On Mon, Jul 17, 2006 at 11:34:07PM +0200, Tribulations Parallèles wrote: > Hello everybody, > > I love LyX, I used it for my PhD thesis, it is a great tool for productivity > compared to pure LaTeX.. > But, to increase the productivity a lot, I imagine often the possibility to > draw vector graphics directly in LyX, with the possibility to include > equations in the graphics. Today it is possible to include equations with > Xfig (both PS/LATEX parts), but it is very annoying, because it is often > mandatory to adapt the size and position of the graphics, and it is ever > slower to use an external application like Xfig.
Perhaps xfig itself could be better, but I fail to see how using an external application is a problem. Slower? Not really, why should using two apps that do one thing be slower than one app that does two things? The two-app approach gives security, a crash in xfig does not bring down lyx. A crash in the word drawing program brings down word though. Lyx has nice support for starting xfig when needed, so you have "integration" even though it is two apps. And this approach is easily extendible to any other drawing program, should you find something better than xfig for your figures. Sizing and positioning graphichs in lyx is easy enough. The drawing program being external does not change this, or could you explain? > The vector graphics part of LyX would have basic capabilities of CAD software > like Qcad. For example, the possibility to stop a line on a circle, exactly > (it is impossible in Word or Xfig). Good vector drawing software is nice to have. The problem with stuffing everything inside lyx is that you get something like word - mediocre vector drawing, mediocre bitmap drawing and so on. It is better to interface to a well-maintained _good_ drawing program. Lyx do that with xfig, and I am sure a similiar interface can be made for qcad too. If we were to implement a drawing program inside lyx, there would never be time for matching the quality of these existing programs - why reinvent the wheel? > It should be also a great idea to have the possibility to draw mathematical > equations: external use of octave for example, octave being called by LyX? Octave, mathematica, etc. can already be called by LyX in order to do computer algebra. Surely this can be extended to graphs and such, if someone volunteer for the job. > This feature is less clear in my mind. > To summarize, I think that a vector graphics application in LyX would be > fabulous. Often I am stopped in my desire to write scientific articles, > because of the difficulty to draw pictures. The internal format could be SVG, > with an external file by figure? The external inset mechanism can be used to interface to existing SVG drawing software. This is much less work than implementing a drawing program inside Lyx. > Other subject: can I find a document that depicts the data structures > employed > in LyX, and the structure of the code of LyX? I have searched on the > developer's site, but can't find anything. > The lyx sources aren't documented except for preferred coding style. If you want to contribute, feel free to ask tons of questions and they will be answered. :-) Helge Hafting
