RE: Realistic Size Limit in LyX
Dear LyX Users, Thank you everyone for the very helpful recommendations. I finally narrowed down what my problem was. Turns out, it wasn't related to RAM, LaTeX, LyX or number of floats. (Just for the record, XeLaTeX and LyX 2.0 are doing a marvelous job with 153 figure and table floats and more than 300 individual images. I think that is rather neat.) The problem is related to my very complicated Ubuntu installation. I've been using LyX from within a VMware virtual machine on my MacBook Pro. I do this because managing packages within Ubuntu is very easy and trying to make things work on Mac can be very hard. (After much trial and error and otherwise head banging, I've just decided to run a virtual instance of Ubuntu.) Anyway ... I have a number of shared directories so that I can access my files from both operating systems. I've noticed on a number of occasions that Ubuntu crawls to a halt if the drive happens to be busy. I think this is due to the way that VMware implements shared folders, but I honestly don't know. But as all of my files are stored on the main hard drive (not in the virtual machine), launching xelatex with a large file will often cause Vmware to hang. It also so happens that trying to convert a large SVN repository to a Bzr branch will cause the same thing. For the past three days, I have been converting one of our larger SVN repos into a Bzr branch so that we could open source the code (of course, this was being done in the Ubuntu virtual machine). As soon as the conversion finished, I found that I was no longer able to reproduce my problem. The book magically started to compile without problems. It turns out that the errors I was receiving were due to individual instances of xelatex stalling and then getting killed by the OS. That is why I was seeing bizarre errors in the debug screen of LyX, the xelatex jobs weren't finishing completely and subsequent runs were unable to correctly parse the code. Once the hard drive was no longer busy, xelatex was able to successfully complete it's run and create a beautiful PDF of the book. Not sure what the moral of this story should be, but at least I can report that the problem has been solved. Cheers, Rob
Re: Realistic Size Limit in LyX
On Thursday 11 March 2010 06:41:05 Helge Hafting wrote:
> Possible fixes for float problems:
> * Upgrade your latex, if possible. May also help with
>other limits.
> * Make sure you don't have an "unplaceable float". Typically
>one that is bigger than a page, so it forces all floats
>to the end of the chapter/book. And that don't work
>if there are "too many".
> * Fewer floats, but you probably doesn't want that.
> * More text between floats, so one float can be placed before
>the next is issued. If some "clearpages" help, then more
>text in those locations will help too.
>If you started by outlining with some headings and then
>added all your figures before writing the text, then
>you might get such trouble.
> * Merge adjacent floats into a single float containing
>several figures. (You can still have several numbered captions
>and cross-reference each of them.)
> * Reduce the size of some figures, placement becomes easier
>for latex.
>
> If your problems aren't float-related, then this isn't
> likely to help.
>
If it helps, I have written a document with 197 floats on 165 pages in the
output PDF file. While working on it, I did have problems with floats. Here
is how I fixed it:
1. Put the following in the Preamble:
\usepackage{morefloats}
\renewcommand{\bottomfraction}{.7}
\renewcommand{\textfraction}{.05}
2. Put \clearpage (in ERT) at the end of each of 12 chapters.
That's all it took. I did this over two years ago, when I was a few versions
back for LyX, and I think I was still using a fairly ancient version of TeTeX.
Les
--
Les Denham
---
http://www.hal-pc.org/~ldenham
---
Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
Re: Realistic Size Limit in LyX
Rob Oakes wrote: Dear LyX Users, Is anyone aware if there is a realistic limitation on the number of images you can have in a long document (or the size of the resultant PDF)? Yesterday, I've run into a problem that I don't know how to solve. I have been working on the "Writing with open source tools" book, but my overall PDF master document will no longer build. It fails with an extremely obscure errors. Though they vary, the most common contain reference to: @@BOOKMARK What is truly bizarre, however, is that if I remove one of several chapter that has a very large number of images (examples, screenshots, etc), then the book will compile without problem. It does not seem to matter which, I've tested several different configurations and it seems to be overall number of images that is the problem. (Also, I've tested all of the individual chapter files that have been removed, and they all compile.) I am also seeing errors in the debug output (I'm using an SVN version), and it appears as though the worker thread is timing out. Does anyone know what might be the cause of these problems? Does LyX or LaTeX have any kind of limit on the number of files that it can realistically handle? I'd be extremely appreciative of any advice. I don't know of any limits in LyX, except for whatever limits your pc and operating system have. Hitting those is not likely. Latex have various limitations, especially for floating material. Is your graphics in floats? Floats may float around, bumping into other floats. There are some limits on how many floats latex can consider at the same time. If "Insert->Formatting->Clearpage" between your floats help, then you probably hit some obscure "too many simultaneous floats" limit. Same diagnosis if removing every other float in the chapter helps. To distinguish between "too many floats" and "too many graphics files", try dissolving floats instead of removing them. (i.e. the image remain in the text, but non-floating.) If it helps, then you had a float problem. If not, then you might have a problem with many files. Try removing some. Destructive tests are best done on a copy of your book. :-) Possible fixes for float problems: * Upgrade your latex, if possible. May also help with other limits. * Make sure you don't have an "unplaceable float". Typically one that is bigger than a page, so it forces all floats to the end of the chapter/book. And that don't work if there are "too many". * Fewer floats, but you probably doesn't want that. * More text between floats, so one float can be placed before the next is issued. If some "clearpages" help, then more text in those locations will help too. If you started by outlining with some headings and then added all your figures before writing the text, then you might get such trouble. * Merge adjacent floats into a single float containing several figures. (You can still have several numbered captions and cross-reference each of them.) * Reduce the size of some figures, placement becomes easier for latex. If your problems aren't float-related, then this isn't likely to help.
