of their class. Are you aware of anyplace where the design conventions are more explicitly described? I checked the "LaTeX2e for class and package writers" in addition to "The LaTeX companion", but I haven't been able to find someplace where it is spelled out. (I don't currently have access to Lamport's original book.) (The request for references is mostly so that I can describe the conventions correctly. I'm probably going to need to re-write a major section.) Again, thanks for responding. I appreciate that the information is only tangentially related to LyX (and of only marginal interest to most), but I'd really like to get things right. Cheers, Rob
Re: Default Fonts in KOMA-Script
Hi Uwe, Thank you for getting back to me. I'm sorry if if my inquiry sounds stupid. (I will concede that it is mildly dense.) Even so, I'm trying to track down which fonts the different packages use without making any modifications. I know that it is very easy to change the font to an alternative either using a package, or if you use xetex, through fontspec. But, not all of the classes use Computer Modern as the default typeface. (Yes, the majority do). The Tufte classes, for example, make use of Palotino/Helvetica/Bera Mono. For nearly all of the other classes I'm compiling a summary for: standard classes, AMS-LaTeX, Memoir, Beamer, Tufte, etc. I have been able to find an explicit reference that says, "The default typeface is computer modern." I have not been able to find this reference for KOMA, and it makes me uneasy to say it without an host of references to back it up. Google has been essentially worthless for tracking the information down. This is what prompted by original question to the group. > The default font is ComputerModern as described in the LyX UserGuide. I appreciate this pointer. I finally got frustrated and compiled a sample document and then hacked it open. The embedded fonts were cms (computer modern sans) and cmr (computer modern roman), just like the standard documents. This evidence, taken with what you've offered, make me comfortable that computer modern is indeed the default. Is there anyone who's had a contrary experience? Cheers, Rob
Default Fonts in KOMA-Script
Dear LyX-Users, Sorry for spamming the list, but I am scrambling to compile a table on the default formatting for the common LaTeX document classes and I can't seem to find a piece of information. I am hoping that someone on the list may know. What is the default font used for the KOMA-Script classes? I need the actual name. When described in the KOMA-Script manual, they are simply referred to as "serif" and "sans-serif". It appears that they are computer modern, but short of hacking the PDF to locate the embedded font names, I can't seem to confirm it. Does anyone know definitively or know of reference that says? Thanks, Rob
Re: External Programs and Add-On Modules for LyX
Hi Rainer, Thank you for your comments. > > Nice - could you inform the list when it is available? Will it be > downloadable? Short answer, yes. Slightly longer answer: I'm not sure that it will be freely available, unfortunately. It is dependent on the publisher There will be several chapters available for download, and I'm strongly pushing for this one to be one of them. Once the chapter is finished, however, I'd love to get feedback from members of the list. If you'd be willing to look at a review copy, I'd be tremendously appreciative. If so, please email me off list. > > While doing so, I've been trying to find a list of all of the external tools > and modules that LyX works with. While many of these are alluded to in the > manuals, is anyone aware of a summary table that summarizes the information > in one place? > > Specifically, I'm interested in tools that allow for document conversion, > > Same as below - if you can write a converter, you can do it -- for import as > well as export. Import is definitely more difficult, but also possible > without having to go into LyX source code (That flexibility is brilliant in > LyX!) I couldn't agree more. The enormous flexibility of LyX is one of the great reasons that lyX has become my defacto writing environment for everything and why I talk about it to anyone who will listen. I've used the conversion filters in the past for importing Microsoft Word documents and I've been relatively happy with the results (see http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/05/14/msword-lyx-import). What I'm looking for are as you say, "A list of examples of what can be done." With the book, I am trying to target people who may be new to writing/publishing/typesetting (basically the state I was in as a junior in college), and are trying to understood the tools available to them. I'm not trying to write a comprehensive manual to LyX (which is thoroughly unneeded, since the documentation is excellent), but rather provide tangible examples and information that can get people started. For that purpose, I'd really like to include a table that lists the various tools that add significant value to LyX and are worth downloading alongside a new install. Examples I've already included are R/Sweave (for statistical work), Lilypond for the typesetting of musical notation, Inkscape for incorporating SVG images, TeX4ht for exporting OpenDocuments, and Writer2LateX for importing OpenDocuments. These, however, are only the options with which I'm personally familiar. I'm interested in picking the collective mind to see if there is anything obvious that I've missed. Of course, incorporating examples is even better. It's one thing to discuss what's possible, it's much better to show it. Cheers, Rob
External Programs and Add-On Modules for LyX
Dear LyX Users and Developers, I'm currently working on the book chapter that covers writing with LyX and LaTeX. While doing so, I've been trying to find a list of all of the external tools and modules that LyX works with. While many of these are alluded to in the manuals, is anyone aware of a summary table that summarizes the information in one place? Specifically, I'm interested in tools that allow for document conversion, the inclusion of file types within LyX documents, or modules that require a non-LaTeX processor in order to work correctly (such as Sweave;/R). If this information doesn't exist, would anyone be interested in helping to compile it? It would make a fantastic addition to either the wiki or the manuals. While I mostly want the information for the book so that I don't mindlessly repeat things already available in the wonderful LyX manuals, I'd be happy to provide a copy to the documentation team or to post/update it on the wiki. (Just a note to the documentation team, the manuals really are superb. I just discovered the feynman manual this morning and I've been having great fun with it. With all that said, though, you've made this chapter very hard to write and I consider that greatly unfair, albeit in a very good way.) Cheers, Rob
