On Mon, Aug 16, 1999 at 12:17:14PM -0600, Juris Reinfelds wrote:
> Thanks for forwarding my message to lyxlist and for your quick response.
I'm sending this to the list too, since I can't answer all of your questions.
In general, you'll probably get quicker answers by mailing questions to
[EMAIL PROTECTED], since I'm only an "expert" at a couple things, like
reLyX and (in theory) revtex.
To subscribe to the devel list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] The
subject and the message itself can be empty; only the address matters. Check
http://www.lyx.org/mailing.html for details.
> What I am missing most is a description of the design of Lyx:
Ah. Well, at least some of this can be found in the docs. The documentation
for LyX is very extensive, and it's even mostly current, although definitely
not perfect.
> How does one create a textclass in Lyx?
See chapter 6 of the Customization document (available in the LyX help
menu). Basically, the answer is that you should copy an existing textclass
(i.e., a layout file in the lib/layouts directory in the distribution) and
modify things to fit your needs. Many textclasses require only minor
modifications.
> How does one create a template?
A template is basically just a regular lyx file. They're generally designed
to be pretty short, just laying out the general outline of the documents for
people to fill in using "new from template". I guess the only difference is
that usually when you design a template, you create the file in LyX, but
then remove any nonessential directives with a text editor. This probably
makes no sense. Read lib/templates/README.new.templates in the LyX
distribution for details. (There's also a command documented in section 2.3
of the user's guide which creates a "default" template.)
> Where does Lyx look for .sty .cls files?
LyX basically just runs LaTeX, and LaTeX looks in places determined by your
TEXINPUTS environment variable. (I think LyX might add something like
/usr/local/share/lyx/tex, which has some LyX-specific tex files in it, to
your TEXINPUTS.)
> What directories does Lyx create in /tmp? Where else?
You mean when you're doing "view dvi" or some such? It creates temporary
directories called /tmp/lyx_lots_of_gibberish/more_gibberish. Each such temp
file contains the tex translation of your lyx file, the dvi, etc.
> Is Lyx development going on without any design-of-Lyx document or agreement?
Certainly not! There are a bunch of design documents, many of which can be
found at www.devel.lyx.org. Others may be archived in various other
locations (e.g. the mailing list archives) but I'm not a core developer so I
can't tell you where they are. But the core developers reading this message
can...
> My student Vince Montoya came up with a work-around for the RevTex problem,
> but it is a bit clumsy compared to the slickness of the rest of Lyx.
Is the workaround something we could use? Note that the tex/revtex.cls is
already a workaround, but it's revtex's fault, not Lyx's fault, because
revtex 3.1 was designed to use latex2.09 even though it's obsolete.
As I mentioned I will hopefully someday get the revtex4 textclass done. When
I do, I'm actually hoping to contact APS, and suggesting that they recommend
LyX to the more LaTeX-phobic professors, since LyX provides a more WYSIWYG
environment.
-Amir
