Re: which texlive uses my lyx?

[Paul A. Rubin]

On 12/6/22 04:51, Wolfgang Engelmann wrote:

I have installed the latest texlive
tex --version
TeX 3.141592653 (TeX Live 2022)
in my Debian /usr/local/texlive/2022/
and set the PATH's in .profile

How can I find out which texlive uses my lyx

Version 2.4.0dev (not released yet)
Built from git commit hash 53ed3dc0
Qt Version (run-time): 5.15.2 on platform xcb
Qt Version (compile-time): 5.15.2
Python detected: python3 -tt

library directory:
/usr/local/share/lyx24x/

User directory:
~/.lyx24x/

Wolfgang


 * First, in LyX go to Tools > Preferences... > File Handling >
   Converters and select one of the converters you use most often. For
   me, that is LaTeX (pdflatex) -> PDF (pdflatex).
 * Now check the command listed in the "Converter" field. For me, that
   is "pdflatex $$i".
 * In a terminal, run that command with the "--version" option to see
   which version is in use.
 * Repeat for other formats you use as needed. My output pretty much
   matches what you got from "tex --version".

Paul

-- 
lyx-users mailing list
lyx-users@lists.lyx.org
http://lists.lyx.org/mailman/listinfo/lyx-users

which texlive uses my lyx?

[Wolfgang Engelmann]

I have installed the latest texlive
tex --version
TeX 3.141592653 (TeX Live 2022)
in my Debian /usr/local/texlive/2022/
and set the PATH's in .profile

How can I find out which texlive uses my lyx

Version 2.4.0dev (not released yet)
Built from git commit hash 53ed3dc0
Qt Version (run-time): 5.15.2 on platform xcb
Qt Version (compile-time): 5.15.2
Python detected: python3 -tt

library directory:
/usr/local/share/lyx24x/

User directory:
~/.lyx24x/

Wolfgang
--
lyx-users mailing list
lyx-users@lists.lyx.org
http://lists.lyx.org/mailman/listinfo/lyx-users

Re: Uses for LyX

[Helge Hafting]

On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 02:23:31PM -0600, Jack T. Gill wrote:
 Thanks to Rich and others for their comments.
 
 I'm a chemist and am currently interim chair of a chemistry department at a
 medium-sized, state supported university.  LyX intrigues me as it seems to
 offer the potential of enabling us to assist our students in writing their
 theses and dissertations.  It's difficult enough to write the content of an
 acceptable thesis or dissertation in chemistry, and having the additional
 challenges of formatting offloaded would be a great help to all.  If we had
 a document class that meets the university's formatting requirements, then
 both the students and the students' graduate faculty committees would be
 relieved of the continual format editing that inevitably falls to them.  
 
 However I doubt if any students or faculty would avail themselves of LyX if
 they were faced with the requirement that they learn LaTex programming.
 When the additional learning curve for incorporating chemical structures is
 added to the mix, the prospects of convincing them to use LyX dims even
 further.
 
 I've searched for dissertation classes (Google, etc.), and have found a few,
 but those I found are either very old (in computer years) or are not
 appropriate for chemistry and/or our university's formatting requirements.
 All would require tweaking.
 
 I dread the possibility of having to write a document class for Lyx, as I am
 new to it all.  However that may be the only way to get the LyX tool in the
 hands of our students.
 
 Are there any chemists on the list that use LyX for theses, dissertations,
 or with American Chemical Society styles?
 
If you have your own special formatting requirements, then a new Lyx document
class is needed.  That may need some work, but the good thing is that
it is a one-time job.  Once you have a class then everybody can use it - 
without any latex tweaks at all.

If you don't want to write a lyx class yourself, consider giving the job
to a student.  Perhaps you have some that are interested in typography
and computers?

Helge Hafting 

Re: Uses for LyX

[Kenward Vaughan]

Hi Jack,

On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 02:23:31PM -0600, Jack T. Gill wrote:
 Thanks to Rich and others for their comments.
 
 I'm a chemist and am currently interim chair of a chemistry department at a
 medium-sized, state supported university.  LyX intrigues me as it seems to
 offer the potential of enabling us to assist our students in writing their
 theses and dissertations.  It's difficult enough to write the content of an
...