Re: more on collaboration
Hi Les, > I had no idea people were asking for this kind of feature. Real-time > collaboration on a document seems to me to be a formula for a colossal waste > of time, extending the concept of endless meetings to an online equivalent. I'm not sure if ti's people in general or just people that I know. But I've seen it come up quite frequently in the past few months. Particularly on blogs and in discussion of software tools. When it arises in face to face communication, as it did during a meeting a month ago, I really try to sit up and pay attention. In the meeting, people were bitching about long-distance collaboration and the slow turn around of document exchange. Several options were suggested: VCS, Google Docs, chat, phone conferences, WebEx, etc. It was a very good discussion and even got a little heated. But then, I'm on the fringes of academics and written documents (particularly reports) are extremely important. It's how we get money and share the results of our work. > In the organizations I'm involved in, written documents of all kinds seem to > be actively discouraged by most managers. The most common kind of "report" > is > an incoherent PowerPoint presentation put together with thought processes and > artistic taste worthy of a four-year-old. > > Writing of any kind is so rare I can't imagine there being any demand for > collaborative writing. Since I've been trying to move toward industry and private consulting, I've also noticed this as well. For that reason, I might be experiencing the effects of an echo chamber. To reiterate my other email, I'm extremely skeptical of the real time collab solutions in general. But if there is a clear use-case where it can be helpful, count me interested. I'd just like to see it done "right." Cheers, Rob
Re: more on collaboration
Hi Jose and other LyX-Users, Very interesting articles, thanks for sending them. While trying to digest the ideas, though, I found myself asking two questions and I'd be interested in your feedback. The first question, of course is spurred by pure skepticism. In what instances do you think this feature would be useful? For my part, I'm not a collaborative writer. I don't think well in the presence of others and I hate writing with an audience. My one and only experience with Google Wave was a nightmare. People could see just how much backspacing was involved in my replies! It was deeply humiliating and I'm quite glad that Wave died. (Unfortunately, this whole real time collaboration thing is the next major front in online communication, and I'm sure others will take up the mantle. Pity.) But I'm probably not representative of the general population. Even VCS collaboration often feels too "real time" for me (though I use it and heartily recommend it to others). I much prefer distinct drafts (PDF) sent via email. Even better is paper sent via post. This allows for me to organize my commentary and deliver an overall impression and specific recommendations (To be clear, I prefer this arrangement when editing and when receiving feedback.) However, with all that said, real time collaboration is becoming an expected feature. AbiWord and Google Docs have it, OpenOffice is talking about it, and MS Word even has a rudimentary option. I have several colleagues that have moved to Google Docs specifically because of the real time collaboration options. Even though they've never actually used them, at least to the best of my knowledge and the editing experience is hideous in every other respect. The people I've talked to take solace in knowing that they are present and "would never move to a platform that didn't have them." I've even heard this from the small cadre of users I've converted to LyX. In effect, real time document collaboration is a marketing feature. Unfortunately, marketing features matter. They differentiate program A from program B and providing a talking point. And because they're talked about, such features become part of the criteria by which a program is judged. If you need an example, look at what Google Docs has done for real time collaboration. The presence/lack of a collaboration feature has become a standard review of any word processor. Microsoft Word 2007 was knocked on ZdNet because it wasn't present. MS Word 2010 was lauded because it was (even though it sucks). Yet, I've never actually met anyone who writes with others in real time. The only counterexample I can think of was an exchange with Michael Foord, who uses it to start program documentation. But when I pressed him, what Michael described was more of an outlining tool and could easily be created via an interactive whiteboard rather than a full-featured real-time editing environment. Which leads to my second question. What should real time collaboration look like in order to be helpful? Should it be built into an IM client (ala screensharing) with voice and video? Or would it be better as an online service? Is integration into a desktop writing program necessary? Or would an implementation similar to the MS Word 2010 version be more appropriate, which is a hybrid approach? You have advocated for this strongly and I would love to hear your opinions on the above questions. What would be most helpful for your work? Based on other implementations, what doesn't work quite so well? As more tools release similar real time solutions, I think calls for something similar in LyX will increase. Not necessarily because it's useful, but because it's expected. And yes, I know that this is a terrible reason to add new features. Which is actually my general point. Current implementations of real-time editing are generally terrible. A desktop level approach would be infinitely superior to the approach we are seeing now where each word processor does its own thing. So, if the feature doesn't fit within LyX, perhaps we could send the use case scenarios and discussion to another project where it did fit? The natural fit, at least to my mind, would be one of the IM clients. Perhaps Empathy? Anyone else have any thoughts? Cheers, Rob Oakes
Re: How to create a layout file?
