1 How do I upgrade my existing LyX system to version 2.2.x?
2 ---------------------------------------------------------
4 * Upgrading from LyX 2.1.x:
6 The format of preference and session files has changed. LyX 2.2.x is able to
7 read old files but will save them in the new format.
9 The format of layout files has changed but, as before, layout2layout.py will
10 convert older versions to the new format automatically.
12 The prefix for subsections in labels and references has been changed from
13 "sub:" to "subsec:" in order to avoid a clash with subfloats (conflicting
14 \subref command, see bug #7550). Files are automatically converted to the new
15 scheme. Please assure that you adapt external refstyle or prettyref definitions
16 and your own layout files.
18 BibTeX errors are now processed and cause LyX to show the errors dialog.
19 Before, these errors were ignored, which means that it may happen that
20 documents that compiled without error with a previous version now
21 compile with error. However, because now in 2.2.x users can click on
22 the "Show Output Anyway" button, the document can still be viewed.
24 Missing characters in the output are now reported as errors. This leads
25 to error reports for documents that compiled without error before.
26 However, the error was always present but went undetected!
28 Documents using Times fonts and containing Greek characters may now fail
29 to compile under pdflatex for users of MikTeX due to an automatically
30 half-installed "grtimes" package. A workaround in LyX was removed as it
31 stands in the way of alternative approaches (see bug #6469).
33 With LuaTeX, LyX now uses polyglossia instead of babel if the language
34 package option "Automatic" is selected. In order to use babel, select
35 "Always babel" instead. This may be needed if a document uses code that
38 * Upgrading from LyX 2.0.x:
40 Python version >=2.4 is now required.
42 Python version >3.0 is still not yet supported.
44 * Upgrading from LyX 1.6.x:
46 The typeset of your documents with non-english language can slightly
47 change in case of math environments and floats. LyX 2.0.x now has its
48 own translation machinery for the strings that are not translated by
51 The format of preference and session files has changed. LyX 2.0.x is
52 able to read old files but will save them in the new format.
54 The format of layout files has changed but, as before, layout2layout.py
55 will convert older versions to the new format automatically.
57 The syntax of the languages file has been changed. If you use a
58 modified languages file, you will need to adapt it to the new syntax.
60 There has been a large change in how Flex insets are named.
61 When exporting back to 1.6.x format user-defined flex insets will not
62 be properly reverted. See RELEASE-NOTES for details.
64 The UI layout named "classic.ui" and some localized keyboard bindings
65 (sv, pt, fi) are not being shipped anymore.
67 * Upgrading from LyX 1.5.x:
69 The format of preference and session files has changed. LyX 1.6.x is
70 able to read old files but will save them in the new format.
72 The format of layout files has changed but, as before,
73 layout2layout.py will convert older versions to the new format
76 * Upgrading from LyX 1.4.x:
78 The biggest change in 1.5 is the switch to Unicode. Please refer to
79 the section "Document transfer" below for some things you might take
80 into account before upgrading.
82 The format of the preferences file has changed slightly. LyX 1.5.x is
83 able to read old preferences files, but it will save them in the new
84 format, so it is not possible to run LyX 1.4.x and 1.5.x with the same
85 personal configuration directory. If you are upgrading from 1.4.x and
86 do not intend to continue using 1.4.x, you should delete your existing
87 preferences file and allow LyX to create a new one.
89 The list of recently open files is now stored in a different location.
90 It will therefore be reset when upgrading from LyX 1.4.x.
92 The format of the layout files has also changed, but LyX 1.5.x uses a
93 converter layout2layout.py written in python that will convert old layout
94 files on the fly (see below, section "Document transfer").
96 * Upgrading from LyX 1.3.x:
98 The format of the external template file has changed substantially with
99 LyX 1.4.0. Automatic conversion is not available, so you need to convert
100 your external templates manually. The new format of the external template
101 configuration file is described in chapter 6.5 of the Customization Guide.
103 * Upgrading from LyX 1.2.x:
105 Since 1.3.0, you have to do the following changes:
107 One of the perennial bug bears of LyX users in the past has been that
108 they have had to run Edit->Reconfigure when starting their new version
109 of the code for the first time. Strange and wonderful things would
110 often result if they forgot to do this, so LyX 1.3.0 now runs
111 Edit->Reconfigure automatically the first time the program is run.
113 If you have your own layout files, you may need to update them a little:
115 - floats are now defined in the layout file, using the "Float"..."End"
116 construct. In most cases, adding "Input stdfloats.inc" to your layout
119 - counters are also defined in the layout files, using the
120 "Counter"..."End" construct. As for floats, adding "Input
121 stdfloats.inc" is probably a good idea.
123 * Upgrading from LyX 1.1.x:
125 - all layout files should have a "DefaultStyle" entry
127 - the "Latex" font style does not exist anymore. If you really need
128 its functionality, consider using the "PassThru" keyword instead.
130 The new layout format keywords are described in the Customization
133 If you have your own binding files (especially math.bind), you will
136 - math-insert now takes a latex macro name as argument, so that
137 "math-insert sqrt" should now be "\math-insert \sqrt"
139 - math-greek-toggle is now gone, and should be replaced by explicit
142 \bind "M-m g a" "math-insert \alpha"
148 LyX 2.0 uses the Qt 4.x toolkit (see INSTALL file).
150 If you do not have the JPEG library installed, you may need to install it
151 before you can use the graphics capabilities of LyX. If you do not have the
152 ImageMagick command-line tools installed, you will need to modify the default
153 set up of LyX, or install them, in order to get previews of your document's
159 * Compatibility with older documents/layouts
161 LyX 2.0.x uses an external python script, lyx2lyx, to import documents
162 written using previous versions of LyX. All versions of LyX as far back as
165 Of course, this means that you must have python (>= 2.3.4, <3)
166 installed in order to use LyX 2.0.x with your old documents.