I unfortunately do not have these issues at my community college (or is
that just fortunate?? ;-) and so cannot help you directly.  

I _do_ use LyX for virtually everything I create for my chemistry
classes.  In particular, all exams and lab handouts, including those
for organic.


 However I doubt if any students or faculty would avail themselves of LyX if
 they were faced with the requirement that they learn LaTex programming.

My own experience has been that this is minimal outside the issue of a
document class, and is well addressed by the resources available
through the LyX site (including this excellent email list).

An FAQ list could also be generated by those pioneering its use for
later consumption by the following masses.  :)


 When the additional learning curve for incorporating chemical structures is
 added to the mix, the prospects of convincing them to use LyX dims even
 further.
...

Hmm.  There are several apps available for generating structures that
work well.

While some LaTeX packages do exist which generate drawings directly in
one's document, I have fallen away from them (in part due to poor
maintenance) in favor of simpler solutions such as chemtool or
xdrawchem.  I now use chemtool almost exclusively despite its
simplicity and a few quirks.  Exporting/printing to (e)ps files is
available with these apps (though I haven't tried using the ps files
generated with xdrawchem's print system).

Xfig (the backend for chemtool) fills in nearly all the rest of my
needs.

Incorporating eps figures into LyX documents is not a difficult task.

There is also a cute little app called chemeq which generates LaTeX for
chemical equations (among other things).  I don't use it much as I have
my own style for doing that, but it's there...

Hope this helps,


Kenward
-- 
In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be 
_teachers_ and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, 
because passing civilization along from one generation to the next 
ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone 
could have. - Lee Iacocca

Re: Uses for LyX

[Helge Hafting]

On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 02:23:31PM -0600, Jack T. Gill wrote:
 Thanks to Rich and others for their comments.
 
 I'm a chemist and am currently interim chair of a chemistry department at a
 medium-sized, state supported university.  LyX intrigues me as it seems to
 offer the potential of enabling us to assist our students in writing their
 theses and dissertations.  It's difficult enough to write the content of an
 acceptable thesis or dissertation in chemistry, and having the additional
 challenges of formatting offloaded would be a great help to all.  If we had
 a document class that meets the university's formatting requirements, then
 both the students and the students' graduate faculty committees would be
 relieved of the continual format editing that inevitably falls to them.  
 
 However I doubt if any students or faculty would avail themselves of LyX if
 they were faced with the requirement that they learn LaTex programming.
 When the additional learning curve for incorporating chemical structures is
 added to the mix, the prospects of convincing them to use LyX dims even
 further.
 
 I've searched for dissertation classes (Google, etc.), and have found a few,
 but those I found are either very old (in computer years) or are not
 appropriate for chemistry and/or our university's formatting requirements.
 All would require tweaking.
 
 I dread the possibility of having to write a document class for Lyx, as I am
 new to it all.  However that may be the only way to get the LyX tool in the
 hands of our students.
 
 Are there any chemists on the list that use LyX for theses, dissertations,
 or with American Chemical Society styles?
 
If you have your own special formatting requirements, then a new Lyx document
class is needed.  That may need some work, but the good thing is that
it is a one-time job.  Once you have a class then everybody can use it - 
without any latex tweaks at all.

If you don't want to write a lyx class yourself, consider giving the job
to a student.  Perhaps you have some that are interested in typography
and computers?

Helge Hafting 

Re: Uses for LyX

[Kenward Vaughan]

Hi Jack,

On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 02:23:31PM -0600, Jack T. Gill wrote:
 Thanks to Rich and others for their comments.
 
 I'm a chemist and am currently interim chair of a chemistry department at a
 medium-sized, state supported university.  LyX intrigues me as it seems to
 offer the potential of enabling us to assist our students in writing their
 theses and dissertations.  It's difficult enough to write the content of an
...

I unfortunately do not have these issues at my community college (or is
that just fortunate?? ;-) and so cannot help you directly.  

I _do_ use LyX for virtually everything I create for my chemistry
classes.  In particular, all exams and lab handouts, including those
for organic.


 However I doubt if any students or faculty would avail themselves of LyX if
 they were faced with the requirement that they learn LaTex programming.

My own experience has been that this is minimal outside the issue of a
document class, and is well addressed by the resources available
through the LyX site (including this excellent email list).

