On 11/17/2009 05:54 PM, Daniel Hofmann wrote:
Hi
I am trying to get Information Mapping running on my Lyx 1.6.3., the
LaTex class and style has been produced by Gerd Neugebauer as
limap.cls and limap.sty, both are part of the TeX Live 2007 distribution.
There is no accompanying .layout file for LyX, so I presume that I
need to write one. However, after reading chapter 5 of the
Customization Manual I am somewhat baffled as to what to do.
Do I:
1) need to create a whole new document class, since limap.cls is not
part of the standard classes, or
2) can I write a short layout file that points lyx in the right
direction?
If the former is the case then I'm unsure what it would help me to
have a Latex .cls or .sty file in the first place, since I need to
write the entire layout file anyway. Surely I'm missing something
vital here?
You don't need to write a document class, but to use that class with
LyX, you do need to write a layout file for this class. The thing to
understand is that, in a certain sense, LyX doesn't know anything about
document classes. All information about them is contained in the layout
files, even for standard classes, like article.cls. You can think of the
layout file for a given document class as a translation manual between
LyX constructs---paragraphs with their corresponding styles, many
insets, etc---and the corresponding LaTeX constructs. Look, for example,
at stdsections.inc, to see how sections and the like are defined. These
map paragraphs in LyX that are marked with the Section, etc, layouts to
corresponding LaTeX commands. The article.layout file basically just
includes a ton of these std*.inc files.
To get limap.cls working with LyX, then, as I said, you need an
limap.layout file. But let's talk about that later.
Since limap also comes as a package---indeed, from what I can tell, even
limap.cls is really a kind of package in disguise that includes some
other class, which you select via class options---you could start with
the package. In this case, you can just write a "module", which is (very
roughly) what corresponds in LyX to a LaTeX package. Modules define
certain sorts of LyX constructs---paragraph styles or custom
insets---and tell LyX how to translate those constructs into LaTeX for
output. In your module, you would define LyX constructs for the various
commands and environments that limap.sty provides---whatever those are.
The best way to get started is to study some of the existing
modules---simple ones, like endnotes.module, for example. Then try to
think of standard LaTeX commands that are in some way similar to the
ones you want to define---even if they're just both commands---find out
how it's done in the existing layout files, and then try to mimic it.
Start simple. Don't worry about how the thing looks in LyX. Just try to
get it working, so far as the LaTeX output goes. You can polish it
later, putting all the section headings in a teeny tiny font with bright
green italics. ;-)
And feel free to ask lots of questions. The learning curve can be steep,
but layout really isn't that hard in the end.
Richard
