-Public release of LyX version 1.5.0 (beta 2)
-===================================
+Public release of LyX version 1.6.0 (beta 4)
+=============================================
-We are glad to announce the release of LyX 1.5.0 (beta 2).
+We are pleased to announce the fourth beta release of LyX 1.6.0.
-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.
+LyX 1.6.0 will be the culmination of 9 months of hard work since the
+release of the LyX 1.5 series. We sincerely hope you will enjoy the
+result.
-Apart from the described major changes, several minor improvements of
-the user interface have been made, such as:
-
- - Syntax highlighting for the user preamble and the LaTeX log file
- - Better parsing of BibTeX databases (in the citation dialog)
- - Support optional arguments 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.
-
-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 1.5.5). 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
-bzip2, which yields smaller files):
+You can download LyX 1.6.0alpha2 here (the .bz2 are compressed with bzip2,
+which yields smaller files):
- ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/devel/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.gz
- ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/devel/lyx-1.5.0beta2.tar.bz2
+ ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/lyx/devel/lyx-1.6.0alpha2.tar.gz
+ ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/lyx/devel/lyx-1.6.0alpha2.tar.bz2
-Note that due to the ammount of changes no patch is provided to upgrade
-from version 1.4.4.
+Note that due to the amount of change, no patch is provided to upgrade
+from version 1.5.5.
Prebuilt binaries (rpms for linux distributions, Mac OS X and Windows
installers) should soon be available at
- ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/devel/
-
+ ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/bin/1.6.0alpha2/
-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
+If you find what you think is a bug in LyX 1.6.0alpha2, 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 1.6.0beta4?
----------------------------
-* 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.
-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.
-
-* Integrated CJK support
-
-The very first result of the Unicode transition is that we have finally
-merged in the externally maintained CJK-LyX branch.
-
-* Multiple views of the same buffer
-
-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 and embedded TOC
-
-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.) The TOC dialog is now a dock widget, embedded in the main window.
-
-* 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.
-
-* 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.
-Since this input method is much easier than the clumsy panel, the math
-panel itself has been removed and superseeded 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
-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 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.
-
-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.
-
-* Minor user interface improvements
-
-Apart from the described major changes, several minor improvements of
-the user interface have been made, such as:
-
- - 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
-
-* 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
-
-Lots of long-lasting bugs have been fixed, as documented in LyX
-bugzilla. Probably some new ones have been introduced instead ;-)
+The new features in LyX 1.6 are detailed in
+http://wiki.lyx.org/LyX/NewInLyX16