-Public release of LyX version 1.5.0 (beta 2)
+Public release of LyX version 1.5.0 (release candidate 2)
===================================
-We are glad to announce the release of LyX 1.5.0 (beta 2).
+We are pleased to announce the release of LyX 1.5.0 (release candidate 2).
+We expect this to be the last release before 1.5.0. We do not anticipate
+any further changes before 1.5.0, although any critical bugs and regressions
+in 1.5.0rc2 will, of course, be addressed.
-Compared with the previous beta release we have fixed several bugs and
-added some graphical improvements:
- * A new math toolbar replaces the old (faithful) math panel.
- * The converter file cache can be now configured in the graphical interface.
- * The TOC dialog is now a dock widget, embedded in the main window.
+We encourage users to try this release candidate and report
+any feedback or problems to lyx-devel at lists.lyx.org.
-Apart from the described major changes, several minor improvements of
-the user interface have been made, such as:
+Since the announcement of release candidate 1, we have mostly fixed bugs
+and polished the graphical interface.
- - Syntax highlighting for the user preamble and the LaTeX log file
- - Better parsing of BibTeX databases (in the citation dialog)
- - Support optional argument for environments
-Compare with the latest stable release this 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.
+LyX 1.5.0 is the culmination of 15 months of hard work since the release
+of the LyX 1.4 series. We sincerely hope you will enjoy the result.
+The changes are too numerous to summarize in a few words, but initial
+unicode support is the flagship among the new features. See the end of
+this announcement for further details.
-As usual with major releases, a lot of work that is not directly
+As usual with a major release, 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.
-See the file RELEASE-NOTES for some known problems in that release.
+The file RELEASE-NOTES lists some known issues with this release
+compared to the current stable release (LyX 1.4.4). An updated list of
+issues might later be found at http://wiki.lyx.org/LyX/ReleaseNotes
+
In case you are wondering what LyX is, here is what
http://www.lyx.org/ has to say on the subject:
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.
+ Macintosh and modern Windows platforms.
-You can download LyX 1.5.0beta2 here (the .bz2 are compressed with
+You can download LyX 1.5.0rc2 here (the .bz2 are compressed with
bzip2, which yields smaller files):
- ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/pre/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.gz
- ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/pre/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.bz2
- ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/lyx/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.gz
- ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/lyx/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.bz2
-
-and it should propagate shortly to the following mirrors (which will also host
-the .bz2 versions):
-
- ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/lyx/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.gz
- http://lyx.cybermirror.org/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.gz
- ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/publishing/tex/lyx/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.gz
- ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/X11/LyX/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.gz
- http://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/unix/editors/lyx/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.gz
- http://lyx.mirror.fr/stable/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.gz
+ ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/lyx/devel/lyx-1.5.0rc2.tar.gz
+ ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/lyx/devel/lyx-1.5.0rc2.tar.bz2
-Note that due to the ammount of changes no patch is provided to upgrade
+Note that due to the amount of change, no patch is provided to upgrade
from version 1.4.4.
Prebuilt binaries (rpms for linux distributions, Mac OS X and Windows
installers) should soon be available at
- ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/bin/1.5.0beta2/
-
-
-If you find what you think is a bug in LyX 1.5.0beta2, you may either
-e-mail the LyX developers' mailing list (lyx-devel @ lists.lyx.org), or open
+ ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/lyx/devel/
+
+As confusing as it is, two sets of installers are available to windows
+users:
+ * LyX-1.5.0rc2-Installer.exe and LyX-1.5.0rc2-Installer-bundle.exe;
+ * LyX-1.5.0rc2-AltInstaller.exe and LyX-1.5.0rc2-AltInstaller-Complete.exe.
+The former is our official installer and the latter was previously known
+as LyXWinInstaller. Please feel free to try either of them. Feedback
+and bug reports on both installers are welcome because they will help
+the merge of the two installers, which is expected to happen during the
+1.5.x series of LyX development.
+
+If you find what you think is a bug in LyX 1.5.0rc2, you may either
+e-mail the LyX developers' mailing list (lyx-devel at lists.lyx.org), or open
a bug report at http://bugzilla.lyx.org
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).
