On Wed, 3 Dec 2008 21:57:33 +0000
"Erez Yerushalmi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi JMarc,
Thanks for your answer!
Is it you in youtube??? :-)
Actually, it's me, hope you could get at least a few words
out of what I say :-)
The easiest option at the moment to find and replace
would be to export as
latex into an editor, and find and replace y_{1t} into
x_{1t}. Then import
it again.
If you really want it, you can write a script that
exports to latex, invokes your favorite text editor,
then imports back to lyx. But LyX is not designed
for such purpose, as pointed out by core developers,
therefore the process is likely to fail because lyx cannot
manage to parse all of the latex stuff that you can ever
write, the tex2lyx process is lossy and
non-perfectly-reversable, and you can make a mistake (most
common is unmatched parenthesis or $ in maths) and then
all blows up.
This is the same rationale for which I like LyX how it is
now, it (theoretically / ideally) does not allow you to
make LaTeX mistakes, because everything you enter into LyX
is "syntactically correct", except if you use (at your own
risk) ERT blocks.
If LyX is an editor for Latex, why don't we have a
special button that
enables us to switch from "regular" LyX view to a
"programing" editor view?
Use View->Source, I use it for "didactic" purposes, while
writing pure LaTeX with Emacs, when I can't remember how
you can do certain constructs.
Then, I would find and replace like I will do now in a
programming editor.
... and you would end up into the usual compilation errors
that you are so accustomed to (see above) ... I don't
think that editing a text file should imply being an
expert of any syntax but it's just a view of the world ...
Another side benefit would be that it actually helps us
to understand what
underlying latex commands were actually used in LyX,
which would bring me
back to the basics, closer to the LyX/Latex idea.
View->Source again, here
What do you say??
As of the current code status, it would not be too
difficult to incorporate a "replace" option, where you
could be able to enter the text to replace in yet another
LyX-enabled WorkArea: the matching text is already
selected, so it is just a matter of cutting it from the
document (I'm sure there is some LFUN for that), plus
pasting the replacement text like if we were pasting from
the clipboard (I'm sure there should be some LFUN for
doing almost this as well). As a quick hack, one could
temporarily copy the replacement text into the clipboard,
just to get fast to a "proof of concept".
Actually, some people would love to redesign the entire
feature (including myself), but nobody has time, so maybe
I'll work to the quick hack for the replace, one of these
days, maybe while flying ...
... replacing with regexp-enabled for back-references may
be more complex to realise ...
My 2 cents,
T.
