>>>>> "Darren" == Darren Freeman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Darren> On Tue, 2007-06-26 at 07:43 +0200, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
Darren> I'm not talking about a functional change, I'm talking about a
Darren> user interface change back to past behaviour that was probably
Darren> once considered "correct".
>> This was _not_ past behaviour.
Darren> An excerpt of a message where another person remembers what I
Darren> think I remember. Maybe it was just a bug. Anyway I thought it
Darren> was better.
I happen to have LyX 1.3.3 installed on this machine and it does not
exhibit the behavior you describe. Actually, I think the current one
was already built-in since the first releases of LyX. As someone who
has been around since 1995, I do not remember anything different.
Of course the above stands for the initial claim
once upon a time, I could type extra whitespace between words and then
it would magically go away when I left that region of text.
Now, extra space keypresses have no effect and I feel like I'm in a
straight-jacket. I can still insert a space *before* an existing
space, because I might be about to type a word between them, just not
after one. Anybody else get that feeling or prefer the old behaviour?
[***** later... *****]
But since I know that somewhere deep inside you do not believe me, I
downloaded lyx-0.7p4-d3 from October 1995 (the oldest we have), and
found inside it a document titled something like
Word processing with LyX
High Level Word Processor
based on TeX/LaTeX
(LyX 0.71, Documentation 0.7p1)
Copyright (C) 1995 Matthias Ettrich
You can find this document here for your enjoyment:
http://www-rocq.inria.fr/~lasgoutt/lyx/Documentation.lyx
Of course, Jose' being the lazy guy we have learned to love (and
hate), lyx2lyx is not able to read this file and yours truly had to
apply the patent-pending lyx2t::bh technique (aka "LyX to Text by
hand"). The document starts with an introduction and some installation
instruction, and the only other section describe what is in the
author's mind the great idea behind LyX:
Differences from usual word processors
What sets LyX apart from other word processors is that it is a
graphical front-end to a general mark-up typesetting system with
extensive macro capabilities, not an extended typewriter. Usual word
processors are in fact highly developed typewriters, but still
compatible with their predecessors. And as far I can see they are
still used as if they were simple typewriters. This is done for two
reasons: The average user is not a specialist in typography (and
shouldn't be!) and the programs don't help him at all with this (This
shouldn't be, either!). But these programs are totally happy to be
used as a typewriter, that everybody could work with, but which leads
to terrible results. For example:
* To emphasize words, they are underlined. The underline is simply a
horizontal line on the base of the typing line. Letters like "g", "j",
"p", and "q" are cut by this line, and partially obscured. What is
necessary on a typewriter becomes with modern typesetting software a
very poor custom, which can be replaced by several text styles and
sizes.
* In order to set headings or titles two blank lines above and one
below the line are added. On a typewriter this is the best
approximation to correct typesetting, but it is only an
approximation. In particular small headings like subsections are
separated too far from the rest of the text. Furthermore, through
this practice it's possible to create awkward page breaks. A page
break There shouldn't occur between a heading and the following
text. But how can the computer avoid this, if it doesn't know that
is is a heading? Or, if it knows it, but an empty line follows? And
what should be be done with all these empty lines at the top of a
page? Ignored? What if the user just wants to paste a picture in
there later? To summarize this issue: Creating headings and vertical
spaces manually using blank lines is an obsolete technique with
grave disadvantages. But it is common usage (I found this even in
books with titles like "Professional writing with **** for
*******"). On very short documents (about two or three pages) this
is not usually a problem, but it can be in a longer one. Correcting
these errors will require considerable manual labor. Finally, every
change in the document will effect the page breaks of all following
pages, which will result in even more work to correct the new errors
that crop up. And why do all these stupid pagebreaks manually, if
you have a computer?
* In order to indent a line blanks are used. In this way you can
certainly build up a table, list or a simple description, but it
would be very primitive. Changes in one line require considerable
editing, since following lines must be broken by hand. Even more
annoying changes to the document, like another basic fontsize or a
new borderwith, cause the same trouble. Here a little example of a
little description list that I have often seen:
[[snip -- I am too lazy to reproduce it]]
As you can see, the text body will never start in one vertical line.
This could be done with a mono-spaced font as a typewriter has, but
today no one uses these fonts anymore except for program source
code. As you also see, the vertical space between the two items (an
empty line, of course) is usually much too great. Also the computer
has no chance to avoid pagebreaks within this description. And what
should be done with the empty line, if a pagebreak occurs between
the two items? Usually the empty line will be printed before the
pagebreak so you can bury any hope of having filled pages like in
professional typesetting.
The LaTeX user doesn't need to worry about these difficulties. Line-
and page-breaking are the business of the typesetting program, not the
author. An empty line separates paragraphs, more empty lines are
ignored. The same goes for empty spaces; they separate words, but
extra empty spaces are insignificant. LyX, as a frontend to LaTeX,
follows this rule. So it is not possible, without further commands, to
insert empty paragraphs. No matter how many spaces are typed between
words, only a single space between the words will appear. Blank spaces
at the beginning of a paragraph are completely taboo. Indentation of
paragraphs are handled automatically by LaTeX. So you will not need
the "dirty" tricks mentioned earlier.
Now I hope you are convinced that LyX has never been supposed to work
as you claim. You may like it or not like it, but I think that in
Matthias Ettrich mind, it was _the_ feature that sets LyX apart from
other word processors, the one he was proud of.
JMarc