Layout files are just simple text files that have been saved with the .layout
extensions. You then place this file in the "layouts" subdirectory of your LyX
user directory.
(To see where your LyX user directory is located, simply click on Help > About,
or if using Mac, Application Menu > About.)
There are some good links from the LyX Wiki (which you reference), though I
would also take a look at Steve Litt's guides to layouts. There's some very
helpful advice there. About a year ago, I wrote a small series that looks at
creating layouts and various ways of customizing LyX. You can find those
articles (and a few other LaTeX related things) at:
http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/writing/latex
If you have any specific questions, you can always post those here as well. To
my knowledge, all the developers subscribe to the users list and they are all
very nice people.
Cheers,
Rob
On Sep 16, 2010, at 6:58 PM, emant777 wrote:
>
> This might be an obvious question but I can't figure out how to make the
> layout file itself.
> I was reading http://wiki.lyx.org/Layouts/CreatingLayouts
> and I want to type something like this into the file:
> **
> #% Do not delete the line below; configure depends on this
> # \DeclareLaTeXClass[acmsiggraph]{ACM SigGraph}
>
> # Read the definitions from article.layout
> Input article.layout
> ***
> but I can't figure out how to create the file into which I am supposed to
> type this. Please help. Thank you.
>
>
> --
> View this message in context:
> http://lyx.475766.n2.nabble.com/How-to-create-a-layout-file-tp5541048p5541048.html
> Sent from the LyX - Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Re: using different themes on same presentation with beamer
Hi Necati, I don't typically use LyX when working with Beamer. I think it's easier to just use plain LaTeX. However, attached you will find the source file for the example slides I included earlier. The theme commands are invoked with ERT insets. If you have any questions, please feel free to let me know. Cheers, Rob Crazy-Ones.lyx Description: Binary data
Re: how to make fragile frames in beamer layout
Hi Guenter, I'm probably missing something obvious, but can't you use a \protect command? In a few of the document classes I've written, this has allowed me to pass all kind of fragile commands (images, for examples in the texMemo class) while keeping the processor nice and happy. Cheers, Rob On Aug 31, 2010, at 1:28 PM, Guenter Milde wrote: > On 2010-08-31, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote: > >> This is due to the fact how frames are defined in LyX. Unfortunately, this >> rules out native support for fragile frames (unless someone comes up with a >> new definition of \lyxframe). > > How about a "fragile frame" inset? > > InsetLayout FragileFrame > LyXType custom > LatexType Environment > LatexName ??? > ... > > > Günter >
Re: creating a custom layout from scratch
Hi Boraz, Start by reading section 5.2 of Help > Customization. Then I would suggest looking at a couple of layout files, first something simple like the basic article class (article.layout) and then a thesis-type layout file. The layout files are located in a folder (cleverly named 'layouts') beneath the installation directory for LyX. If you're not sure where that is, try Help > About LyX and look for the "Library directory" path near the bottom. Layout files are plain text, so you can view them in your favorite text editor. Some of them import other files (.inc extension). You will also need a LaTeX class for your new document type. If you don't have a custom LaTeX class, shop around for a standard class that supports the various types of environment you need. In addition to this excellent advice, I would take a look at the series of articles by Steve Litt (http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/surefire_layout.htm and http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/lyx_latex_tex.htm). I've also written a series of articles that may be helpful. You can find a full list of the LyX articles at: http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/writing/latex Additionally, there are links to a few custom document classes I maintain which also have layout files that might serve as examples. You might start by looking at the texMemo layout file. It is straightforward, but at the same time, includes examples of how to do character/paragraph styles in addition to custom insets. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to write back to the list. Most of the people here are very nice (I might be the one major exception) and are willing to help. Cheers, Rob
Re: LyX 1.6.7 Packages for Ubuntu
