On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 06:52:19PM +0000, Guillaume Munch wrote: > Dear list, > > > I noticed various issues with the following new feature: > > Splitting of consecutive environments has been reworked and enhanced > > which is marked as "undocumented" on the wiki. I was waiting for a > documentation to be sure that I understood what was going on before > explaining my issues with it.
This was documented at e521ee7b but the documentation was mostly removed at 1c71f1ea. > First, I think it is a very good idea to make this more simple and > intuitive. > > I attached a lyx file describing the problems. Please, next time try to write directly in the post your observations as this makes it easier replying. For now I will make a copy of the points I want to reply to. > • Defect: The following character (parbreak separator) is not a line > break (the symbol is misleading). Obtained with Enter Enter Enter. It breaks a line and introduces a blank line afterwards. Here an unobtrusive symbol is required (because it is also used for other reasons explained in the removed documentation) and it is not simple deciding what to use. I thought that using the same symbol you find on the Enter key could convey this info. The symbol is heavier than the line break symbol and easily distinguishable from it. You are welcome to propose suggestions. > • Enhancement: If we are going to use this as the intuitive way to > separate environments, then it would be nice if the previous > environment (here itemize) was re-introduced automatically. This is going to replace the separate environment, which did not re-introduce the previous environment. Then, this is a personal preference and as such it is not going to be shared by everyone. Moreover, there are other ways to do what you want and that will use a more appropriate plain separator (as you also discovered). > • Defect: They tend to accumulate and they are redundant because there > is only one additional '\n' in the LaTeX source. The problem is the > one can add one before another. Thus, two such consecutive chars > should be merged as a single one, like it is done for spaces in LyX. There were a lot of problems to be solved and this one was escaping me. Thank you for pointing it out. I will try to address it when I will find time (and motivation) to work again on LyX. Unfortunately, I will be unavailable the next weeks. > • Defect: Converting a LyX 2.1 file into 2.2 produces a lot of these > characters in places where they do change anything to the output > (I think this is a bug). This makes the choice of symbol all the > more confusing because users are going to think LyX 2.2 introduces > line breaks in their documents when converting. Please, find in the bug tracker the relevant discussion about this (now I don't remember anymore the bug number). In a nutshell, it was requested that the output should not change. However, all this work was motivated by the fact that LyX was introducing spurious par breaks in unwanted places. For leaving unchanged the output (now that this spurious par breaks are avoided), when the file is converted they are to be forcibly reintroduced. This is done by the parbreak separator. The fact that you find that nothing changes in the output means that it actually works (and thus is not a bug but a feature). The users are simply made aware that previous LyX versions were silently introducing par breaks that now are explicitly indicated. All of this was explained in the removed documentation. > • Defect: I do not understand (as a user) the difference with the > plain separator obtained with Alt+P Enter (which looks better IMO): The plain separator is simply a separator that does not introduce a blank line in the output. This is complementary to the parbreak one, which should take the place of the old separator environment that introduced a blank line after itself. So, in the places where you were using the separator environment, you should use the parbreak separator if you want a blank line afterwards, otherwise you can use the plain separator (see the removed documentation). > • Defect: I did not know about Alt+P Enter until very recently so > this feature has a discoverability issue, that Enter Enter Enter > appears to solve to me. Now that the separator environment is gone, > the discoverability is an issue. This is not my doing but I also find it cumbersome having to use Alt+P Enter and I have the following in my user.bind file: \unbind "M-p Return" "environment-split" \bind "S-Return" "environment-split" such that I can simply use Shift Enter to break the current environment and re-introduce the same one again. -- Enrico
