On 18. okt. 2011 13:04, Hannu Vuolasaho wrote:
Hi!
I'm also writing my thesis with Lyx. My biggest problem is .doc
template. If I open it on Libreoffice, OpenOffice or MS Office with
different versions I get subtle changes in printout.
If these programs produce some differences, then the standard is
loosely specified. For surely they won't reject the _formatting_
of a thesis using their own template?
For example vertical space before image might change little and lines
length differ. Then there is the typesetting in Lyx. Lyx' fonts are
generally more readable than Office programs due proper kerning.
Now the problem comes. What is the right layout and how I reproduce
it with Lyx. If there is trick please tell to list also.
For the document, just use the same font and text size as their
template uses.
All word processors have some differences in
line breaking, page breaking and spacing between figures. This
should not matter to a university, as long as your thesis
isn't _very_ different from the rest.
They may be more strict about the front page. Try to match the
layout closely, use "insert->formatting" and vertical spacing
or horizontal spacing as needed. Boxes are also sometimes useful for
positioning stuff. Experiment with font sizes to match what
they want.
Make a test printout, and ask the professor if the layout is ok.
If he find the question strange, just explain that you use a
different word processor so you can't use their .doc template directly.
Also references are different. I never learned bibtext enough to give
right style of reference list. Now I have page which is list of my
references and then I cross-reference to them. It is also irritating
that you can't cross reference to say Fig 1 without labeling it. Or
have I missed something?
To cross-reference a figure, it must have a label. It is the
label that generates the referencable number. Also - how should people
find "figure 5" in the printed document, if the figure isn't captioned
with the text "figure 5" ? (It is possible to reference the page
number, but there can be several small figures on the same page.)
It is possible to have page references to something without a caption,
if you really want that. you can insert a label anywhere in text, and
refer to that. But there is no guarantee that the document won't have
a page break between the figure and the label. A caption does not have
that problem.
If entering figures is too much work, consider other ways of doing it.
I normally copy+paste some existing figure, then I change the filename
in the new figure. That way, I get a figure inside a float with a
caption - without having to enter everything through the menu system.
And last thing. I'm not professional with Lyx and I still learn a lot
with it. And problems that I mentionned might not be real problems. I
haven't just found solutions yet.
Well, just ask here when you get problems. People are usually helpful.
Also ask if something seems very cumbersome. There may be an easier way.
Many menu choices have hotkeys, for example. That can save a lot
of work for stuff you do often.
Helge Hafting
