LyX Joins the Google Summer of Code 2013 70
Hamburg writes "LyX joined this year's Google Summer of Code (GSoC 2013) as a mentoring organization. The LaTeX based open-source GUI LyX has been accepted to the GSoC for the first time. With LyX one can start using LaTeX without being used to 'program' documents. So it's an important entry point to the (La)TeX world, and a bridge between GUI word processors and LaTeX. This is a great opportunity for its development, now student developers can get financial support for contributing new features: successful contributions will earn a stipend of 5000 USD for the student and 500 USD for the organization, in this case the LyX project, who provides mentors to the students. There are already many project ideas, for example a GUI for editing layouts, a presentation mode, EPUB export, an outliner tool for intuitive writing, retina screen (HiDPI) support, and interactive concurrent editing. Would you like to take part, or do you have further ideas for improvements or features? Send your proposals to the lyx-devel mailing list, or simply comment here, what can be suggested to the LyX mentors."
Interface to online compilers (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Interface to online compilers (Score:4, Informative)
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Or sharelatex [sharelatex.com].
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That would seem almost trivial from a coding standpoint. I think the real thing is infrastructure. If you had servers on which the system was authenticated LyX could save files remotely or move then via. ssh. LyX can use an arbitrary TeX including an ssh connect. TeX can accept input streams....
CLSI sounds cool. I didn't know about it. But IMHO the real issue is who is willing to provide the service.
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It seems to me that if you can have an online LaTeX service that's well maintained and can compile documents on demand, why couldn't you also have a
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LaTeX documents tend to be compiled at short intervals in bursts, every 30 seconds is not uncommon, because every little change needs a recompilation to see its effect.
You're using TeX wrong, then. You simply don't need to see every little change - at least not when dealing with normal text. You type in hundreds of pages if need be - and you know that it will be laid out nicely because LaTeX always do that well. There may be some corner cases where you need a lot of compiling, but writing normal textual documents is not one of them.
You look at the document layout once, when finished. Usually, there is nothing to fix.
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While it's easy to write pages of prose without compiling (since your text editor gives instant feedback anyway) when it comes to typing equations it's a totally manual process with plenty of trial and error that requires frequent recompiling.
It's extremely hard to see what's going on just from the LaTeX markup alone, when you have lots of indices (
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Bah, who cares about a few gigabytes on real computers (including netbooks too). Maybe sysadmins with hundreds of diskless clients care, but with installing TeX on a shared mount, that's no problem. And who worries about updates anymore when there's apt, yum and hundreds of hacked together solutions on Windows. Maybe sysadmins who have hundreds of clients who needs updates, but don't ahve unlimited bandwidth ;) For that, there's local update repos
Remote compilation is interesting at first glance though bec
LYX is a good editor (Score:2)
Re:LYX is a good editor -- not rue! (Score:3)
I strongly disagree, LyX is not a good editor, it is a great one! :-) It's formulas editing is absolutely unmatched. I have switched to pure LaTeX nowadays, but recommend LyX to any student I know.
A success story from my side: at the university I have used LyX to type down lecture information from a blackboard. I have, of course, shared my pdfs and .lyx files. Later on, even the professor himself has used my documents because he had his lectures written down by hand previously. And I got a part-time job fro
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I think it comes down to different workflows.
A typical academic or grad student will constantly revise a document. By the time I've written a paper, I've probably done editing equivalent to re-writing it 10x. Most of the time is spent writing text and formulas.
If you are spending a lot of time doing formatting, either of the document or very complex formulas, then LyX probably isn't a good solution. But if your formulas remain within what LyX can handle and the document is nothing but text and formulas
EPUB output! (Score:1)
EPUB output!
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Fully agree. I wrote two books which I (self) published at Amazon in Lyx. Exporting to HTML and then use Calibre works, but can be tedious.
Re:EPUB output! (Score:4, Insightful)
What you want is .dvi to EPUB. That's a TeX/LaTeX feature not a LyX feature.
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No. There are 2 TeX engines: TeX proper which goes to dvi and PDFTeX which skips .dvi. LaTeX extensions work against either engine but need to be built against both. The font system is particularly nasty since metafont isn't PDF only.
I wish that TeX would just flush .dvi and tie themselves to the PDF standard. But no, they haven't.
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No, .dvi is like .pdf:
- page-oriented
- positional
- stripped of semantics.
