LyX developers:
I'm an astronomer-type who recently started using LyX as my primary
document preparation system. I've written a 100+ page manual, observing
proposals, and a few articles for publication in scientific journals
using LyX. I've done my time in the LaTeX trenches, and find that with
LyX, I do indeed concentrate more on the content than on the formatting/
coding.
Astronomers represent a large base of LaTeX users, and much like RevTeX
(phor physics), there is a commonly used package for astronomy: AASTEX
(AAS = American Astronomical Society). This package is required use
for electronic article submission to the principle astronomicla journals--
both American and European.
Unfortunately, AASTEX has lagged in being LaTeX 2e compliant, and while I
thought it would be nice to incorporate AASTEX into LyX, I realized its
pointlessness, seeing that it was stuck back in the 2.09 ages. BUT ALAS!
AASTEX is about to release v5.0, which is 2e-based. See the page at:
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AAS/AASTeX/ for details.
(I did use LyX with AASTEX commands--not understood of course by LyX, then
could edit the exported LaTeX file to convert it to 2.09 style, which
fortunately did not take too much effort on my part--most of the exported
LaTeX code from LyX is 2.09 compliant. I will continue to use this
kluge-approach until the v5.0 of AASTEX comes out.)
So my point of e-mailing the developers, if you haven't guessed already,
is to inquire about the chances (and the difficulty) of supporting a
package such as AASTEX. I know the first question that comes to your minds:
"sure, it'd be great, but who's going to do it?". Believe me, I know
how it goes. So I'm not asking necessarily for any action, though I would
like to know what's involved in adding AASTEX capability to LyX. I'm
not a C++ programmer, or I might offer to jump in and help out myself.
I'd appreciate feedback on the prospects of incorporating this package.
Tom Murphy