An FAQ list could also be generated by those pioneering its use for
later consumption by the following masses.  :)


 When the additional learning curve for incorporating chemical structures is
 added to the mix, the prospects of convincing them to use LyX dims even
 further.
...

Hmm.  There are several apps available for generating structures that
work well.

While some LaTeX packages do exist which generate drawings directly in
one's document, I have fallen away from them (in part due to poor
maintenance) in favor of simpler solutions such as chemtool or
xdrawchem.  I now use chemtool almost exclusively despite its
simplicity and a few quirks.  Exporting/printing to (e)ps files is
available with these apps (though I haven't tried using the ps files
generated with xdrawchem's print system).

Xfig (the backend for chemtool) fills in nearly all the rest of my
needs.

Incorporating eps figures into LyX documents is not a difficult task.

There is also a cute little app called chemeq which generates LaTeX for
chemical equations (among other things).  I don't use it much as I have
my own style for doing that, but it's there...

Hope this helps,


Kenward
-- 
In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be 
_teachers_ and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, 
because passing civilization along from one generation to the next 
ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone 
could have. - Lee Iacocca

Re: Uses for LyX

[Helge Hafting]

On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 02:23:31PM -0600, Jack T. Gill wrote:
> Thanks to Rich and others for their comments.
> 
> I'm a chemist and am currently interim chair of a chemistry department at a
> medium-sized, state supported university.  LyX intrigues me as it seems to
> offer the potential of enabling us to assist our students in writing their
> theses and dissertations.  It's difficult enough to write the content of an
> acceptable thesis or dissertation in chemistry, and having the additional
> challenges of formatting offloaded would be a great help to all.  If we had
> a document class that meets the university's formatting requirements, then
> both the students and the students' graduate faculty committees would be
> relieved of the continual format editing that inevitably falls to them.  
> 
> However I doubt if any students or faculty would avail themselves of LyX if
> they were faced with the requirement that they learn LaTex programming.
> When the additional learning curve for incorporating chemical structures is
> added to the mix, the prospects of convincing them to use LyX dims even
> further.
> 
> I've searched for dissertation classes (Google, etc.), and have found a few,
> but those I found are either very old (in computer years) or are not
> appropriate for chemistry and/or our university's formatting requirements.
> All would require "tweaking".
> 
> I dread the possibility of having to write a document class for Lyx, as I am
> new to it all.  However that may be the only way to get the LyX tool in the
> hands of our students.
> 
> Are there any chemists on the list that use LyX for theses, dissertations,
> or with American Chemical Society styles?
> 
If you have your own special formatting requirements, then a new Lyx document
class is needed.  That may need some work, but the good thing is that
it is a one-time job.  Once you have a class then everybody can use it - 
without any latex tweaks at all.

If you don't want to write a lyx class yourself, consider giving the job
to a student.  Perhaps you have some that are interested in typography
and computers?

Helge Hafting 

Re: Uses for LyX

[Kenward Vaughan]

Hi Jack,

On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 02:23:31PM -0600, Jack T. Gill wrote:
> Thanks to Rich and others for their comments.
> 
> I'm a chemist and am currently interim chair of a chemistry department at a
> medium-sized, state supported university.  LyX intrigues me as it seems to
> offer the potential of enabling us to assist our students in writing their
> theses and dissertations.  It's difficult enough to write the content of an
...

I unfortunately do not have these issues at my community college (or is
that just fortunate?? ;-) and so cannot help you directly.  

I _do_ use LyX for virtually everything I create for my chemistry
classes.  In particular, all exams and lab handouts, including those
for organic.


> However I doubt if any students or faculty would avail themselves of LyX if
> they were faced with the requirement that they learn LaTex programming.

My own experience has been that this is minimal outside the issue of a
document class, and is well addressed by the resources available
through the LyX site (including this excellent email list).

An FAQ list could also be generated by those pioneering its use for
later consumption by the following masses.  :)


> When the additional learning curve for incorporating chemical structures is
> added to the mix, the prospects of convincing them to use LyX dims even
> further.
...

Hmm.  There are several apps available for generating structures that
work well.

