-Public release of LyX version 1.3.0
+Public release of LyX version 1.4.0
===================================
-We are glad to announce the release of LyX 1.3.0.
+We are glad to announce the release of LyX 1.4.0.
-As with the previous major version 1.2.0, many things make this new
-release an exciting one. One of the major projects that has been going
-on behind the scenes is the so-called GUI-independence project. We are
-glad to announce that version 1.3.0 shows the first results of this.
-LyX now comes in two flavours: Qt-LyX and xforms-LyX!
+It is the culmination of 3 years of hard work, and we sincerely hope
+this you will enjoy the results. The changes are too numerous to
+summarize in a few words, jump directly to the end of this message if
+you want to know more.
-Although this is the most visible change in version 1.3, this should not
-hide the fact that the `under the hood' changes to the code have again
-been very important. A detailed list can be found below.
+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.
In case you are wondering what LyX is, here is what
http://www.lyx.org/ has to say on the subject:
- LyX is an advanced open source document processor that encourages an
- approach to writing based on the structure of your documents, not their
- appearance. LyX lets you concentrate on writing, leaving details of
- visual layout to the software.
+ 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.
- LyX runs on many Unix platforms (including MacOS X), OS/2, and under
- Windows/Cygwin. Note that all these ports use the same xforms interface
- and therefore need an X server.
+ 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.
-You can download LyX 1.3.0 here :
+ 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.
- ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/stable/lyx-1.3.0.tar.gz
- ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/lyx/lyx-1.3.0.tar.gz
+ 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.
-and it should shortly propagate to the following mirrors :
+You can download LyX 1.4.0 here (the .bz2 are compressed with bzip2,
+which yields smaller files):
- ftp://ftp.sdsc.edu/pub/other/lyx/stable/lyx-1.3.0.tar.gz
- ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/lyx/stable/lyx-1.3.0.tar.gz
- ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/publishing/tex/lyx/stable/lyx-1.3.0.tar.gz
- ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/X11/LyX/stable/lyx-1.3.0.tar.gz
- ftp://ftp.icm.edu.pl/vol/rzm0/lyx/stable/lyx-1.3.0.tar.gz
+ ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/stable/lyx-1.4.0.tar.gz
+ ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/stable/lyx-1.4.0.tar.bz2
+ ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/lyx/lyx-1.4.0.tar.gz
+ ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/lyx/lyx-1.4.0.tar.bz2
+and it should propagate shortly to the following mirrors (which will also host
+the .bz2 versions):
-Prebuild binaries (mainly rpms for linux distributions) should soon be
-available at
- ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/bin/1.3.0
+ http://lyx.mirror.fr/stable/lyx-1.4.0.tar.gz
+ ftp://ftp.sdsc.edu/pub/other/lyx/stable/lyx-1.4.0.tar.gz
+ ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/lyx/stable/lyx-1.4.0.tar.gz
+ ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/publishing/tex/lyx/stable/lyx-1.4.0.tar.gz
+ ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/X11/LyX/stable/lyx-1.4.0.tar.gz
-If you find what you think is a bug in LyX 1.3.0, you may either
-e-mail the LyX developers' mailing list (lyx-devel@lists.lyx.org), or open
+Note that no patch is provided to upgrade from version 1.3.7.
+
+Prebuilt binaries (rpms for linux distributions, Mac OS X and Windows
+installers) should soon be available at
+ ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/bin/1.4.0/
+
+
+If you find what you think is a bug in LyX 1.4.0, 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
If you're having trouble using the new version of LyX, or have a question,
-first check out http://www.lyx.org/help/, and e-mail the LyX users' list
-(lyx-users@lists.lyx.org) if you can't find an answer there.
+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).
Enjoy!
The LyX team.
-New features
-============
-
-** Qt frontend
-
-This is of course the most visible new feature. This frontend supports
-either Qt 2.x or 3.x and is mostly feature complete. Note that some
-of the dialogs are slightly different in design, but are generally
-functionally equivalent.
-
-** Xforms frontend
-
-The advent of the Qt frontend does not mean that the historical xforms
-frontend is dead. Actually, it is still the one which is the best
-implemented, because we have had more time to polish it. In this release,
-most of the dialogs have been redesigned to be tighter.