+e-mail the LyX users' list (lyx-users at lists.lyx.org).
Enjoy!
The LyX team.
-What's new in version 1.5.0 (beta 2)?
+What's new in version 1.5.0 (release candidate 2)?
----------------------------
* Unicode
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.
+encodings currently available), so that you can use LaTeX's new utf8
+encoding or a brand new typesetting system such 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
+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
+bugs on the 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.
The very first result of the Unicode transition is that we have finally
merged in the externally maintained CJK-LyX branch.
+The languages Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are now supported in
+the user interface.
+Note that setting the encoding for these languages in LyX 1.5 by
+using ERT or the document preamble will lead to LaTeX-errors!
+
+* Language support
+
+In addition to the CJK languages, the languages Armenian and Farsi also
+have full user interface support.
* Multiple views of the same buffer
dialog. (The outliner has been backported and was released with LyX
1.4.4.) The TOC dialog is now a dock widget, embedded in the main window.
-* Session managment
+* Session management
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.
+the LyX window. The session management will remember their state.
* Source code Viewer
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.
-
+LaTeX. Support for the booktabs package has been implemented,
+providing beautiful and elegant tabulars.
-* Glossaries
+* Nomenclatures
-Native LyX support for the nomencl package was implemented. With this,
+LyX now has native support for the nomencl package. With this,
you can treat your document with all sorts of nomenclatures,
glossaries and fancy notations.
* Enhanced Math Toolbars
The math toolbar was enhanced significantly. Drop down menus were
-added, that allowed to integrate all of the math panel' content to the
-math toolbars.
+added, allowing the integration of all of the math panel's content
+to the math toolbars.
Since this input method is much easier than the clumsy panel, the math
-panel itself has been removed and superseeded by the toolbars.
+panel itself has been removed and superceded by the toolbars.
* 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
+LyX 1.5 uses the Qt4 toolkit. This is especially good news for
+Windows users, because 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
+unicode. The Qt3 frontend was also removed. The work on the GTK
+frontend has been transferred 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.
+Major parts of the change tracking code have been rewritten, addressing
+several problems that existed in the previous implementation.
* Converter file cache
-A cache for converted files, such as included figures, was
+A cache for converted files, such as included figures, has been
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 it can be enabled in the Preference
-Settings dialog, in the Converters section or, if you want to use it,
-add the line
-
- \use_converter_cache true
-
-to your preferences file.
+is enabled by default.
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.
+where xxx is the maximum age in seconds, in your preferences file.
* Unified Windows installer
The two windows installers are being merged and bug reports regarding
both installers are welcome.
+* Program listings
+
+The traditional way to insert program listings in LyX involves the use
+of the LyX-Code style. This option works quite well for short snippets but
+does not support in-line code segments or the inclusion of external files.
+
+Using the listings latex package as the backend a new inset was added that
+supports all these three ways of listing computer programs.
+
+* LaTeX-package support
+
+LyX provides the following new document classes:
+ - article(IOP) - for scientific papers published by the IOP group
+ - presentation(powerdot) - for presentations using the powerdot package
+ - curriculum vitae(Europe) - for CVs following the guidelines of the EU
+ - curriculum vitae(modern) - for CVs using the moderncv package
+ - curriculum vitae(simple) - for simple CVs
+
* Minor user interface improvements
-Apart from the described major changes, several minor improvements of
-the user interface have been made, such as:
+Several minor improvements of the user interface have been made, such as:
+
+ - Syntax highlighting of the user preamble and the LaTeX log file.
+ - Better parsing of BibTeX databases (in the citation dialog).
+ - Support for optional arguments for environments.
+
+* Enhanced clipboard/selection handling
- - Syntax highlighting for the user preamble and the LaTeX log file
- - Better parsing of BibTeX databases (in the citation dialog)
- - Support optional argument for environments
+The clipboard has been tuned to work better with other applications.
+Parallel to clipboard usages, the *nix way of using middle-button
+to paste selected text is enhanced, and is also available under windows
+(but within lyx only). Selection of lyx text is now persistent in that
+you can paste the selected text using the middle button multiple times,
+even after the selection has been cleared.
* Under the hood