Re: Realistic Size Limit in LyX
On Wednesday 10 March 2010 19:59:11 Rob Oakes wrote: [clip] > I have been working on the "Writing with open source tools" book, * * \ o / \|/ | C O O L / \ _ / \/ / - Outstanding idea Rob! There are books on Gimp, books on Inkscape, a friend of mine wrote a book on Scribus, I personally wrote a book on Vim, there's lots of web content on LyX, there are several authoritative LaTeX books, but AFAIK nobody has ever put it together into a single book on writing with open source tools. Would it be OK if I told the Publisher's Forum mailing list that your book is being written, and your name and email address so if any of them are interested they can contact you? I'm trying to get them more interested in Open Source writing tools, and it's painfully slow work convincing them. Thanks SteveT Steve Litt Recession Relief Package http://www.recession-relief.US Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt
Re: Realistic Size Limit in LyX
On Wednesday 10 March 2010 19:59:11 Rob Oakes wrote: > Dear LyX Users, > > > > Is anyone aware if there is a realistic limitation on the number of images > you can have in a long document (or the size of the resultant PDF)? > Yesterday, I've run into a problem that I don't know how to solve. > > > > I have been working on the "Writing with open source tools" book, but my > overall PDF master document will no longer build. It fails with an > extremely obscure errors. Though they vary, the most common contain > reference to: > > > > @@BOOKMARK > > > > What is truly bizarre, however, is that if I remove one of several chapter > that has a very large number of images (examples, screenshots, etc), then > the book will compile without problem. It does not seem to matter which, > I've tested several different configurations and it seems to be overall > number of images that is the problem. (Also, I've tested all of the > individual chapter files that have been removed, and they all compile.) > > > > I am also seeing errors in the debug output (I'm using an SVN version), and > it appears as though the worker thread is timing out. > > > > Does anyone know what might be the cause of these problems? Does LyX or > LaTeX have any kind of limit on the number of files that it can > realistically handle? I'd be extremely appreciative of any advice. Hi Rob, My first advice would be to compile the thing one step at a time: lyx --export latex myfile.lyx latex myfile.tex dvips myfile.dvi ps2pdf myfile.ps See where it fails. Try to view the error message. Google the error message. If it doesn't fail, find what it's doing different from your integrated compile or the compile script you've been using. Just for fun try a different version of LyX and see if the symptom changes. Either way, it tells you something. Try to rule out RAM and disk space. Compile it on a computer with giant disk space and a huge swap partition. Or if you're already on the biggest one you can find, yank one chapter so that it compiles right, then try compiling that on a computer with less RAM, disk space and swap, and see if you get a similar error. Your error message has the word BOOKMARK in it. What's a bookmark in LyX? I see there's Navigate->Bookmark. See what bookmarks you have, clear them all and try again. If none of this solves it, I'll leave you with this one last thought: http://www.troubleshooters.com/tpromag/199902/199902.htm SteveT Steve Litt Recession Relief Package http://www.recession-relief.US Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt
Realistic Size Limit in LyX
Dear LyX Users, Is anyone aware if there is a realistic limitation on the number of images you can have in a long document (or the size of the resultant PDF)? Yesterday, I've run into a problem that I don't know how to solve. I have been working on the "Writing with open source tools" book, but my overall PDF master document will no longer build. It fails with an extremely obscure errors. Though they vary, the most common contain reference to: @@BOOKMARK What is truly bizarre, however, is that if I remove one of several chapter that has a very large number of images (examples, screenshots, etc), then the book will compile without problem. It does not seem to matter which, I've tested several different configurations and it seems to be overall number of images that is the problem. (Also, I've tested all of the individual chapter files that have been removed, and they all compile.) I am also seeing errors in the debug output (I'm using an SVN version), and it appears as though the worker thread is timing out. Does anyone know what might be the cause of these problems? Does LyX or LaTeX have any kind of limit on the number of files that it can realistically handle? I'd be extremely appreciative of any advice. Cheers, Rob Oakes