One wants a direct conversion which:
- allows re-flow
- preserves semantics
- sets math as mathml
William
(who thinks LyX is the most innovative opensource app yet --- I just wish there were a vector drawing app equivalent, something more powerful than xasy for Asymptote, more elegant than metagraf for metapost, as nice as Freehand for postscript)
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There are only two engines, and you would lose the ability to use LyX if you lost the TeX engine. 3 decades ago TeX had something that stripped those issues off dvi2tty. It is easy to drop the page orientation. Mathml may not be needed, TeX can render centered equations using jpgs easily.
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dvi2tty doesn't preserve semantics.
It's not easy to decide which paragraphs end at a page break and which don't.
MathML is needed to interface w/ Computer Algebra Systems.
JPEGs don't scale.
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dvi2tty doesn't preserve semantics. It's not easy to decide which paragraphs end at a page break and which don't. MathML is needed to interface w/ Computer Algebra Systems.
Sure but we are talking e-readers here.
JPEGs don't scale.
They sort of can be magnified. Beyond that, why do they need to? You want the equation to break in fairly specific ways, that's the whole thing with multi-line equations. You don't want flow on your equations which means you can constrain size.
What would make me move to Lyx - LaTeX (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm like many other professionalls a "lapsed" Fan of LaTeX, truth be told I started with troff -man and the various ancillary tools of the Unix environment
What I recognize is that LaTeX (and the roff familly) enables you to create content that is WAY better looking in many ways.
So why don't I ? in part because I recognized that my investment in *roff was quietly dying off.... so I had to change to something
Partly because Open Office gave me a "free option" so I "could" go to a wysiwyg solution.
And because I started to need to exchange documents with people who would write part of it, and if you are not working in academia this means that the probability of working with LaTeX friendly colleage is quite low.
So what would make me come back...
If I could have an heuristic tool that reads my .odt (or even the .docx version or the .pdf) analyse the structure, and creates a LaTeX document that has the same content but NOT really the same layout but as close as possible the same structure.
There are a couple of tools pdf/odt/word to LaTeX but they all try to convert the original document into LaTeX that looks just like the original document.
What I think would be a game changer would be to have a new document, able to leverage the embedded knowledge in the more common LaTeX templates, and create a tweakable MUCH better looking, new document.
I would then be happy to use LyX as an entry point for WysiWyg tweaking, and finallly jump into emacs to really finalize my document...
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For text (including lists etc) to me LyX is sufficiently easy to use that I simply paste the text and then format it (using the shortcuts to assign headers, lists etc). Of course if there are a lot of cross-references or formulas, this becomes more complicated. Still the LyX interface is great and adding formulas (once you learn keyboard shortcut and some usual LaTeX math commands to speed up formula writing) is for me about 1/4 of the time for Word. So it is definitely doable. /Anders
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I would then be happy to use LyX as an entry point for WysiWyg tweaking, and finallly jump into emacs to really finalize my document...
Understand when you are talking LyX you are talking computer generated code not human generated. It can be very complex to modify. You can do minor edits to do things LyX doesn't support (though LyX allows you to do TeX directory) but you aren't going to want to work on a LyX document in a normal text editor as a human for much.
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That is what I was talking about. So Lyx basically ties you to Lyx with the new file Lyx-format. But Tex files are human "generated" and by that they are really simple and easy to understand. Lyx replacing that simple human written and understandable language with some computer generated code. So basically it throws Latex away and replaces it with a text like binary format.
No I can't agree to that. Even if Lyx is generating better looking documents because it's Latex under the hood. But it does by throwing
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You get the picture. I wouldn't quite go as far as binary. But yes you do throw away the advantages of a human readable editable file. LyX is a good crutch for the learning curve for TeX. But ultimately someone is going to want more WYSIWYG or they are going to want learn TeX.
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Oh I agree is is better than editing most PostScript by hand. There is a long distance between worst possible case and comfortable. Though I have worked with gorgeous PostScript. Old fashioned hand coded PostScript was pretty awesome sometimes.
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I would rather argue that Tex/Latex is way simpler to learn then any Word Software.
I don't know about Lyx but it would help to have a one simple Setup.exe for Windows users that installs the Lyx software and setup the most common Latex packages so it's ready to go. On Linux is for course trivial. Just install all texlive packages it be done with it.
But frankly, I don't really like Lyx. I just try Lyx again and it feels like any Word processor. WYSIWYG horror brought to you to Latex.
Latex is great because al
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BTW; Kile is just that: a simple text editor using the same text editor GUI and engine as Kate and KWrite (simple text editors in KDE). All what the developers have added is buttons for some common Latex commands, a button to compile the Latex code, and previews.
