1 How do I upgrade my existing LyX system to version 1.6.x?
2 ---------------------------------------------------------
4 * Upgrading from LyX 1.4.x and earlier:
6 The biggest change in 1.5 is the switch to Unicode. Please refer to
7 the section "Document transfer" below for some things you might take
8 into account before upgrading.
10 The format of the preferences file has changed slightly. LyX 1.5.x is
11 able to read old preferences files, but it will save them in the new
12 format, so it is not possible to run LyX 1.4.x and 1.5.x with the same
13 personal configuration directory.
15 The list of recently open files is now stored in a different location.
16 It will therefore be reset when upgrading from LyX 1.4.x.
18 The format of the layout files has also changed, but LyX 1.5.x uses a
19 converter layout2layout.py written in python that will convert old layout
20 files on the fly (see below, section "Document transfer").
22 * Upgrading from LyX 1.3.x:
24 The format of the external template file has changed substantially with
25 LyX 1.4.0. Automatic conversion is not available, so you need to convert
26 your external templates manually. The new format of the external template
27 configuration file is described in chapter 6.5 of the Customization Guide.
29 * Upgrading from LyX 1.2.x:
31 Since 1.3.0, you have to do the following changes:
33 One of the perennial bug bears of LyX users in the past has been that
34 they have had to run Edit->Reconfigure when starting their new version
35 of the code for the first time. Strange and wonderful things would
36 often result if they forgot to do this, so LyX 1.3.0 now runs
37 Edit->Reconfigure automatically the first time the program is run.
39 If you have your own layout files, you may need to update them a little:
41 - floats are now defined in the layout file, using the "Float"..."End"
42 construct. In most cases, adding "Input stdfloats.inc" to your layout
45 - counters are also defined in the layout files, using the
46 "Counter"..."End" construct. As for floats, adding "Input
47 stdfloats.inc" is probably a good idea.
49 * Upgrading from LyX 1.1.x:
51 - all layout files should have a "DefaultStyle" entry
53 - the "Latex" font style does not exist anymore. If you really need
54 its functionality, consider using the "PassThru" keyword instead.
56 The new layout format keywords are described in the Customization
59 If you have your own binding files (especially math.bind), you will
62 - math-insert now takes a latex macro name as argument, so that
63 "math-insert sqrt" should now be "\math-insert \sqrt"
65 - math-greek-toggle is now gone, and should be replaced by explicit
68 \bind "M-m g a" "math-insert \alpha"
74 LyX 1.5 uses the Qt 4.x toolkit (version 4.1.1 or newer). Contrary to
75 previous versions of LyX, it won't build against Qt 2.x or 3.x.
76 Furthermore, the XForms frontend was dropped.
78 LyX's graphics handling system has changed substantially. If you
79 do not have the JPEG library installed, you may need to install
80 it before you can use the graphics capabilities of LyX. If you
81 do not have the ImageMagick command-line tools installed, you
82 will need to modify the default set up of LyX, or install them,
83 in order to get previews of your document's graphics.
88 * Compatibility with older documents/layouts
90 LyX 1.5.x uses an external python script, lyx2lyx, to import documents
91 written using previous versions of LyX. All versions of LyX as far back as
92 0.12 are supported, so any klyx users still holding out for an alternative
93 to xforms will finally be able to put their dinosaur to rest ;-)
95 Of course, this means that you must have python (at least version 2.3)
96 installed in order to use LyX 1.5.x with your old documents.
98 lyx2lyx also has the framework in place to be able to convert documents
99 to an earlier format (which requires python 2.3.4 at least). However,
100 these converters have only been written for the conversion from 1.5.x
101 to 1.4.x and 1.3.x, so versions of LyX older than 1.3.0 will NOT be able
102 to read documents saved with LyX 1.5.x. The conversion from 1.5.x to
103 1.4.x/1.3.x is lossless as long as no new features are used. lyx2lyx
104 tries hard to find something equivalent for new features such as boxes,
105 but this is known to fail sometimes. LyX 1.4.5.1 contains an updated
106 lyx2lyx that can read documents in 1.5.x format. LyX 1.5.x can also
107 export to 1.4.x format for document transfer to older 1.4.x releases.
109 Furthermore, LyX uses a converter layout2layout.py, also written in python
110 that will convert old layout files on the fly. You can also call it manually
111 on your layout files if you want to convert them to 1.5.x format permanently.
113 * Preparing for Unicode:
115 As of version 1.5.0, LyX uses Unicode internally. This is a major change that
116 affects documents and layouts likewise. We have tried to do out best to make the
117 transition as smooth as possible for you. However, there are some caveats:
119 - User layout files must be converted to UTF-8
121 In previous versions, layout styles were allowed to use non-ASCII names
122 using the local encodings. LyX-1.5 now assumes that all layout files are
123 UTF-8 encoded. This means that non-ASCII style names are still allowed
124 but they must be valid UTF-8 strings. One way of doing the conversion
125 is to use iconv. Using bash, the script below should work:
133 iconv -f latin1 -t utf8 tmp.txt -o "$l"
137 - Inset encodings and Conversion from earlier LyX versions
139 As part of the transition to unicode, lyx2lyx (the scripts used for converting
140 back and forth between different versions of the lyx files) converts old .lyx
141 files, which may use a number of different encodings, to UTF-8. This conversion
142 depends on correctly identifying the language of the text. There were previously
143 some edge-cases (insets embedded in different-language text type scenarios) in
144 which the language was incorrectly identified, which caused some text to
145 appear incorrectly after having upgraded from older versions. This has now been
146 fixed. Unfortunately, however, the fix cannot be applied to files which have
147 already been converted past format 249. So if you have already converted
148 your old files (using a development version or release candidate), this fix
149 won't help, unless you still have the originals lying around (and haven't
150 yet made too many changes to the newer versions ;) ).
152 Generally, it is probably wise to keep a backup of the old version of your
153 files, at least until you are sure that the upgrade went smoothly (which it
156 * Languages/encodings and insets
158 One of the bugs fixed in LyX 1.5.0 is that previously, there were certain
159 specific cases in which the LaTeX generated did not correctly reflect
160 language/encoding transitions in and around insets (footnotes, LyX notes).
161 After much deliberation, it was decided not to change older files such that
162 they will still reflect the old LaTeX output; rather, they will now correctly
163 reflect the situation as it appears in the GUI. This means, however, that if
164 you mangled the text in the GUI in the older versions, in order that it
165 generate the correct LaTeX output, the LaTeX will now generate the mangled
166 text. If this is problematic for you, please get in touch with us on the
167 developers mailing list, we do have some possible solutions for this.
169 The effects of this will be more pronounced for RTL (Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi)
170 users -- though they affect users of other languages as well.
172 * Floatflt in 1.2.x and older
174 If you were previously (in LyX 1.1.x) using the floatflt paragraph
175 option to wrap text around a figure, it was necessary to modify this
176 for LyX 1.2.0 manually, as described in the manuals. The feature has
177 been re-implemented as "Floating figure" inset in 1.3.0. Old files will
178 be converted automatically, but you may want to convert the
179 1.2.x-style ERT constructs with the native solution (see section 3.8
180 of the Extended Features manual).
182 * Babel changes since 1.2.x
184 Since LyX 1.2.0, the babel package is loaded after the user-defined
185 preamble (because some packages really need to be loaded before
186 babel). If you relied, on babel being loaded before your own
187 definitions, you can add an extra "\usepackage{babel}" statement at
188 the beginning of your preamble.
190 http://bugzilla.lyx.org/show_bug.cgi?id=315