-Public release of LyX version 1.1.2
+Public release of LyX version 1.4.0
===================================
-What is LyX?
-------------
+We are glad to announce the release of LyX 1.4.0.
-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 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.
-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.
-Read more about LyX (including screen shots) at:
+In case you are wondering what LyX is, here is what
+http://www.lyx.org/ has to say on the subject:
- http://www.lyx.org/
+ 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.
-What can LyX do?
-----------------
+ 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.
-A very incomplete feature list:
+ 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.
-- "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
+ 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.
-How stable is LyX?
-------------------
+You can download LyX 1.4.0 here (the .bz2 are compressed with bzip2,
+which yields smaller files):
-This release is considered stable, but as with any software, you should
-take appropriate back-up steps in a production environment.
+ 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
-Where can I get it?
--------------------
+and it should propagate shortly to the following mirrors (which will also host
+the .bz2 versions):
-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.
+ http://lyx.mirror.fr/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
-The main LyX site is
+Note that no patch is provided to upgrade from version 1.3.7.
- ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/
+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/
-with mirrors at
- ftp://alpha.tat.physik.uni-tuebingen.de/pub/lyx
- ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/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 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
- ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/stable/lyx-1.0.4.tar.gz
- ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/lyx/lyx-1.0.4.tar.gz
+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).
-and at the mirrors listed above.
+Enjoy!
-You need to have XForms version 0.81, 0.86 or 0.88 to compile your own
-version. Version 0.88 is highly recomended. LyX should also compile
-with 0.89.
+The LyX team.
-Ready-to-run precompiled binaries for various platforms are available at:
- ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/bin/1.0.4/
-Binaries for i386-Linux are also available at your local sunsite mirror:
+What's new in version 1.4.0?
+----------------------------
- ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/editors/lyx-1.0.4-bin.tar.gz
+** Improved user interface
-Credits
--------
+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.
-The LyX Team is composed of volunteers from around the world. Many, many
-people have helped make the 1.0 release possible, including:
+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.
- 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, ...
+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.
-Special thanks should go to Matthias Ettrich who started it all.
+** Change tracking
-Feedback
---------
+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.
-Please direct any comments or questions to the appropriate mailing list as
-described on the LyX homepage (http://www.lyx.org/).
+** 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 ;-)
-Enjoy!
-The LyX Team
projects / lyx.git / blobdiff