> This is how, after all, python packages are managed (through setup.py). But I > agree if you really need this, advanced users can figure it out by > themselves. I can only dream. I'm not sure that it's that simple. (Or if it is, I really need to learn more about packaging!) I maintain a python project for creating backups (http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/science-and-technology/time-drive). While the packaging scripts use setup.py (distutils) in order to structure things during the build process, I'm not sure that it is used during installation. (My knowledge of packaging is minimal. I struggled through it once so that I could figure out Time Drive, and a second time while learning to package LyX. In both cases, I had good examples and people had already done all the hard work for me.) On the user end, everything seems to be managed by apt and dpkg. Which takes us back to the original problem, there doesn't seem to be a way for the systems to automatically talk to one another on the user's system. It still requires a human being (or a very smart build system) to create specific packages for the platform. Which brings me to the question in the front of my mind. Should we create another Ubuntu/Debian package for LyX that doesn't require the system LaTeX packages? Cheers, Rob
Re: LyX 1.6.7 Packages for Ubuntu
On Aug 20, 2010, at 7:33 AM, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote: > Sure. But you lose one of the most important features of TeXLive: immediate > update to the most recent packages from CTAN. I think it really depends on your needs. The question for the user becomes, how often do you really need to update your LaTeX distribution? Given its maturity and the high quality of the original packages, I've found the answer is: not very often (at least for me). For example, I just recently updated to TexLive 2009 on my main Ubuntu workstation. For years, only TeXLive 2007 was available as part of the package repositories, so I used it. In all that time, there was only one time that I needed a newer copy of a package and couldn't find a workaround. Sure TeXLive included a bunch of benefits, but I'd be pretty hard-pressed to name one that I take advantage of frequently. In fact, without referring to the change-log, I'd be pretty hard pressed to name any at all (updated Tufte classes that correctly number margin figures might be one). For this reason, up to the second versions of LaTeX packages aren't really all that important to me. If the releases were packaged once per year, I think that's more than enough for my needs (and I would argue for the needs of most other users). But the three years that it took to update TeXLive 2007 to TexLive 2009 was probably too long. Though I didn't notice any practical need, there was a psychological need. It's important to feel like your software is maintained, and going such a long time between updates made TeXLive on Debian feel abandoned. (As a caveat, I'd like the ability to download needed packages on the fly (like MikTeX allows), but I am willing to forego that particular nicety for the convenience of a single packaging tool.) So, though i largely agree with your recommendation, I would attach on addendum. For novice LaTeX/LyX users, I would recommend staying with the default packages. For more advanced users that are comfortable with managing their own LaTeX installations, going upstream makes a lot of sense. As someone earlier in this thread said, I wonder if it would be worth packaging a version of LyX for this particular demographic. I wouldn't make it the default, but we could easily set up a PPA (in addition to Red Hat/Open SuSe equivalents) and post installation instructions somewhere on the website. If an advanced user is willing to set up a custom LaTeX distribution, surely they are motivated enough to seek out LyX options that don't require system packages? Just my two cents, though. Cheers, Rob
LyX Presentation Notes and Slides
Dear LyX Users, Because I got a couple of emails asking about the slides from my presentation yesterday, I thought I would pass along the following link: http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/08/19/linux-typography From there, you can download a copy of the slides, or view the slides/speaking notes. Cheers, Rob
Re: LyX 1.6.7 Packages for Ubuntu