While some LaTeX packages do exist which generate drawings directly in
one's document, I have fallen away from them (in part due to poor
maintenance) in favor of simpler solutions such as chemtool or
xdrawchem.  I now use chemtool almost exclusively despite its
simplicity and a few quirks.  Exporting/printing to (e)ps files is
available with these apps (though I haven't tried using the ps files
generated with xdrawchem's print system).

Xfig (the backend for chemtool) fills in nearly all the rest of my
needs.

Incorporating eps figures into LyX documents is not a difficult task.

There is also a cute little app called chemeq which generates LaTeX for
chemical equations (among other things).  I don't use it much as I have
my own style for doing that, but it's there...

Hope this helps,


Kenward
-- 
In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be 
_teachers_ and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, 
because passing civilization along from one generation to the next 
ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone 
could have. - Lee Iacocca

Uses for Lyx

[Les Denham]

On Wednesday 29 December 2004 20:11, Jack T. Gill wrote:
 Does anyone use LyX right out of the box (or download) without all the
 tweaking?  If so, to what use are you putting it?

I've used Lyx for more than four years, and rarely do anything you could call 
tweaking.  Some of the things I've used it for are:

Technical proposals, ranging in size from a few pages to over a hundred pages.

Geological reports, usually 50 to 200 pages, with many figures.

Five sail-training manuals of 30 to 100 pages.

A 400 page novel.

I generally do not use Lyx for very short documents (two pages or less), 
though yesterday I used it to make two pages of notes on the contents of five 
data CDs.

My biggest problems with Lyx come from colleagues, publishers and clients who 
insist on receiving documents in MS Word format.  Lyx does not have a 
solution for that.  One approach I have used is to prepare the document in 
Lyx, then export as ASCII; open the ASCII file in OpenOffice and save it in 
MS Word format.  Then I send both the MS Word document and a PDF file 
generated from Lyx, so the recipient can see how much better it could look.

My other major problems come from people who insist on sending me MS Word 
documents.  While Lyx often does a reasonable job of importing MS Word 
documents, the result is an unstructured Lyx document which is hard to modify 
as you would an ordinary Lyx document.  My usual solution is to import the MS 
Word document into OpenOffice, convert the whole document to Default style, 
and save in text format.  Then I import that plain ASCII file into Lyx, and 
go through the document, setting styles by hand.

-- 
Les

~~
Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

Re: Uses for Lyx

[Rich Shepard]

On Thu, 30 Dec 2004, Les Denham wrote:
I generally do not use Lyx for very short documents (two pages or less),
though yesterday I used it to make two pages of notes on the contents of
five data CDs.
Les,
  I'll second that. When I write letters or must share a document with those
stuck with Microsoft software I use OpenOffice.org. Otherwise, all serious
writing is with LyX.
My biggest problems with Lyx come from colleagues, publishers and clients
who insist on receiving documents in MS Word format.
  The greatest irony is that O'Reilly Associates (publishers of some of the
best UNIX/linux books) insists that their authors submit book text in MS
Word! O'Reilly also sponsors OSCON (the Open Source Convention) and promotes
open documents, too. So, why do they demand the use of a terrible,
proprietary word processor when they can get camera-ready, typeset
submittals as .tex files? Shrug. It's a real shame.
  My publisher (Springer-Verlag) has LaTeX class files. I easily converted
the svmono.cls into a LyX layout and sent them the book that way.
Rich
--
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
http://www.appl-ecosys.com   Voice: 503-667-4517   Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Uses for Lyx

[Matej Cepl]

Rich Shepard wrote:
The greatest irony is that O'Reilly Associates (publishers of some of
the
 best UNIX/linux books) insists that their authors submit book text in MS
 Word! O'Reilly also sponsors OSCON (the Open Source Convention) and
 promotes open documents, too. So, why do they demand the use of a
 terrible, proprietary word processor when they can get camera-ready,
 typeset submittals as .tex files? Shrug. It's a real shame.

Even worse, O'Reilly are one of the powers behind DocBook!

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time
reading it.
  -- Moses Hadas

Re: Uses for LyX

[Jack T. Gill]

Thanks to Rich and others for their comments.