-
-Note also that the xforms library has been very recently updated to
-version 1.0. This version has been released under the LGPL (Lesser
-General Public License), and the availability of the source means that
-many bugs that have been plaguing LyX have been fixed in xforms. You
-are advised to upgrade to xforms 1.0 to enjoy all these new fixes.
-In fact, LyX 1.3.0 no longer supports versions of xforms older than 0.89.5.
-Moreover, support for xforms older than 1.0 will be removed in the next
-release. You have been warned ;-)
-
-In most cases the dialogs have been designed to make it impossible to input
-invalid parameters. The exception to this rule is the input of length data.
-Power LaTeX users can still input obtuse "glue lengths", but the widgets are
-highlighted in red if this input is invalid or incomplete. This visual
-feedback makes it easy to see why LyX won't allow you to Apply your changes.
-
-** Gnome frontend
-
-Unfortunately, the development of the Gnome frontend has mostly
-stopped recently and we have therefore chosen to disable it. We
-strongly invite anyone willing to revive this port to volunteer on the
-developer's list.
-
-** Instant preview
-
-preview-latex is an emacs package for LaTeX that allows "instant previews"
-of LaTeX code, so you can immediately see the visual rendering of the
-LaTeX in the document. Its project home page can be found at
-http://sourceforge.net/projects/preview-latex. With the help of David
-Kastrup, the author, LyX 1.3.0 can harness this functionality to
-allow instant previews in the LyX window of math equations and
-figures. This feature can be immensely useful, ensuring that the
-rendering of your equation will look right in the final output. The
-preview is only displayed (if enabled) when you're not editing the
-actual equation, so it's unobtrusive too.
-
-** Math editor
-
-There have been a few visible and some not-so-visible changes. On the
-visible side we have better visual feedback regarding the structure of
-a formula, showing the nesting by small purple decorations in the
-formula itself and revealing the names of the nesting levels in the
-minibuffer. There is now native support for symbols from the wasy
-package containing e.g. the zodiac symbols. New also is the internal
-structure of font changes which are now proper "insets", just like
-anything else from a square root to an array. This not only simplifies
-the code greatly but also allows the same editing tricks as for the
-"regular" math. However, it was not possible to tweak the visible
-behaviour to mimic 1.2 in all cases, so this might take some time to
-get accustomed to. On the pro side, the new structure allowed
-support for LaTeX's \mbox and \fbox to be implemented and general
-"switching back to text mode within math", so a lot of "evil red text"
-trickery is not needed anymore. The most visible changes are the following:
-
-- Pressing { and } will insert LaTeX's \{ and \} which show up as { }
- in the printout. To get LaTeX's {} nesting, you need to type \{.
-
-- Fonts changes now really nest. Repeated application of a font change
- will result in nested font changes! To remove a font change without
- removing the "contents", it is now possible to "pull the argument"
- like in other insets, i.e. put the cursor in the first position of
- the inset and press 'backspace'.
-
-** Reading old files
-
-LyX now has a new script lyx2lyx which enables the reading of any file
-produced by LyX versions as old as 0.12. Work is in progress on files
-created with LyX 0.10 (LyX 1.4 time-line) and still older files are
-in the forge. Basically if lyx wrote it LyX will read it. :-)
-
-There is also a strong demand to be able to read files produced by
-_newer_ versions of LyX. While lyx2lyx has the infrastructure in place
-to do such things, the filters to `downgrade' LyX files (from 1.3.0 to
-1.2.x, for example) have not yet been written.
-
-** Miscellaneous changes
-
-- LyX now automatically uses TeX fonts for screen rendering of math
- equations if they are available (it is not necessary anymore to
- configure your font server).
-
-- The Insert>Short Title allows the addition of an optional text
- for section headings and captions that is designed to be used in
- tables of contents.
-
-- The Insert>Float>Floatflt Figure menu item restores the ability
- to wrap text around an image which was present in 1.1.6 and
- removed in 1.2.0
-
-- If you configure with --with-pspell (which uses the PSpell library for
- spellchecking), you will be able to automatically spell-check
- multi-language documents, assuming you have the right dictionaries
- installed.
+
+What's new in version 1.4.0?