Hi Fareed, Does this new LyX package depend on the the TexLive in Ubuntu's repositories? Ubuntu's version of TexLive was out-of-date for a long time, so I installed TexLive 2009 directly from its net installer, to use its latex package manager. As a result I've had to install any latex related programs (LyX, kile, etc) from source to prevent apt from installing its own version of TexLive. Unfortunately, it does. I simply made a few (very minor) modifications to the existing debian package and then submitted it to the Launchpad build service. I did not change the package requirements. However, Ubuntu updated the version of LaTeX to TeXLive 2009 in 10.04. If you're using an older version of Ubuntu, it is possible to have multiple versions of TeX installed side by side. This article explains how (even though the instructions use Ubuntu 10.04 as an example, they work with older versions as well): http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/07/15/latex-custom If you object to that, it's also possible to create dummy packages, though that is more involved: http://texblog.net/latex-archive/linux/kile-texlive-2008-equivs/ If you've already been installing from source, though, you may wish to continue with that. It makes updating to newer versions significantly easier, and it sounds as though you've already made the initial time investment (which is what I find killer). Cheers, Rob
Pure Promotion - LyX Talk at University of Utah
Dear LyX Users, This is a pure piece of personal promotion, but ... here goes. Tonight, I will be giving a talk about LyX to the Salt Lake Linux Users Group. The meeting will be at the University of Utah in the Warnock Engineering building. (See below for directions.) It will start at just after 7:00 pm. Free admission. Though it will focus heavily on LyX (I'm even going to demo a mostly functioning LyX-Outline), the talk will also deal with how to research, write, and publish using Linux. For that reason, I'll also be highlighting several other programs (Zotero, BibTeX, Mendely, LaTeX, Inkscape and Scribus) and describing how they work together. If this interests you at all, and you are in the Salt Lake area, please come. It would be wonderful to put faces to email addresses. /End Shameless Self Promotion Cheers, Rob Warnock Engineering Building 72 South Central Campus Drive Salt Lake City *From Downtown* 1. _Drive East on 400 South:_ As you reach the foothills, 400 South will curve so that it's name changes to 500 South by the time you are on top of the hill. Continue driving East on 500 South until you come to the 1300 East intersection. 2. _Turn left on 1300 East:_ You will now be facing North. Continue driving North on 1300 East until you come to the 100 South intersection. 3. _Turn right on 100 South_ (North Campus Drive): You will now be facing East. Continue driving East on 100 South. As you go up the hill, 100 South will abruptly turn to the left (North), at which point it's name changes to North Campus Drive. Later, it will make a large sweeping turn to the right (East). Continue following North Camus Drive until you come to Central Campus Drive. 4. _Turn right on Central Campus Drive:_ You will now be facing South. Continue driving South on Central Campus Drive until you come to the intersection with the street named Federal Way. 5. _The Warnock Engineering Building_ (WEB) is located off the South West corner of the intersection of Central Campus Drive and Federal Way. *Parking * There is ample parking in three lots adjacent to WEB. Additionally, 7:00 pm is unofficially considered "after hours" by the attendants With that said, the University of Utah parking trolls are evil, aggressive, and can magically detect the presence of violators. (Really. I have no other explanation for my most recent ticket. I had to drop off an edit to a friend and was away from the car for five minutes. By the time I got back to the car, the attendant was gone and the ticket was on my dash. For this reason, you might consider the purchase of a parking day pass (Ithey're $5.00), even though it shouldn't be necessary.
LyX 1.6.7 Packages for Ubuntu
Dear LyX Users and Developers, I wanted to provide a bit of an update to my adventures with Ubuntu packaging (insofar as they are related to LyX). I've spoken with the Ubuntu developers, and they have granted our request to include 1.6.7 in the next version of Ubuntu (Maverick Meerkat, 10.10). Packages have been compiled and are available from Launchpad as of this moment (https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lyx). For users of Lucid Lynx (10.04) who would like to upgrade, I have created a PPA that you can use (https://launchpad.net/~lyx-outline-devel/+archive/lyx-stable). To update, use the following commands from the terminal: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lyx-outline-devel/lyx-stable sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade This will add the repository to your list of software sources and then update any software you have installed. If you have any problems, please let me know. Cheers, Rob PS, if there is interest from the developer/user community, I would also be happy to create a PPA for the latest alpha of LyX 2 (or we on the betas yet?). To prevent it from destroying your system, though, I would need to patch the packaging files and inertia prevents me from doing so unless there is interest.