168 lyx2lyx also has the framework in place to be able to convert documents to an
169 earlier format (which requires python 2.3.4 at least). However, these
170 converters have only been written for the conversion from 2.0.x to 1.6.x,
171 1.5.x, 1.4.x and 1.3.x, so versions of LyX older than 1.3.0 will NOT be able to
172 read documents saved with LyX 2.0.x. The conversion from 2.0.x to 1.6.x-1.3.x
173 is lossless as long as no new features are used. lyx2lyx tries hard to find
174 something equivalent for new features such as boxes, but this is known to fail
175 sometimes. LyX 1.6.9 contains an updated lyx2lyx that can read documents in
178 Furthermore, LyX uses a converter layout2layout.py, also written in python
179 that will convert old layout files on the fly. You can also call it manually
180 on your layout files if you want to convert them to 2.0.x format permanently.
182 * Formatted references
184 Before version 2.0, LyX used the LaTeX package "prettyref" to produce
185 "formatted references", such as "Section 2.1". This package has several
186 shortcomings when used in a non-English environment, not least of which is
187 that it has no mechanism for internationalization. (See bug #6421 and those
190 As of LyX 2.0, users can choose whether to use prettyref or, alternatively,
191 the "refstyle" package. The current version of refstyle, v0.5, ships with
192 translations for several languages and provides an easy mechanism for users
193 to translate the references it produces into still other languages. It also
194 defines many more commands than prettyref does, including, for example, ones
195 to produce "ranges", such as "Sections 2.1 to 2.3". Some LyX developers are
196 already working with the refstyle maintainer, Danie Els, to make it work more
197 easily with LyX and to extend the translations it provides. (You are invited
198 to contribute translations, too!)
200 Because many LyX users already have customized prettyref for their purposes,
201 LyX 1.6.x files opened in LyX 2.0 will continue to use prettref by default.
202 New LyX 2.0 files will use refstyle by default. Both can of course be changed
203 in Document>Settings. Please be advised, however, that prettyref support is to
204 be considered deprecated: It may well be removed in LyX 2.1, and all users are
205 encouraged to adapt their layout files, etc, to refstyle.
207 Doing so is fairly simple. With prettyref, one has declarations such as:
208 \newrefformat{for}(Formula \ref{#1}}
209 The refstyle equivalent is:
210 \newref{for}{refcmd={Formula \ref{#1}}}
211 The translation is obviously trivial.
213 * Preparing for Unicode:
215 As of version 1.5.0, LyX uses Unicode internally. This is a major change that
216 affects documents and layouts likewise. We have tried to do out best to make the
217 transition as smooth as possible for you. However, there are some caveats:
219 - User layout files must be converted to UTF-8
221 In versions prior to 1.5.0, layout styles were allowed to use non-ASCII names
222 using the local encodings. LyX-1.5 and later assume that all layout files are
223 UTF-8 encoded. This means that non-ASCII style names are still allowed
224 but they must be valid UTF-8 strings. One way of doing the conversion
225 is to use iconv. Using bash, the script below should work:
233 iconv -f latin1 -t utf8 tmp.txt -o "$l"
237 - Inset encodings and Conversion from earlier LyX versions
239 As part of the transition to unicode, lyx2lyx (the scripts used for
240 converting back and forth between different versions of the lyx
241 files) converts old .lyx files, which may use a number of different
242 encodings, to UTF-8. This conversion depends on correctly
243 identifying the language of the text. There were previously some
244 edge-cases (insets embedded in different-language text type
245 scenarios) in which the language was incorrectly identified, which
246 caused some text to appear incorrectly after having upgraded from
247 older versions. This has now been fixed. Unfortunately, however, the
248 fix cannot be applied to files which have already been converted
249 past format 249. So if you have already converted your old files
250 (using a development version or release candidate), this fix won't
251 help, unless you still have the originals lying around (and haven't
252 yet made too many changes to the newer versions ;) ).
254 Generally, it is probably wise to keep a backup of the old version of your
255 files, at least until you are sure that the upgrade went smoothly (which it
258 * Languages/encodings and insets
260 One of the bugs fixed in LyX 1.5.0 is that previously, there were certain
261 specific cases in which the LaTeX generated did not correctly reflect
262 language/encoding transitions in and around insets (footnotes, LyX notes).
263 After much deliberation, it was decided not to change older files such that
264 they will still reflect the old LaTeX output; rather, they will now correctly
265 reflect the situation as it appears in the GUI. This means, however, that if
266 you mangled the text in the GUI in the older versions, in order that it
267 generate the correct LaTeX output, the LaTeX will now generate the mangled
268 text. If this is problematic for you, please get in touch with us on the
269 developers mailing list, we do have some possible solutions for this.
271 The effects of this will be more pronounced for RTL (Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi)
272 users -- though they affect users of other languages as well.
274 * Floatflt in 1.2.x and older
276 If you were previously (in LyX 1.1.x) using the floatflt paragraph
277 option to wrap text around a figure, it was necessary to modify this
278 for LyX 1.2.0 manually, as described in the manuals. The feature has
279 been re-implemented as "Floating figure" inset in 1.3.0. Old files will
280 be converted automatically, but you may want to convert the
281 1.2.x-style ERT constructs with the native solution (see section 3.8
282 of the Extended Features manual).
284 * Babel changes since 1.2.x
286 Since LyX 1.2.0, the babel package is loaded after the user-defined
287 preamble (because some packages really need to be loaded before
288 babel). If you relied, on babel being loaded before your own
289 definitions, you can add an extra "\usepackage{babel}" statement at
290 the beginning of your preamble.
292 http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/315