Hello,
I want to participate in this discussion as I was the one in Eildert's
department who tried to customize LyX for our needs.
> Rainer Dorsch wrote at Wed, 27 Feb 2002 08:28:17 -0800:
> Hello Eildert,
>
> we are using LyX here at university for maintaining large documents.
>
> > Hello everyone,
> > we are currently considering spreading the use of LyX in the public
> > scientific (and administration) community beyond the traditional Unix
> > clientel, trying in a possibly rather well funded project to migrate people
> > from Windows/Word to LyX/LaTeX/BibTeX. To be able to do this a few things
> > need to be addressed, for which I would like to get a response from the
> > developers community.
> >
> > 1. letter templates: there needs to be a straightforward way of creating
> > letter heads. With a substantial amount of hacking we got one for our own
> > purposes. But this is too complicated for general use.
>
> Are you sure that you do not want: WYSIWYG
Yes, we are shure!
Even for me as a programmer it was not quite easy to build a customized
letter layout. Although it is more than half a year ago it still may be
helpful to share my experiences:
We use Axel Kielhorns akletter.cls for a long time and want to stay
with it. It has one big advantage: it has a system wide configuration
file to create customized letters which in turn reads user
configuration files to provide items like user name, email address,
etc. The LyX template only has to provide the needed parameters.
The syntax (I wouldn't call it a language) for describing
LyX-templates/layouts is clumsy and lacks important features.
- Empty label fields disappear if they are not filled. I could not
toggle this behaviour.
- I could not pick up the input from the labeled fields as a variable
and parse it. For instance if the user wants to insert an address
this usually spreads several lines. I could not get these lines and
convert them into the appropriate LaTeX-syntax. I created a
workaround like this in the layout file:
Preamble
\usepackage{ifthen}
\usename{tzvletter} % local config file, akletter.cfg by default
\newcommand{\myopening}{}
\newcommand{\mycc}{}
\newcommand{\myclosing}{}
\newcommand{\AkAddress}[1]%
{\begin{letter}{#1}%
\opening{\myopening}%
}
\AtEndDocument{%
\closing{\myclosing}
\ifthenelse{\equal{\mycc}{}}{}{\cc{\mycc}}
\end{letter}}
EndPreamble
where the template filled AkAddress (LatexType Command, LatexName
AkAddress), \myopening, etc.
This also solved the problem that akletter.cls needs the address as
parameter for \begin{letter}{My Name\\My Street\\My City}.
It is an ugly, non-intuitive and error-prone interface to the user
who now has to type:
Address: My Name\\My Street\\My City or even worse
Address: My Name\\My Street\\[.8ex]My City
- The order of the labels seems to be important (e.g. for multiline
environments. This restricts the design choices.
- Some higher level contructs are missing like if-then-else or boolean
switches. Example:
We have set up our network to directly send faxes from office
applications. When I want to send a LyX-letter as a fax I want to
include my scanned handwritten signature (nice feature :^).
The LyX template now has to give me a Fax/Letter-button and I could
then write something like:
if ($Fax){ \includefile{mysignature.jpg} }
- akletter can create standardized letters in different languages. The
user in the template does not know which languages are available and
how to write them correctly. A 'List Values' feature, like a pop-up
menu is missing.
- The labels are hard coded in the template file. It would be nice when
they would change depending on the selected language.
> > 3. there are many ways to maintain bibtex files. However, there should be one
> > means (point and click) of maintaining them as part of the package.
>
> Pybliographer?
Yes, there are a lot of external programs available. But what about
integration into LyX? Is this not intended or on the ToDo list (or
already solved and we are not aware of it)?
Helmut
--
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Helmut Lichtenberg (PGP Public Key available) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Institut f. Tierzucht und Tierverhalten - 31535 Neustadt - Germany
Tel. +49 (0)5034/871-128 Fax +49 (0)5034/92579
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