Re: texMemo layoutfile
Hi Hellmut, Thanks for these recommendations. They are appreciated. > Permit some sort of textual logo (for people who know some LaTeX like > me using different fonts, sizes, color, etc.) > An elementary form could be an ERT block instead of the graphics inset > but I don't have any idea how to do that in lyx. Actually, the template layout allows you to use either text or graphics or any combination of the two. This includes ERT insets. You only need to place them inside the logo inset to make them work. > * Offer fancy headers and footers > (I'm somewhat compulsive wrt Author/Copyright and date on _every_ page > of my documents, even memos ;-) > Could probably be done on LaTeX level already in the preamble ? The template is just based on article, which means that you could use fancyhdr to do this. LyX even includes some limited support for fancyhdr in the Document Settings pane. It's not something I've experimented with much, but you could probably get a long ways without needing to write much ERT. Cheers, Rob
Fwd: [Bug 618690] Re: Sync lyx 1.6.7-1 (universe) from Debian testing (main)
It appears that the request for Feature Freeze exception has been granted. I'm now trying to whittle down the list of Launchpad bugs. Is it just me, or are the LyX website and trac down? Also, were the problems with platex solved per LyX 1.6.7? I remember some of the discussion, but haven't been able to check trac. Cheers, Rob Begin forwarded message: > From: StefanPotyra > Date: August 16, 2010 9:42:45 AM MDT > To: lyx-de...@oak-tree.us > Subject: [Bug 618690] Re: Sync lyx 1.6.7-1 (universe) from Debian testing > (main) > Reply-To: Bug 618690 <618...@bugs.launchpad.net> > > As I've read the mailing list discussion: FFe granted. Thanks for taking > care for lyx in Ubuntu. > > -- > Sync lyx 1.6.7-1 (universe) from Debian testing (main) > https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/618690 > You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber > of the bug. > > Status in “lyx” package in Ubuntu: New > > Bug description: > Please sync lyx 1.6.7-1 (universe) from Debian testing (main) > > Explanation of the Ubuntu delta and why it can be dropped: > The Ubuntu delta applies to version 1.6.5 of LyX, which is obsoleted > by 1.6.7 from Debian testing. Version 1.6.7 fixes a number of bugs in > addition to resolving all known conflicts with Qt 4.6 and 4.7. > > Changelog entries since current maverick version 1.6.5-1ubuntu1: > > lyx (1.6.7-1) unstable; urgency=low > > * New upstream release. > + Remove debian/patches/spellcheckfix - applied upstream. > * Update to Standards-Version: 3.9.0 - no changes required. > * Remove build-dep on libaspell-dev and --with-aspell configure flag. > > -- Sven Hoexter Sat, 17 Jul 2010 18:02:22 +0200 > > lyx (1.6.6-2) unstable; urgency=low > > * Add --with-enchant to the configure flags and add build-depend on >libenchant-dev. > * Add librsvg2-bin | inkscape to the Recommends to support SVG image >handling (new in LyX 1.6.6). > * Set elyxer to the first position in the list of HTML converters. > * Add debian/patches/spellcheckfix which reverts upstream commit >r33567 to fix the broken spellchecker in LyX 1.6.6. >Upstream bugreport: http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/6708 > > -- Sven Hoexter Fri, 28 May 2010 14:30:19 +0200 > > lyx (1.6.6-1) unstable; urgency=low > > [ Per Olofsson ] > * Add texlive-science to Recommends. It's not big, and it's required >for compiling the LyX math manual. Closes: #508939 > > [ Sven Hoexter ] > * New upstream release. >+ Should no longer crash when inserting floats. Closes: #579630 >+ Refresh debian/patches/prefer-xdg-open. > * Bump Standards-Version to 3.8.4 - no changes required. > * Add debian/source/format to state that this is still a package in >1.0 format. > > -- Sven Hoexter Thu, 20 May 2010 13:34:14 +0200 > > > > To unsubscribe from this bug, go to: > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lyx/+bug/618690/+subscribe
Re: texMemo layoutfile
I'm sorry about that Hellmut, I've been using LyX 2.0 exclusively for months and I tend to forget that layou files and enhancements released for the newer versions will not always work with the old. Glad to hear that you got it working, though. If you run into any other problems, please let me know. Also, if there are any feature enhancements you think would be worthwhile, that would also be good to hear. Though I feel somewhat guilty about it, I like using the mailing list as a laboratory for different projects. There is a tremendously diverse group of people here and I get a wide range of feedback that helps to improve my various projects. Cheers, Rob On Aug 16, 2010, at 9:07 AM, Hellmut Weber wrote: > Hi Rob, > thanks for your quick answer ;-) > > Now i got the layout file. > > I ran into little problems because it seems the document class has been > designed using lyx 2.0, and I#m still using 1.6.6.1. > > After a bit of brute force 'backporting' (Changing the format numbers in > both, the *.lyx and the *.layout files and commenting out one line > (concerning the children) in the *.lyx file, some header errors are > shown the first time but after changing something (and thus probably > overwriting the cause of these