+----------------------------
+
+** Improved user interface
+
+LyX 1.4 has a re-designed layout for the menus, designed to decrease
+clutter and maximise productivity. Several menu items (in the Edit
+menu) are now context-sensitive, so they only appear when needed. For
+the die-hard old LyX users, the older layout (referred to as the
+classic UI) is still available, for now.
+
+It's now possible to define multiple toolbars as seen in other
+editors. By default, the new LyX release has two toolbars displayed,
+the standard one (similar to the static toolbar in LyX 1.3), plus the
+extra toolbar. In addition, there are two pre-defined toolbars
+available: one for tables, and one for math.
+
+Another new feature worth mentioning is popup toolbars: you can set a
+toolbar such that it only appears when editing math, or when editing a
+table.
+
+** Change tracking
+
+This new feature, similar to that found in Microsoft Word and others,
+makes collaboration on a document a cinch. It provides a way to track
+changes made to a document, and later approve, reject, or modify such
+changes.
+
+** Much better conversion from .tex to .lyx
+
+The ancient and unloved Perl script, reLyX has finally bitten the dust
+and been replaced by the brand new and shiny tex2lyx. tex2lyx's LaTeX
+parser follows most of the rules of the real TeX and so is already
+much more powerful than reLyX ever was.
+
+** Character styles
+
+For a system that purports to make it easy to write documents full of
+logical (as opposed to visual markup), LyX has always had one glaring
+omission: no character styles. LyX 1.4 goes some way towards
+addressing this defect, although there's no dialog to define your own
+styles.
+
+
+** Branches
+
+The teacher who's setting an exam obviously doesn't want her pupils
+seeing the answers, yet having questions and answers in the same
+document will make the life of the markers of that exam much easier.
+
+That's just one example of someone who would benefit from LyX's new
+"branches" feature. In fact, anyone who writes documents which have
+more than one target audience will find this feature useful.
+
+** Minipages evolve to Boxes
+
+In 1.3, LyX only had native support for plain minipages. Now you can
+use a wide range of box types and decorations directly from the LyX
+GUI
+
+** Notes
+
+LyX now has three different Notes for you to add to your document from
+the Insert>Note menu:
+
+- the "LyX Note" is not exported to LaTeX, as now. The "Comment" is
+- exported to LaTeX as a comment environment and is not processed
+ further.
+- The Greyed Out note is visible in your PostScript or PDF output as,
+ well, greyed-out text.
+
+** Better language and numbering on screen
+
+Two features help to make the screen rendering closer to the printed output:
+
+- the labels attached to layouts like Chapter are now translated in
+ the language of the document, which may be different from the
+ language of the menus;
+- sectioning headers and theorems are now numbered according to the
+ document class specifications.
+
+** Word count
+
+Yes, it's finally there! Tools>Count Words will give you a word
+count of the document or of the current selection.
+
+** Error Lists
+
+Nasty "error boxes" were eliminated in favor of a dialog with a list
+of errors popping up at compilation time.
+
+** Improved bibliography support
+
+- LyX's support for natbib has been enhanced. Now, also the mysterious
+ "before citation" field is supported;
+- We have added support for jurabib, an amazing package to produce
+ flexible citations that are especially well suited for the humanities
+ and law fields;
+- Support for sectioned bibliographies (bibtopic) has been added;
+- the way bibtex is called is now customizable (as is the way the
+ index processor is invoked).
+
+** Improved microtypography support
+
+LyX aims to produce superior typography. With 1.4, it supports:
+
+- more blank characters (e.g. a "thin space", which should stand here
+ between "e." and "g.");
+- inner and outer quotation marks without the hassle of toggling the
+ style in the documents dialog. Just use the Alt key.
+- the handling of figure and table alignment inside floats has been
+ improved. You can now use the paragraph dialog without getting too
+ much space between figure/table and caption.
+
+** Small bits
+
+- Figure and table floats can be rotated sideways
+
+- The external xfig inset has been improved especially with regard to
+ pdf generation
+
+- The graphics inset dialog has now an "edit" button that allows to
+ edit the included figure
+
+- For index generation, xindy can be used instead of makeindex, which
+ has poor support for other than English index sorting.
+
+** Bug fixes
+
+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