On Aug 10, 2006, at 4:13 PM, Enrico Forestieri wrote:
On Thu, Aug 10, 2006 at 08:28:31AM -0700, Jens Noeckel wrote:
On Aug 10, 2006, at 6:25 AM, Georg Baum wrote:
Jens Noeckel wrote:
I had brought up an issue on the LyX users list, see the quoted
text
below; meanwhile I've looked around for some more info on this, and
felt I could make some suggestions here. Looking at Bug 2419, I see
the rationale for having self-contained export from LyX to LaTeX
that
includes the matching graphics formats as well. But I think in
order
for LyX to retain its full customizability it is also essential to
have a pure LaTeX export function that leaves included graphics
untouched.
Why? The exported document is useless without the converted images.
If the
images are already in a suitable format they are not converted (at
least in
theory. If that is not the case please file a bug report).
Right now, both "plain and PDF"-latex exports run additional
scripts
that attempt to provide not only the LaTeX file but also the
corresponding graphics files. But those kinds of scripts are not
the
core functionality of a LaTeX export - they are added sugar. If
they
have to be in the export menu, they should certainly not REPLACE
the
original pure LaTeX file export; they should be offered IN ADDITION
to it.
I guess that would not be too difficult to implement, but I see no
reason to
do it. Maybe it would help if you describe what exactly you are
trying to
do.
The simple answer is: I'd like to see backwards compatibility
restored, because if you want to take lyx seriously as a command-line
tool AS WELL AS a GUI application, you have to expect that users will
find unforeseen uses for lyx. Just as the makers of ImageMagick had
to expect that "convert -depth 8" will be made an integral part of
LyX, the makers of lyx should then expect that "lyx --export" will be
relied on in some new application. Since "lyx --export" used to leave
graphics untouched in earlier versions, it should stay that way. What
would LyX developers say if "convert -depth 8" suddenly started to
add a legend to every figure it converts... (just to make a point)?
Agreed. Additional functionality should require an additional switch
to be activated.
There are many applications for a bare LaTeX export. For one of my
lectures several years ago, I had made a script that exports a LyX
document as as PHP script so that it not only shows what I typed but
also includes some dynamic information. In that case, the included
graphics were placeholders for the points where dynamic information
is inserted in the PHP script. So I have no need for the graphics
from the LyX document to be touched during export.
Nor it is necessary to also overwrite included material with a copy
from the lyx tmpdir, thus modifying the timestamp of a file.
http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2434
Note that you cannot skip the copy without aborting the entire
process.
Please, leave to Word the role of turning stupid trying to be smart.
I've just added another (and not reported earlier, I believe) bug
related to the latex export, when done from the command line. It
causes irreversible loss of existing EPS files. I'm not saying that
it's useless to have such an additional functionality, but I think
given the pros and cons it's a reasonable request to put the original
latex export back, to let the user say to LyX: "please don't touch my
image files, nor the way they are included in my document. I can take
care of that myself, thank you."
I would call the current "plain latex" export something like "latex +
EPS" to make it clear what's really going on, and keep "plain latex"
or "latex" reserved for latex-only export.
Jens