I'm a chemist and am currently interim chair of a chemistry department at a
medium-sized, state supported university.  LyX intrigues me as it seems to
offer the potential of enabling us to assist our students in writing their
theses and dissertations.  It's difficult enough to write the content of an
acceptable thesis or dissertation in chemistry, and having the additional
challenges of formatting offloaded would be a great help to all.  If we had
a document class that meets the university's formatting requirements, then
both the students and the students' graduate faculty committees would be
relieved of the continual format editing that inevitably falls to them.  

However I doubt if any students or faculty would avail themselves of LyX if
they were faced with the requirement that they learn LaTex programming.
When the additional learning curve for incorporating chemical structures is
added to the mix, the prospects of convincing them to use LyX dims even
further.

I've searched for dissertation classes (Google, etc.), and have found a few,
but those I found are either very old (in computer years) or are not
appropriate for chemistry and/or our university's formatting requirements.
All would require tweaking.

I dread the possibility of having to write a document class for Lyx, as I am
new to it all.  However that may be the only way to get the LyX tool in the
hands of our students.

Are there any chemists on the list that use LyX for theses, dissertations,
or with American Chemical Society styles?

Jack

-Original Message-
From: Rich Shepard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 2004 9:46 PM
To: lyx-users@lists.lyx.org
Subject: RE: chapter heading on blank page and too much text in chapter
heading

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004, Jack T. Gill wrote:

 I've been monitoring this list for a couple of months. I was intrigued 
 by LyX and it being a WYSIWYM program. However most of the activity 
 I've seen on this list seems to be from folks having problems tweaking 
 LyX, i.e., changing the settings or adding ERT to reformat the output 
 to what they want. To me that's no longer WYSIWYM, but seems to be 
 what I've done for years with OpenOffice or in Word---typing the 
 content and formatting the output.

 Does anyone use LyX right out of the box (or download) without all the 
 tweaking?  If so, to what use are you putting it?

Jack,

   You're reading too much into what you see. For the really easy stuff no
one writes to ask for help. It's only when you don't know how to do
something (e.g., remove the date from the title page; place a special
character, have multiple equations with one number and caption, put multiple
figures or tables in the same float).

   On the other hand, I'll bet you don't use winWord or OO.o out of the
box, either. Never used Word (yea, team!) but have used OO.o since
WordPerfect bit the dust about 5 years ago. In OO.o one must set the page
size (unless A4 is your default), specify font style, size, margins and so
on for your defaults. If you want templates then you need to create those,
too. Nothing works for everyone as built.

   What sort of writing do you do? Have you produced documents using the
article, report and/or book classes? If so, do they meet your needs? If the
defaults (and you still need to configure LyX when you carefully take it out
of the box) are acceptable, then use it and ignore the traffic here. When
you want to do more, or customize the output to fit a specific need (e.g., a
thesis/dissertation template, journal template, whatever) and you need help,
just write and someone(s) will respond to you.

   This is, without doubt, one of the most useful mail lists to which I
subscribe. I learn as much by reading how others' problems are resolved as I
do when my problems are resolved. Also, if you're serious about using LyX
buy yourself a copy of The LaTeX Companion, Second Edition (TLC2). Not
only is it a complete reference but it will show you what you can do to make
the output match your design.

   Once things are set up, just write. The formatting, typesetting and other
heavy lifting is done for you.

HTH,

Rich

--
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
http://www.appl-ecosys.com   Voice: 503-667-4517   Fax: 503-667-8863

Uses for Lyx

[Les Denham]

On Wednesday 29 December 2004 20:11, Jack T. Gill wrote:
 Does anyone use LyX right out of the box (or download) without all the
 tweaking?  If so, to what use are you putting it?

I've used Lyx for more than four years, and rarely do anything you could call 
tweaking.  Some of the things I've used it for are:

Technical proposals, ranging in size from a few pages to over a hundred pages.

Geological reports, usually 50 to 200 pages, with many figures.

Five sail-training manuals of 30 to 100 pages.

A 400 page novel.

I generally do not use Lyx for very short documents (two pages or less), 
though yesterday I used it to make two pages of notes on the contents of five 
data CDs.

My biggest problems with Lyx come from colleagues, publishers and clients who 
insist on receiving documents in MS Word format.  Lyx does not have a 
solution for that.  One approach I have used is to prepare the document in 
Lyx, then export as ASCII; open the ASCII file in OpenOffice and save it in 
MS Word format.  Then I send both the MS Word document and a PDF file 
generated from Lyx, so the recipient can see how much better it could look.

