Am Sonntag, 28. September 2003 17:03 schrieb Herbert Voß:
> Helge Hafting schrieb:
> > You have a point. Note that the people here can change lyx but
> > not latex, and part of the problem here is how latex works.
>
> no, the point is in which way LyX should support LaTeX
> packages, should it be for 100% or is a minimal support
> better than no support.
>
> LyX supports the longtable package in a minimal way, which
> may be frustrating when you want a caption.
I would even go a step further. The charm of LyX IMHO is that it hides the
complexity of LaTeX in fairly standard cases very well. In lyx you can view a
document from a high level view. You write a paragraph and just have to
assign a layout to a paragraph. You don't have to worry about margins,
hyphenation etc., you are encouraged to use fonts which harmonize etc. .
And this model does not work so well with tables, possibly because such a
higher level mechanism is only introduced with an extension package
(array.sty). I would propose to define array.sty as a prerequisite for table
support in lyx and use the format mechanism via \newcolumntype as the
standard way for lyx. It is from the perspective of an "Office-trained" user
much easier to understand. "In tables, you have to use column or cell
formats, too..."
>
> > Latex support two kinds of tables. One that is never broken
> > up - this kind may go directly in a document or in some kind
> > of floating object or in a text wrapping construct.
> >
> > The long table is the other kind, it will be broken up to fit
> > the pages.
>
> TeX supports only _one_ kind of table, all other are supported
> by special packages: longtable, tabularx, LTXtable,
> threeparttable, ...
I think one should define a set of reasonable standard cases for tables in
typical lyx documents - and define the necessary latex packages as
prerequisites (I think at least array, longtable and dcolumn are necessary).
These standard tables should be handled by lyx in a consistent way from the
lyx typical high level view - the latex complexity should be handled from the
lyx2latex backend. The borders of this approch - where you have to switch to
ERT - should be clearly marked in the documentation.
>
> > Other table-related stuff like captions and automatic listing
> > in a "list of tables" isn't table properties, it is
> > properties of the float object.
>
> it is right, that a float has nothing to do with its
> contents and only for some historical reasons there
> exists the _predefined_ float types table and figure.
>
> > The table user interface could easily be modified to have a
> > four-way choice of floating/wrapped/nonfloating/longtable as
> > a table property. But then people would wonder why
> > the caption disappears when they switch the table
> > to non-floating - because latex don't support a caption
> > in that case.
> > Well, perhaps the "dirty tricks" mentioned could become
> > part of the conversion from .lyx to .tex
>
> if you use the longtable checkbox in the LyX tabular,
> you need some dirty tricks to get a caption, which has
> nothing to do with the floating object. And this dirty
> tricks are annoying for users, because he thinks, that
> LyX supports the longtable _with_ caption.
>
> > Another problem:
> > A user might want to do stuff like I do - such as putting
> > a figure+a table in the same float. That works fine
> > if you start with an empty float and fills it in with
> > the other stuff. But what should your user do if he
> > started with one of your kind of "table with the
> > floating option checked"? Will there be an easy conversion
> > from "table that is implicitly floating" to a float
> > inset that happens to contain a table? And how about
> > reversing such a conversion - what if there is more
> > stuff in the float than just the table?
I think that a this is another type of table - a table as subfigure, which
should be also supported from the lyx standard approach.
>
> the user has to decide, if he wants a caption or not.
> This is exactly what LyX supports. And it is no problem
> to change the floating type, especially in my personal
> LyX, where I can change this on the fly, but in standard LyX,
> if you want another caption type than the predefined one,
> then you have to use ERT. But this was not Joachims point ...
For me the main questions are, if it is worth to try to redesign the lyx table
support along the lines I explained, has it a chance to go into lyx when it
the design is fleshed out an who is willing to help in doing so (I'm neither
familiar with lyx's internals nor with the probable subtle latex
incompatibilites and I'm not at all a C++ programmer). All I can offer is
preparing a first draft and participate in the discussion.
YOURS
--
Dr. Joachim Heidemeier Tel. +49-30-8903-2780
Fachgebiet II 3.2 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Umweltbundesamt, Bismarckplatz 1 D-14191 Berlin