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Working with colleagues with Latex is quite simple: each colleague will write the text in whatever he/she likes. The partner will send you the text document (can be text file, ODT file, Microsoft Word file) and you copy and paste the text in the Latex project, and add Latex formats for section, paragraph, footnote, etc. The finished Pdf file can then be distributed.
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Working with colleagues with Latex is quite simple: each colleague will write the text in whatever he/she likes. The partner will send you the text document (can be text file, ODT file, Microsoft Word file) and you copy and paste the text in the Latex project, and add Latex formats for section, paragraph, footnote, etc.
Or better: each colleague will check out/clone the project from revision control, write her part of the text in whatever she likes, and commit/push the changes. Then you can touch it up, and it goes back out on review until everyone's satisfied.
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Theory is that way <==
Practice over there ==>
Some people use editors that wrap lines on screen but save it as one long line, and others use editors that wrap it on file too. Enough to mess up any useful version control. And it's not practicable to convinve peop
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If I could have an heuristic tool that reads my .odt (or even the .docx version or the .pdf) analyse the structure, and creates a LaTeX document that has the same content but NOT really the same layout but as close as possible the same structure.
I'm thinking of doing something like that, from inside of LibreOffice as a one-click/keypress solution. (Additionally, the same engine could do OOXML imports/exports, the basic idea is roughly the same - have a generic, rule-driven document structure transformer, with some sane way of allowing the user to make custom rules.) But given their slightly differing purposes, I wouldn't go for LaTeX output, I'd go for a ConTeXt one. It feels cleaner to me, and nowadays (we have the LuaTeX days nowadays), it doesn'
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For a two-page resume or something, current word processors are faster
There. Fixed that for you. Just because the current breed of graphical authoring applications is mostly crap doesn't mean that this situation is going to stay with us until the Sun turns into a red giant.
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Use the memoir documentclass --- you can get any desired apearance w/ it.
CAS integration (Score:2)
LyX is the fastest interface I have come across for mathematical syntax, due to the great foundations and comprehensive input mapping. It would be lovely to be able to use generally as a notebook, especially if there were some upgrades to the rudimentary CAS (computer algebra system) support included up to V2.
One feature fundamental to this goal is the parsing of respective CAS languages, obviously, in particular multi-line expressions. In the case of Maxima, I experimented with LyX -> LaTeX -> Maxima
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There are far more feature rich notebooks systems that include more than just TeX: http://www.sagemath.org/tour.html [sagemath.org]
But if you want primarily TeX plus computer algebra (Maple) it exists but it is commercial. http://www.mackichan.com/ [mackichan.com]
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Texmacs is great, I have used it and it performs the features I described better than LyX.
I am coming from a perspective of how LyX handles input, however, and while admittedly that too is similar I think LyX is far more polished, customisable and holds a bright future =)
I think Sage will ultimately serve projects where CAS integration is more vital and soluble - my reference to 'notebook' is closer to the traditional kind, but with greater readability by strangers :) LyX and Sage are likely to forever serv
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i haven't played with Texmacs in years. Might be worth trying again.
I don't know Maxima in terms of CAS. Many years ago I used Maple oriented notebooks and Mathematica ones and they integrated well. But Maxima was at that point very rough, I'd assume things have gotten much better and it makes sense for OpenSource to focus on Maxima.
Put the work into LibreOffice (Score:2)
It would be more useful to fix LibreOffice to produce output that looks as good as TeX.
One forgotten approach comes from Interleaf. Most WYSIWYG word processors today show you only the document - the markup is invisible. The old Word Perfect approach, where you could see the markup characters, or the HTML source approach, is too clunky. But Interleaf showed the output text alongside a column of annotation information. So you could see the difference between a tab indent and a paragraph indent, for exam
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Most WYSIWYG word processors today show you only the document - the markup is invisible. The old Word Perfect approach, where you could see the markup characters, or the HTML source approach, is too clunky. But Interleaf showed the output text alongside a column of annotation information. So you could see the difference between a tab indent and a paragraph indent, for example. That would be an appropriate way to present fine formatting controls.
Since we're all comfortable with using tabs (and MS's "Ribbon" is training office-types in tabbed toolbars) perhaps it would make sense to split content-creation and content-design into a separate workspaces? Ie, instead of just tabbed tool-bars, you have tabbed document views. If the Write tab is a WYSIWYG workspace, the design/format tab is then free to not only show formatting, but do so in an intuitive n00b-friendly GUI style. With colours, frames, controls/handles around parts of the document to show f
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It would be more useful to fix LibreOffice to produce output that looks as good as TeX.
http://writer2latex.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] is active for OpenOffice
http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center/writer2latex-1 [libreoffice.org] is the Libre version though no one is pushing across changes.