My other major problems come from people who insist on sending me MS Word 
documents.  While Lyx often does a reasonable job of importing MS Word 
documents, the result is an unstructured Lyx document which is hard to modify 
as you would an ordinary Lyx document.  My usual solution is to import the MS 
Word document into OpenOffice, convert the whole document to Default style, 
and save in text format.  Then I import that plain ASCII file into Lyx, and 
go through the document, setting styles by hand.

-- 
Les

~~
Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

Re: Uses for Lyx

[Rich Shepard]

On Thu, 30 Dec 2004, Les Denham wrote:
I generally do not use Lyx for very short documents (two pages or less),
though yesterday I used it to make two pages of notes on the contents of
five data CDs.
Les,
  I'll second that. When I write letters or must share a document with those
stuck with Microsoft software I use OpenOffice.org. Otherwise, all serious
writing is with LyX.
My biggest problems with Lyx come from colleagues, publishers and clients
who insist on receiving documents in MS Word format.
  The greatest irony is that O'Reilly Associates (publishers of some of the
best UNIX/linux books) insists that their authors submit book text in MS
Word! O'Reilly also sponsors OSCON (the Open Source Convention) and promotes
open documents, too. So, why do they demand the use of a terrible,
proprietary word processor when they can get camera-ready, typeset
submittals as .tex files? Shrug. It's a real shame.
  My publisher (Springer-Verlag) has LaTeX class files. I easily converted
the svmono.cls into a LyX layout and sent them the book that way.
Rich
--
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
http://www.appl-ecosys.com   Voice: 503-667-4517   Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Uses for Lyx

[Matej Cepl]

Rich Shepard wrote:
The greatest irony is that O'Reilly Associates (publishers of some of
the
 best UNIX/linux books) insists that their authors submit book text in MS
 Word! O'Reilly also sponsors OSCON (the Open Source Convention) and
 promotes open documents, too. So, why do they demand the use of a
 terrible, proprietary word processor when they can get camera-ready,
 typeset submittals as .tex files? Shrug. It's a real shame.

Even worse, O'Reilly are one of the powers behind DocBook!

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time
reading it.
  -- Moses Hadas

Re: Uses for LyX

[Jack T. Gill]

Thanks to Rich and others for their comments.

I'm a chemist and am currently interim chair of a chemistry department at a
medium-sized, state supported university.  LyX intrigues me as it seems to
offer the potential of enabling us to assist our students in writing their
theses and dissertations.  It's difficult enough to write the content of an
acceptable thesis or dissertation in chemistry, and having the additional
challenges of formatting offloaded would be a great help to all.  If we had
a document class that meets the university's formatting requirements, then
both the students and the students' graduate faculty committees would be
relieved of the continual format editing that inevitably falls to them.  

However I doubt if any students or faculty would avail themselves of LyX if
they were faced with the requirement that they learn LaTex programming.
When the additional learning curve for incorporating chemical structures is
added to the mix, the prospects of convincing them to use LyX dims even
further.

I've searched for dissertation classes (Google, etc.), and have found a few,
but those I found are either very old (in computer years) or are not
appropriate for chemistry and/or our university's formatting requirements.
All would require tweaking.

I dread the possibility of having to write a document class for Lyx, as I am
new to it all.  However that may be the only way to get the LyX tool in the
hands of our students.

Are there any chemists on the list that use LyX for theses, dissertations,
or with American Chemical Society styles?

Jack

-Original Message-
From: Rich Shepard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 2004 9:46 PM
To: lyx-users@lists.lyx.org
Subject: RE: chapter heading on blank page and too much text in chapter
heading

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004, Jack T. Gill wrote:

 I've been monitoring this list for a couple of months. I was intrigued 
 by LyX and it being a WYSIWYM program. However most of the activity 
 I've seen on this list seems to be from folks having problems tweaking 
 LyX, i.e., changing the settings or adding ERT to reformat the output 
 to what they want. To me that's no longer WYSIWYM, but seems to be 
 what I've done for years with OpenOffice or in Word---typing the 
 content and formatting the output.

