-Public release of LyX version 1.1.5cvs
+Public release of LyX version 1.5.0 (beta 1)
===================================
-What is LyX?
-------------
+We are glad to announce the release of LyX 1.5.0 (beta 1).
-LyX is an advanced open-source "document processor". Unlike standard
-word processors, LyX encourages writing based on the structure of your
-documents, not their appearance, It lets you concentrate on writing,
-leaving details of visual layout to the software.
+It is the culmination of 1 year of hard work, and we sincerely hope
+this you will enjoy the results. The changes are too numerous to
+summarize in a few words, with initial unicode support as the flagship
+of new features, jump directly to the end of this message if you want
+to know more.
-With the familiar face of a WISYWIG word processor, LyX produces high
-quality, professional output -- using LaTeX, an industrial
-strength typesetting engine. No knowledge of LaTeX is required to
-use LyX; however, there is also a "TeX mode" which allows you to enter
-plain LaTeX commands.
+As usual with major releases, a lot of work that is not directly
+visible has taken place. The core of LyX has seen more cleanups and
+some of the new features are the direct results of this work.
-All in all, LyX is a complete environment for writing documents. It has
-superior support for scientific writing, but works well for any kind of
-document.
+See the file RELEASE-NOTES for some known problems in that release.
+
+In case you are wondering what LyX is, here is what
+http://www.lyx.org/ has to say on the subject:
-Read more about LyX (including screen shots) at:
+ LyX is a document processor that encourages an approach to writing
+ based on the structure of your documents, not their appearance. It
+ is released under a Free Software / Open Source license.
- http://www.lyx.org/
+ LyX is for people that write and want their writing to look great,
+ right out of the box. No more endless tinkering with formatting
+ details, 'finger painting' font attributes or futzing around with page
+ boundaries. You just write. In the background, Prof. Knuth's legendary
+ TeX typesetting engine makes you look good.
-What can LyX do?
-----------------
+ On screen, LyX looks like any word processor; its printed output -- or
+ richly cross-referenced PDF, just as readily produced -- looks like
+ nothing else. Gone are the days of industrially bland .docs, all
+ looking similarly not-quite-right, yet coming out unpredictably
+ different on different printer drivers. Gone are the crashes 'eating'
+ your dissertation the evening before going to press.
-A very incomplete feature list:
+ LyX is stable and fully featured. It is a multi-platform, fully
+ internationalized application running natively on Unix/Linux and the
+ Macintosh and modern Windows platforms.
-- "standard" word processing: fonts, cut & paste, infinite undo...
-- footnotes, citations, cross-referencing, faxes, spellchecking
-- almost any math expression (with a simple, but powerfull interface)
-- automatic, multilevel outline support (enumerated or bullets)
-- tables and embedded postscript figures support
-- import LaTeX or ASCII
-- export LaTeX, ASCII, DVI, PostScript, LinuxDoc-SGML, DocBook-SGML
-- fair support for non-English documents and/or menus
-- extensive documentation, including a tutorial
-- version control using RCS (some support for CVS)
+You can download LyX 1.5.0beta1 here (the .bz2 are compressed with
+bzip2, which yields smaller files):
-How stable is LyX?
-------------------
+ ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta1.tar.gz
+ ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta1.tar.bz2
+ ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/lyx/lyx-1.5.0beta1.tar.gz
+ ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/lyx/lyx-1.5.0beta1.tar.bz2
-This release is considered stable, but as with any software, you should
-take appropriate back-up steps in a production environment.
+and it should propagate shortly to the following mirrors (which will also host
+the .bz2 versions):
-Where can I get it?
--------------------
+ ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/lyx/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta1.tar.gz
+ http://lyx.cybermirror.org/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta1.tar.gz
+ ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/publishing/tex/lyx/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta1.tar.gz
+ ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/X11/LyX/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta1.tar.gz
+ http://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/unix/editors/lyx/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta1.tar.gz
+ http://lyx.mirror.fr/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta1.tar.gz
-LyX is distributed under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL), which
-means that you can not only use it freely, but also modify and
-redistribute it, provided that you include the source of the program.
+Note that due to the ammount of changes no patch is provided to upgrade
+from version 1.4.4.
-The main LyX site is
+Prebuilt binaries (rpms for linux distributions, Mac OS X and Windows
+installers) should soon be available at
+ ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/bin/1.5.0beta1/
- ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/
-with mirrors at
+If you find what you think is a bug in LyX 1.5.0beta1, you may either
+e-mail the LyX developers' mailing list (lyx-devel @ lists.lyx.org), or open
+a bug report at http://bugzilla.lyx.org
- ftp://alpha.tat.physik.uni-tuebingen.de/pub/lyx
- ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/lyx/
- ftp://ftp.chg.ru/packages/lyx/
- ftp://ftp.sdsc.edu/pub/other/lyx/
- ftp://ftp.fciencias.unam.mx/pub/Lyx/
- ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/LyX/
-
-The source code package is available at:
+If you're having trouble using the new version of LyX, or have a question,
+first check out http://www.lyx.org/help/. If you can't find the answer there,
+e-mail the LyX users' list (lyx-users @ lists.lyx.org).
- ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/stable/lyx-1.1.5.tar.gz
- ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/lyx/lyx-1.1.5.tar.gz
+Enjoy!
-and at the mirrors listed above.