Framemaker / Docbook (Score:2)
This goes beyond typical summer of code but what about adding Framemaker type capabilities to LyX. Right now LyX is a word processor that outputs to TeX. What about an entire document authoring and organizational GUI which used LyX / TeX for the lower level stuff. Pull in DocBook.
Gui for editing layouts (Score:2)
"for example a GUI for editing layouts"
This! Latex and Lyx are fabulous as long as there's a class file or style file available for whatever format you need, but the second you're preparing something where there's no existing class file, you're screwed unless you want to spend hours with the Lamport book learning the intricacies - something that by definition Lyx is trying to help users avoid. Most of the time there's even something close to what you want - I ended up digging through the Lamport book when
Great news. (Score:4, Interesting)
LyX does have some failings though. I learned with my thesis that it's not yet ready for a serious long-term multi-document project. Some of the LaTeX details are insufficiently exposed, and so when tweaking is necessary it's difficult to get under the hood and make something happen that needs to happen (like once I couldn't get linebreaks in figure captions.. Simple in LaTeX, but in LyX...) Sometimes when it IS possible to do LaTeX tweaking it won't behave nicely with LyX because LyX isn't technically a LaTeX frontend, it uses its own typesetting language and converts at compile if you want e.g. a pdf in the style of pdflatex. One example of this is putting in \noindent to remove spurious indenting after figures,equations. Put it next to text in LyX and it won't compile even though it's in its own LaTeX environment.
For small projects those things aren't really a big deal, you get by with a workaround.. but on a huge project like my thesis you have put in so much work and already have a huge base of work that the little things just need to work, because you can't just say "oh well just won't do that thing." Also the errors you get at compile are all LaTeX errors, which even if you're editing a LaTeX document aren't terribly informative, but editing LyX it can be next to impossible to tell where that error is coming from without exporting to LaTeX and looking, which costs time.
Still.. Fix these things, and LyX has the potential to be a massive productivity tool. Many of the proofs in my thesis I directly began in LyX without working out on paper beforehand, and then edited it for prettiness later. It's the perfect balance between proper typesetting and what mathematics gets presented to the user. WYSIWYM as the LyX folks say, but still usable as a notebook for on-the-fly work.
Some features I'd love to see is a solid symbolic math interface. It has one currently but it's limited. Scientific Workplace has an *excellent* symbolic interface, and when I used that (which I don't anymore because it's not portable across multiple OS) I had a huge productivity gain. Imagine typing in a frustratingly complicated integral that you need in a proof, and just highlighting it and typing "Ctrl+e" and it spits out the typeset solution before your eyes IN YOUR DOCUMENT. Sure you'll have to edit it down because likely it will exceed margins, or isn't exactly in the form that is most appropriate for the context.. but that's editing work that you'll have to do anywhere anyways. I'd also like to see a better supported nomenclature package, which is currently a tad buggy in LyX (random deleting of nomenclature entries, no way to browse nomenclature entries throughout document without resorting to ctrl+f, etc).
web-based? (Score:1)
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Online work and WYSIWYG layouts (Score:1)
Today online work is a minimum requirement for text editors, so LyX should support collaborative work in the same way google docs does. Hey, I wonder how hard it would be to use Google Docs API as a backend for LyX? Then you have the server infrastructure and sharing for free.
The next thing I really want to se in LyX is WYSIWYG editor for layouts. For business work, LyX is far from being usable.
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Suggestion: Collaboration features (Score:2)
The 1. missing feature in TeX land is collaboration features. It's not horrible -- you can split the doc into files for different sections (don't know if you can do this in LyX) and use source control or Dropbox -- but it's not particularly elegant. Just having seamless integration with source control would be great: some kind of interactive conflict handling and easy committing of all dependent resources. It could also be useful for single-user projects to have revision tracking. Perhaps the Lyx project co
Strike that suggestion (Score:2)
The 1. missing idea from my previous post is the output format. There is no reason to have documents be a stack of pages when they are displayed on a screen. It is absolutely boneheaded. There are solutions for producing HTML from TeX source, this was the first search result: http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/ [belmont.ma.us] . I don't know why academics keep ignoring this and keep making PDFs which are only good for printing and for displaying on large monitors. There are many small devices which are better suited for