 Does anyone use LyX right out of the box (or download) without all the 
 tweaking?  If so, to what use are you putting it?

Jack,

   You're reading too much into what you see. For the really easy stuff no
one writes to ask for help. It's only when you don't know how to do
something (e.g., remove the date from the title page; place a special
character, have multiple equations with one number and caption, put multiple
figures or tables in the same float).

   On the other hand, I'll bet you don't use winWord or OO.o out of the
box, either. Never used Word (yea, team!) but have used OO.o since
WordPerfect bit the dust about 5 years ago. In OO.o one must set the page
size (unless A4 is your default), specify font style, size, margins and so
on for your defaults. If you want templates then you need to create those,
too. Nothing works for everyone as built.

   What sort of writing do you do? Have you produced documents using the
article, report and/or book classes? If so, do they meet your needs? If the
defaults (and you still need to configure LyX when you carefully take it out
of the box) are acceptable, then use it and ignore the traffic here. When
you want to do more, or customize the output to fit a specific need (e.g., a
thesis/dissertation template, journal template, whatever) and you need help,
just write and someone(s) will respond to you.

   This is, without doubt, one of the most useful mail lists to which I
subscribe. I learn as much by reading how others' problems are resolved as I
do when my problems are resolved. Also, if you're serious about using LyX
buy yourself a copy of The LaTeX Companion, Second Edition (TLC2). Not
only is it a complete reference but it will show you what you can do to make
the output match your design.

   Once things are set up, just write. The formatting, typesetting and other
heavy lifting is done for you.

HTH,

Rich

--
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
http://www.appl-ecosys.com   Voice: 503-667-4517   Fax: 503-667-8863

Uses for Lyx

[Les Denham]

On Wednesday 29 December 2004 20:11, Jack T. Gill wrote:
> Does anyone use LyX right out of the box (or download) without all the
> tweaking?  If so, to what use are you putting it?

I've used Lyx for more than four years, and rarely do anything you could call 
"tweaking".  Some of the things I've used it for are:

Technical proposals, ranging in size from a few pages to over a hundred pages.

Geological reports, usually 50 to 200 pages, with many figures.

Five sail-training manuals of 30 to 100 pages.

A 400 page novel.

I generally do not use Lyx for very short documents (two pages or less), 
though yesterday I used it to make two pages of notes on the contents of five 
data CDs.

My biggest problems with Lyx come from colleagues, publishers and clients who 
insist on receiving documents in MS Word format.  Lyx does not have a 
solution for that.  One approach I have used is to prepare the document in 
Lyx, then export as ASCII; open the ASCII file in OpenOffice and save it in 
MS Word format.  Then I send both the MS Word document and a PDF file 
generated from Lyx, so the recipient can see how much better it could look.

My other major problems come from people who insist on sending me MS Word 
documents.  While Lyx often does a reasonable job of importing MS Word 
documents, the result is an unstructured Lyx document which is hard to modify 
as you would an ordinary Lyx document.  My usual solution is to import the MS 
Word document into OpenOffice, convert the whole document to "Default" style, 
and save in text format.  Then I import that plain ASCII file into Lyx, and 
go through the document, setting styles by hand.

-- 
Les

~~
Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

Re: Uses for Lyx

[Rich Shepard]

On Thu, 30 Dec 2004, Les Denham wrote:
I generally do not use Lyx for very short documents (two pages or less),
though yesterday I used it to make two pages of notes on the contents of
five data CDs.
Les,
  I'll second that. When I write letters or must share a document with those
stuck with Microsoft software I use OpenOffice.org. Otherwise, all "serious"
writing is with LyX.
My biggest problems with Lyx come from colleagues, publishers and clients
who insist on receiving documents in MS Word format.
  The greatest irony is that O'Reilly Associates (publishers of some of the
best UNIX/linux books) insists that their authors submit book text in MS
Word! O'Reilly also sponsors OSCON (the Open Source Convention) and promotes
open documents, too. So, why do they demand the use of a terrible,
proprietary word processor when they can get camera-ready, typeset
submittals as .tex files? Shrug. It's a real shame.
  My publisher (Springer-Verlag) has LaTeX class files. I easily converted
the svmono.cls into a LyX layout and sent them the book that way.
Rich
--
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
   Voice: 503-667-4517   Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Uses for Lyx

[Matej Cepl]

Rich Shepard wrote:
>The greatest irony is that O'Reilly Associates (publishers of some of
>the
> best UNIX/linux books) insists that their authors submit book text in MS
> Word! O'Reilly also sponsors OSCON (the Open Source Convention) and
> promotes open documents, too. So, why do they demand the use of a
> terrible, proprietary word processor when they can get camera-ready,
> typeset submittals as .tex files? Shrug. It's a real shame.

