Hi.. I'm not on the list so you'll need to reply to me.
How hard would it be to whack together a Unix-like command to convert a
LyX file to a LaTeX file non-interactively? I'm working in a group at Uni
to do a software eng project and we use LyX heavily.
There are also a few problems / bugs we have, mainly related to multiple
concurrent LyX users and file inclusion:
1) There isn't much in the way of file locking.
2) We have split our project up into lots and lots and lots of big lyx
files. LyX can't handle it. I need a way to convert each to a LaTeX file
and run latex manually. I think this is related to the fact that LyX loads
all included files into memory.
3) Document inclusion has a couple of small bugs. If a document includes
another with a differnet document class, latex barfs. There was also a
small problem with relative / absolute paths which I can't remember how to
recreate (sorry!). I vaguely recall trying to include something like
"../req/req.lyx" and it wouldn't go.
4) Small gripe. The reason I use LyX rather than Latex and emacs is that
my group doesn't feel up to using Latex.. *sigh*. One thing they keep
doing is selecting section* rather than section. Perhaps these could be
renamed to something else, like "Numbered section" and "Unnumbered
section". Another one is using "Title" for each section. This could be
fixed by renaming it "Document Title".
Perhaps when a user creates a new document, a dialogue could pop up asking
what sort of document, title, author and other document settings. It would
also be nice if there was some other sort of mechanism for setting the
most common 'modes' used. Typically this is standard, section, subsection,
subsubsection, comment, description, bullet and itemise. Perhaps a
floating window (ek!), buttons on the button bar (in lyxrc?) or using
right-click pop-ups. It is slow to use the pull-down selection and search
for the right mode.
6) Latex errors sometimes only go to the console. If lyx was started via
fvwm2 menus, we never see these error messages. It would be nice to have
an option to interact with latex (other than exporting and doing it
manually). Also, if there are errors, latex still made a dvi, but we never
get to see it.
That's about it. LyX is actually really useful. It starts up a whole lot
faster than any of the other word processors and doesn't kill your
computer when running six instances of it. I find that the other group
members are using it for a lot more than just group work now, probably
because they liked (LyXed?) it. One last gripe: there is just too much
help documentation ;-).