+The LyX team.
-You need to have XForms version 0.88 or newer to compile your own
-version. Version 0.88 is highly recomended. LyX should also compile
-with 0.89.
-Credits
--------
+What's new in version 1.5.0 (beta 1)?
+----------------------------
-The LyX Team is composed of volunteers from around the world. Many, many
-people have helped make the 1.1.x releases possible, including:
+* Unicode
- Lars Gullik Bjoennes, Alejandro Aguilar Sierra, Asger Alstrup,
- Jean-Marc Lasgouttes, Juergen Vigna, John P. Weiss, Bernhard Iselborn,
- Andre Spiegel, Allan Rae, Henner Zeller, Robert van der Kamp,
- David L. Johnson, Amir Karger, Joacim Persson, Peter Suetterlin,
- SMiyata, Alkis Polyzotis, ...
+LyX 1.5's big goal was to use unicode internally and so resolve a slew
+of existing problems with special characters and non-alphabetic
+languages. LyX 1.5 is able to output unicode (in addition to
+encodings current available), so that you can use LaTeX's new utf8
+encoding or such brand new typesetting systems as XeTeX.
+Since the change to unicode touched much of the code base and some
+areas still need a cleanup it is very likely that some bugs related to
+the unicode transition still exist. Please have a look at the Known
+bugs in LyX 1.5 page if you encounter a bug that seems to be related
+to unicode. If it's not there, then please report it to the lyx-devel
+mailing list.
-Special thanks should go to Matthias Ettrich who started it all.
+* Integrated CJK support
-Feedback
---------
+The very first result of the Unicode transition is that we have finally
+merged in the externally maintained CJK-LyX branch.
-Please direct any comments or questions to the appropriate mailing list as
-described on the LyX homepage (http://www.lyx.org/).
+* Multiple views of the same buffer
-Enjoy!
+LyX can now display multiple views of the same buffer. I.e., you can
+now open a single document in multiple windows and work on different
+parts of it synchronously.
+
+* Outliner
+
+LyX has another long-awaited feature: a basic outliner mode, in which
+you can move chapters and sections around in the Table of Contents
+dialog. (The outliner has been backported and was released with LyX
+1.4.4.)
+
+* Session managment
+
+LyX is now able to remember window size and position and it will
+reopen the documents you worked on last time around. If you've
+selected the feature in the Preferences dialog, it'll even move the
+cursor to the place you were working on last! Furthermore, toolbars
+can (finally!) be switched on/off in View->Toolbars and moved about in
+the LyX window. The session managment will remember their state.
+
+* Source code Viewer
+
+As a kind of "anti-preview-latex", a dialog was implemented that lets
+you view the source code of a given paragraph/selection or the whole
+document.
+
+* New Font Selection Interface
+
+LyX's font selection abilities have been one of its weakest and most
+outdated components. A completely new interface was implemented that
+provides access to the power of LaTeX's font selection scheme.
+
+* Tabular extensions
+
+LyX's table support is certainly less powerful than that of
+LaTeX. support for the booktabs package was implemented, which
+provides beautiful and elegant tabulars.
+
+
+* Glossaries
+
+Native LyX support for the nomencl package was implemented. With this,
+you can treat your document with all sorts of nomenclatures,
+glossaries and fancy notations.
+
+* Tabbed Widget
+
+LyX now uses tabbed widgets to display multiple documents.
+
+* Frontend News
+
+LyX 1.5 will use the Qt4 toolkit. This is especially good news for
+Windows users, since there's an official, GPL version of Qt4. They no
+longer have to rely on an unofficial port of the Unix Qt3 library to
+Windows. The good old XForms frontend went the way of the dodo. It
+was both hated and loved, and certainly shaped the unique look of LyX
+in the past. It was finally killed off, however, by the switch to
+unicode. The Qt3 frontend was removed. The work on the GTK frontend
+has been transfered to a branch because its development has
+essentially stalled.
+
+* Change tracking enhancements
+
+Major parts of the change tracking code were rewritten addressing
+several problems that existed in the existing implementation.
+
+* Converter file cache
+
+A cache for converted files, such as included figures, was
+implemented. This can speed up LyX's performance considerably when
+displaying documents with many included figures that need conversion
+to a format that can be rendered on screen. The converter file cache
+is disabled by default, and there is no GUI for configuring it yet. If
+you want to use it, add the line
+ \use_converter_cache true
+
+to your preferences file. The default maximum age of a cached file is
+6 months. You can change that with the line
+ \converter_cache_maxage xxx
+
+where xxx is the maximum age in seconds.
+
+* Unified Windows installer
+
+The two windows installers are being merged and bug reports regarding
+both installers are welcome.
+
+* Under the hood
+
+As usual, one big task has been the ongoing code cleanup of the LyX
+core. Performing this cleanup makes the code more understandable and
+easier to maintain. It also leads inevitably to a more robust
+application. Nonetheless, it's an unfortunate fact of life that ugly
+code is sometimes faster than pretty code. We're well aware that LyX
+1.4 is slower than LyX 1.3. One important goal of this 1.5 development
+series has been to bring this speed back.
+
+** Bug fixes
-The LyX Team
+Lots of long-lasting bugs have been fixed, as documented in LyX
+bugzilla. Probably some new ones have been introduced instead ;-)
projects / lyx.git / blobdiff