Even worse, O'Reilly are one of the powers behind DocBook!

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time
reading it.
  -- Moses Hadas

Re: Uses for LyX

[Jack T. Gill]

Thanks to Rich and others for their comments.

I'm a chemist and am currently interim chair of a chemistry department at a
medium-sized, state supported university.  LyX intrigues me as it seems to
offer the potential of enabling us to assist our students in writing their
theses and dissertations.  It's difficult enough to write the content of an
acceptable thesis or dissertation in chemistry, and having the additional
challenges of formatting offloaded would be a great help to all.  If we had
a document class that meets the university's formatting requirements, then
both the students and the students' graduate faculty committees would be
relieved of the continual format editing that inevitably falls to them.  

However I doubt if any students or faculty would avail themselves of LyX if
they were faced with the requirement that they learn LaTex programming.
When the additional learning curve for incorporating chemical structures is
added to the mix, the prospects of convincing them to use LyX dims even
further.

I've searched for dissertation classes (Google, etc.), and have found a few,
but those I found are either very old (in computer years) or are not
appropriate for chemistry and/or our university's formatting requirements.
All would require "tweaking".

I dread the possibility of having to write a document class for Lyx, as I am
new to it all.  However that may be the only way to get the LyX tool in the
hands of our students.

Are there any chemists on the list that use LyX for theses, dissertations,
or with American Chemical Society styles?

Jack

-Original Message-
From: Rich Shepard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 2004 9:46 PM
To: lyx-users@lists.lyx.org
Subject: RE: chapter heading on blank page and too much text in chapter
heading

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004, Jack T. Gill wrote:

> I've been monitoring this list for a couple of months. I was intrigued 
> by LyX and it being a WYSIWYM program. However most of the activity 
> I've seen on this list seems to be from folks having problems tweaking 
> LyX, i.e., changing the settings or adding ERT to reformat the output 
> to what they want. To me that's no longer WYSIWYM, but seems to be 
> what I've done for years with OpenOffice or in Word---typing the 
> content and formatting the output.
>
> Does anyone use LyX right out of the box (or download) without all the 
> tweaking?  If so, to what use are you putting it?

Jack,

   You're reading too much into what you see. For the really easy stuff no
one writes to ask for help. It's only when you don't know how to do
something (e.g., remove the date from the title page; place a special
character, have multiple equations with one number and caption, put multiple
figures or tables in the same float).

   On the other hand, I'll bet you don't use winWord or OO.o "out of the
box", either. Never used Word (yea, team!) but have used OO.o since
WordPerfect bit the dust about 5 years ago. In OO.o one must set the page
size (unless A4 is your default), specify font style, size, margins and so
on for your defaults. If you want templates then you need to create those,
too. Nothing works for everyone as built.

   What sort of writing do you do? Have you produced documents using the
article, report and/or book classes? If so, do they meet your needs? If the
defaults (and you still need to configure LyX when you carefully take it out
of the box) are acceptable, then use it and ignore the traffic here. When
you want to do more, or customize the output to fit a specific need (e.g., a
thesis/dissertation template, journal template, whatever) and you need help,
just write and someone(s) will respond to you.

   This is, without doubt, one of the most useful mail lists to which I
subscribe. I learn as much by reading how others' problems are resolved as I
do when my problems are resolved. Also, if you're serious about using LyX
buy yourself a copy of "The LaTeX Companion, Second Edition" (TLC2). Not
only is it a complete reference but it will show you what you can do to make
the output match your design.

   Once things are set up, just write. The formatting, typesetting and other
heavy lifting is done for you.

HTH,

Rich

--
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
   Voice: 503-667-4517   Fax: 503-667-8863