errors) it is working fine. > > > Thanks a lot and happy LyXing > > Hellmut > > > On 15.08.2010 23:29, Rob Oakes wrote: >> Hi Helmut, >> >> My apologies. The article was cross-posted to two sites: blog.oak-tree.us >> and www.oak-tree.us. The error was corrected on the first and not on the >> second. I have since updated the download link: >> >> http://www.oak-tree.us/2010/08/02/texmemo/ >> >> Please let me know if you have any other problems, or any other feedback you >> might have. I'm an attention whore and love hearing about how things work >> (especially if they don't work, so that I can fix any problems). >> >> Cheers, >> >> Rob >> >> >> On Aug 15, 2010, at 2:10 PM, Hellmut Weber wrote: >> >>> Hi Rob >>> thanks for sharing this docuemnt type ;-) >>> >>> when i try to use the download link indicated >>> >>> tex Memo LyX files >>> >>> from your web page >>> >>> www.oak-tree.us/2010/08/02/texmemo >>> >>> the links resolves to >>> >>> http://oak-tree.us/stuff/LyX/xetexCV-LyX.zip >>> >>> and the content is what the filename says. >>> >>> Can you please put the link to the LyX layout file there instead. >>> Thanks in advance >>> >>> >>> Best regards >>> >>> Hellmut >>> >>> -- >>> Dr. Hellmut Weber m...@hellmutweber.de >>> Degenfeldstraße 2 tel +49-89-3081172 >>> D-80803 München-Schwabing mobil +49-172-8450321 >>> please: No DOCs, no PPTs. why: tinyurl.com/cbgq >> >> > > -- > Dr. Hellmut Weber m...@hellmutweber.de > Degenfeldstraße 2 tel +49-89-3081172 > D-80803 München-Schwabing mobil +49-172-8450321 > please: No DOCs, no PPTs. why: tinyurl.com/cbgq
Re: How to convert to MS Word?
Hi Steve, I'd recommend that you first convert to HTML using eLyXer, and then use create an HTML to Word export filter. The ConvertDoc script described in this article (http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/05/14/msword-lyx-import) can be used to automate the command line OpenOffice conversion so that everything can be done from inside of LyX. When I originally wrote the article, I played with both import/export of Word documents and everything seems to work acceptably for the default character styles. I'm not sure how well it works for custom character styles. With an eye toward LyX 2.0, a better conversion filter might be created that uses the native XHTML export and XML stylesheets to export to Word. Theoretically, such a filter would be able to maintain all of the semantic markup. I've been playing with round tripping with DocBook XML, and though the process is somewhat complicated, it wouldn't be too hard to automate it with python or similar language. It also has the advantage of not relying on a copy of OpenOffice (which given the recent Oracle/Google nastiness, I'm not sure that I trust anymore). Cheers, Rob On Aug 16, 2010, at 4:42 AM, Steve Litt wrote: > Hi all, > > I know this question has been answered 1.1 million times on the list, but I > couldn't quickly find it in a search so I thought I'd ask it again... > > On my second-to-next book I'm going to use the services of a real copy > editor. > Most copy editors prefer (ugh) MS Word. I have to admit when I wrote Samba > Unleashed, the copy editing/proofreading process did work very well with MS > Word. > > My book will be typographically fairly simple and mostly styles-based. What's > the best way to convert from LyX to MS Word, hopefully retaining my styles. > I'm more than willing to rewrite my style definitions on the MS Word side -- > I'd just like the text marked by those styles to be retained as styles on the > MS Word side if possible. If not possible, having the appearances carry > through would be sufficient, as ultimately I'll need to manually put the > editor's suggestions back in my LyX doc. > > By the way, if any of you do proofing/copy-editing for a living, please feel > free to email me off list. > > Thanks > > SteveT > > Steve Litt > Recession Relief Package > http://www.recession-relief.US > Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt >
Re: texMemo layoutfile
Hi Helmut, My apologies. The article was cross-posted to two sites: blog.oak-tree.us and www.oak-tree.us. The error was corrected on the first and not on the second. I have since updated the download link: http://www.oak-tree.us/2010/08/02/texmemo/ Please let me know if you have any other problems, or any other feedback you might have. I'm an attention whore and love hearing about how things work (especially if they don't work, so that I can fix any problems). Cheers, Rob On Aug 15, 2010, at 2:10 PM, Hellmut Weber wrote: > Hi Rob > thanks for sharing this docuemnt type ;-) > > when i try to use the download link indicated > > tex Memo LyX files > > from your web page > > www.oak-tree.us/2010/08/02/texmemo > > the links resolves to > > http://oak-tree.us/stuff/LyX/xetexCV-LyX.zip > > and the content is what the filename says. > > Can you please put the link to the LyX layout file there instead. > Thanks in advance > > > Best regards > > Hellmut > > -- > Dr. Hellmut Weber m...@hellmutweber.de > Degenfeldstraße 2 tel +49-89-3081172 > D-80803 München-Schwabing mobil +49-172-8450321 > please: No DOCs, no PPTs. why: tinyurl.com/cbgq
Re: lyx: Font derail (with semi-related ranting)
