On Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 2:18 AM, Jürgen Spitzmüller <sp...@lyx.org> wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, den 28.03.2018, 09:32 -0600 schrieb Joel Kulesza:
> > LyX Developers,
> >
> > While working with the poster-beamerposter template to create ... a
> > poster ... I ran into:
> >
> > 1) an issue whereby marking a region within the frame as "Comment"
> > didn't allow a PDF to render but marking it as "LyX Note" does allow
> > the PDF to render. I would expect these to have similar levels of
> > (dis)functionality. This seems like a bug and I would appreciate it
> > if you could confirm. If/when confirmed, I'll submit it to the
> > tracker.
>
> No, they are not identical. Comment outputs a comment environment to
> LaTeX, LyX Note just omits the contents.
>
Ugh, I feel quite sheepish for not looking at the generated code...
That said, I'm surprised that Comment outputs to a special environment
rather than encapsulating (e.g., <!-- .. --> in the case of HTML) or
preceding each line of (e.g., % in the case of LaTeX) the content as an
actual comment. This way, it would act as a comment in LyX and in the
generated document. A LyX note, by comparison, would be just that: a note
in LyX and non-existent in the generated document.
Do you know why the design decision was made to treat comments as they
are?
I ask because, in my experience, inserting a comment should *never* have an
effect on the result of the application processing it. My thanks for the
fix with "fragile" below, and it's true I don't need overlays in my
application, but as a user I would never expect a "comment" to influence
whatever back end LyX is using to render.
Because of this better understanding of the actual behavior, I think that
"Comment" is potentially misleading when it comes to the final document
produced. Is there a better name that can be used? Alternatively, and
what I'd prefer, does it make sense to change how the comment is output
consistent with what I'd described above?
> The comment environment that is output for comments is verbatim and
> cannot be handled by a normal beamer frame. You need to pass the frame
> option "fragile" in order to make it work. This disables some features
> such as overlays (but I suppose you don't need overlays in a poster
> anyway).
>
> Please refer to the beamer manual, sec. 12.9 ("Verbatim and Fragile
> Text"), for details.
>
> > 2) a non-obvious functionality omission whereby LyX List / Labeling
> > environments are not available in Beamer-based documents. Is there a
> > technical reason why this is not available (and if not, is it
> > appropriate to file an enhancement request to make it available)? I
> > tend to prefer how this behaves to the similar "Description"
> > environment.
>
> It cannot be imported as such, since beamer lists are quite specially
> defined. You'd need to set up a specific new list in beamer, using all
> the beamertemplates involved in such a definition.
>
> Since the main feature of the lyxlist, setting the label width, is
> already provided by beamer's description, I do not see the need to do
> that.
>
It's a minor point, but I also like the left-alignment that lyxlist gives
versus description's right alignment (when label width is set). Am I
overlooking an option to get left-aligned labels with beamer's description?
A separate question on lyxlist... When specifying the longest label, I need
to do so in the paragraph settings dialog. If my longest label is math
based, then I wrap it in $s and the resulting PDF has the correct layout.
However, the LyX interface will generally create an unnecessarily wide
label width (presumably because it is interpreting the label as text rather
than math). Is there a sense for (a) how easy and/or (b) how much interest
there is from a developer to change this behavior in the LyX interface?
This very much falls under inconvenience, but when dealing with complicated
math terms (in a LaTeX markup sense), I can lose half my window to what is
ultimately a quite compact label.
> > and while creating a MWE to demonstrate the first issue:
> >
> > 3) a special character insertion issue that seems unique to the
> > poster-beamerposter template whereby a "right arrow" can be inserted
> > but throws a warning upon render.
>
> It tells you (in rather cryptical words, though) that the font you are
> using (Utopia = futs) does not contain the right arrow symbol.
>
Is there a way to trap this type of error and make the message more clear?
It wouldn't surprise me if (a) this applies to other symbols and (b) other
users would experience it.
> An easy workaround is to redefine the \textrightarrow command in the
> preamble and make it output a math arrow:
>
> \renewcommand{\textrightarrow}{$\rightarrow$}
>
> HTH
> Jürgen
My thanks for your clear and thorough response, as always.
Joel