Hi Morten, << Since this discussion is turning to matters of taste, what do you think about the font choices? The default font is obviously dated, if elegant. What do you people use? >> Take care with calling Computer Modern dated. I personally don't like it, but a lot of people do. I'd use stronger language -- such as calling it rigid, pompous or and ghastly -- but that got me in trouble last time. So I'll refrain. There's no reason to start forest unnecessary forest fires.) It works very nicely for mathematics and it has a cult following. Beside, fonts never really become "dated". Look at Helvetica, or Gill Sans. They've been around for 60 and 80 years, respectively, and are not going anywhere. Helvetica is everywhere and Gill Sans is (more or less) the default Sans Serif for Mac computers. Not bad for old timers. As far as my personal preferences go, I'm a big fan of Minion and Myriad Pro fonts. I use Minion for body text and Myriad as a sans serif. I haven't quite found a mono spaced font that I like. Yet. Courier Std works in a pinch. (If anyone has any other ideas, I would love to hear them.) I leave Latin Modern for math. Customizing math fonts in xelatex is a pain that no one should suffer willingly, so I don't bother. Regarding files, I use the OpenType variants available with xelatex. There is also a MinionPro package that can be used with other tex variants (http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/minionpro/MinionPro.pdf). It will even customize the math fonts for you. Re: Palatino. I absolutely love Palatino and second Liviu's recommendations. The letter forms of Palatino may be the most refined ever created. But, I've never really been able to find a sans-serif and mono-spaced font that matches well. (At least not per my aesthetic taste.) For that reason, I don't use it often. A good designer friend says that Univers (or if you really need to go there, Helvetica) are appropriate pairings. I think he consumed too many magic mushrooms in his youth. (I actually agree with the Univers pairing. It offers good typographical contrast and the final effect really is quite nice, just not for really long texts.) Re: Margins and Details If you're using Minion, be sure to set appropriate margins. Minion is slightly narrower than Palatino and related fonts, and your margins should be adjusted accordingly. Re: General Advice However ... I'd worry about fonts and appearance until the end. The choice of font should complement the subject of your thesis, and it is usually impossible to choose before it has been written. Book design follows the writing of the book, not before. (I'm speaking from experience, rather than trying to be preachy. I've been working on a book about Open Source writing and I've wasted inordinate amounts of time fretting about fonts, margins, and headings. This is why authors should also not be their own book designers.) With the disclaimer, I would start looking at every book you see. Spend time in the bookstore browsing titles that are similar to your thesis and look at how they lay things out. In the frontmatter, it will usually say who designed the book and what typefaces were used. If you find a pairing that you really like, by all means, steal it. There is no reason to re-invent wheels if you don't have to. Also, note how wide the margins are and whether they use fully justified text, or ragged right. (These things really do matter, a lot. Designer types have done lots of research about these things.) With all that said, the default package pairings in LaTeX are really quite good. Consider using one of those. The LaTeX companion has an overview and I would highly recommend you take a look. Just wait until you are finished, though, and know what type of effect you want to achieve. It will save you hours of tinkering. For working drafts, use Latin Modern. Cheers, Rob
Re: writing my Thesis with lyx
I also, couldn't agree more. I tend to hide my modifications as new document classes ... but front-matter should be finger painted. After that, though, I don't want to see or think about ERT. On 08/11/2010 12:40 PM, Liviu Andronic wrote: On Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:19:43 -0400 Steve Litt wrote: This is a minority opinion and a lot don't subscribe to it, but in my opinion you save time by fingerpainting your front matter. In other words, use embedded LaTeX, historically called ERT in the LyX community, to insert your logo and employer and line them up exactly how you want them and page break where you want and make fonts exactly how you want them to look. I'm not sure that this is minority.. At least I subscribe to it: if in need for anything fancy, first page should be pure LaTeX. All below should (mostly) be LyX. Liviu
Re: lyx chokes on documents with many subsections?
Hi Jose, If you've been using the LyX-Outline branch, you may want to update to the most recent version. It's been a little over a week since I've merge LyX trunk. (I've been trying to fix a problem related to tabbing to the next entry in the expanded outline view.) I merged the source again this morning. It incorporates a lot of bugfixes that may have been specific to your problems. (In addition to fixing a small memory leak that I found with the Corkboard.) Might be worth a try to see if it speeds up LyX for you. Cheers, Rob
