-!Important Changes in LyX 2.3.0
+!Important Changes in LyX 2.4.0
!!Interface changes
-* LyX now has "inverted" branch insets, which output their contents just in
- case a given branch is not "activated". This makes inclusion of alternate
- material in different versions easier.
+* It is now possible to cancel background export processes at any time. A menu
+ entry to do so will appear on the Document menu when such a process is
+ underway. The LFUN for this is export-cancel. One can also click on the red
+ 'x' next to the spinner to cancel export. Thanks to this functionality, we now
+ remove the "Stop command?" prompt, which polled users whether to stop a long
+ process.
-* When inserting a command or symbol in mathed, it is now automatically
- wrapped in a real inset (either \text or \ensuremath) assuring the correct
- mode, instead of being wrapped only in the output. The wrapping inset can
- be safely dissolved, as it will be automatically inserted at export time
- if needed, as usual.
+* The items on the Edit menu have been reordered, and many of the shortcuts
+ have been changed so that they are more intuitive in the case of often
+ used items. We understand that this may frustrate some users and apologize,
+ while noting that menu shortcuts can always be customized by copying the
+ stdmenus.inc file to the user directory and editing it.
-* LyX now outputs en- and em-dashes as -- and --- ligatures when exporting to
- latex using TeX fonts, as done in version 2.1 and earlier. In version 2.2
- they were instead output as the macros \textendash and \textemdash, causing
- changed output with old documents and bugs. The 2.2 behavior can be restored
- by don't allowing using dash ligatures in Document->Settings->Fonts.
+* Backspace and other forms of deletion will now merge paragraphs even when they
+ have different layouts.
+
+* Ctrl-click on a cross-reference will now take you to its label.
+
+* Default shortcuts for saving bookmarks have been changed to Alt-NUM, where
+ NUM is the number of the bookmark. (They were previously Shift-F1, etc.)
+
+* Shift-F3 can be used for word-find-backwards (i.e., find previous) on Linux
+ and Windows.
+
+* The shortcut to use the selection for a find on macOS is now Cmd-E, as is the
+ Apple standard. The shortcut for find the next occurrence of the current
+ find buffer text is Cmd-G. The shortcut for toggle of font emphasis has been
+ changed to Cmd-Ctrl-E.
+
+* Continuous spellcheck is now on by default, but only if the user does not have
+ an existing preferences file. In that case, the old setting is preserved.
+
+* Document (or selection statistics) is now shown in status bar and can be
+ disabled by the context menu.
+
+* The actual enabled state of the synchronize TeX output option of the document
+ is used to enable or disable the menu item for forward-search.
+
+* When using the document compare function, there is now an option to display the
+ differences using a special "Document Compare" author.
+
+* InsetRef now supports starred commands. The starred commands stop hyperref from
+ creating a link (and are only available when hyperref is used). There is a
+ checkbox "No Hyperlink" for this purpose.
+
+* Alt-Escape can be used to 'float' and redock widgets like the table of contents
+ or source view.
+
+* Edit > Paste operation now preserves newlines in text by default.
+
+* Dark mode on Windows is possible now by choosing "fusion" user interface style
+ in the user interface preferences dialog, your system style has to be set to dark.
+
+* One can now use the Text Properties dialog in mathed to not only change
+ colors but also other text properties, except strikethrough and language
+ settings.
-* The following UI translations were dropped, because the lack of translation
- maintenance: Russian, Danish, Greek, Serbian, Galician, Catalan, Romanian,
- Dutch.
!!Documents compilation process and images conversion
-* The converters definition syntax (LYX_HOME/lyxrc*) now supports a
- new option, 'needauth', to prevent completely automated execution of
- the converter, unless LyX acquired explicit consent by the
- user. This is a new security feature, useful for converters that are
- capable of executing arbitrary code, such as R scripts (used with
- sweave/knitr), embedded within LyX documents. The user needs to
- explicitly grant per-document permission on the first need for using
- the converter on each document, unless he/she checks the "Don't ask
- again for this document" checkbox in the permission dialog. The new
- behavior can be fine-tuned from two new options in the preferences
- dialog (see their description below). These also allow for disabling
- 'needauth' converters altogether, if desired (default behavior).
+* LyX now uses utf8 encoding per default for all languages. This does
+ not affect existing documents. Note that LyX also does not touch
+ personal defaults and templates. That is to say, if you still see
+ traditional encoding preset for new documents, you can change that
+ by selecting "Unicode (utf8) [default]" and hitting "Save as
+ Documents Defaults" afterwards. Your personal templates need to be
+ changed manually if desired.
+
+* LyX defaults to the "HE8" LaTeX font encoding with Hebrew if the
+ "Culmus" LaTeX fonts are installed.
+
+* Documents that use TeX fonts can only be compiled with XeTeX if the input
+ encoding is set to "utf8-plain" or "ascii".
+
+* With LyXHTML output, there are now different CSS classes generated for
+ different depths: enumi, enumii, enumiii, and enumiv, and similarly for
+ itemize: lyxitemi, etc. There is also a new HTMLClass tag, which makes it
+ easier to provide specific classes for paragraphs.
+
+* HTML support has been updated to output XHTML5 files. A major change is the
+ use of XML entities instead of HTML ones (e.g., LyX now outputs -
+ instead of ").
+
+* DocBook support has been revamped and now targets DocBook 5 (i.e.
+ only XML, SGML is gone). Some supporting files for the previous
+ implementation have been removed: all examples (lib/examples),
+ some layouts (existing documents should still work, but with a
+ DocBook 5 output instead of DocBook 4 SGML). The dependency on
+ sgmltools has been removed, this new support is always enabled.
+ Having sgmltools installed or not will not change anything in LyX.
+
+* Postscript -> PDF convertor (ps2pdf) uses -dALLOWPSTRANSPARENCY by
+ default now (implemented since ghostscript 9.53.3, see bug #12303).
+
+* There is a widespread ban on postscript conversions across different
+ linux distributions and there are currently two way how to address
+ various image conversion errors when typesetting your documents:
+ - either manually remove the bans of EPS/PDF coders in ImageMagick
+ policy.xml configuration file
+ - or install alternative converters for bitmap <-> postscript.
+ In particular pdftoppm (poppler-utils) and tiff2ps (libtiff-tools)
+ are now recognized and activated in case LyX detects ImageMagick
+ policy ban. These will allow eps<->png(jpg) conversion chain to
+ be found when processing your documents.
+ Package maintainers of distributions (e.g. openSUSE or Debian derivates)
+ where ghostscript conversions of ImageMagick are banned can simply
+ add dependencies for poppler-utils and libtiff-tools to workaround
+ the problem.
+
+* LyX now supports hebrew and hungarian quotation styles.
+
+!!!The following pref variables were added in 2.4:
+
+* \ct_additions_underlined true|false: determines whether additions in change tracking
+ are underlined in the workarea (default: true).
+
+* \ct_markup_copied true|false: determines whether change tracking markup should be
+ preserved on copy/paste (default: false).
+
+* \citation_search_view lyxpaperview: determines whether external script "lyxpaperview"
+ should be used for looking up citation source.
+
+* \draw_strategy partial|backingstore: when this is set to
+ "backingstore", the drawing code will force the use of an
+ intermediate surface, instead of just drawing changed regions on
+ screen. Note that "backingstore" is actually always enforced on
+ macOS and Wayland (default: partial).
+
+* \screen_limit true|false: determines whether the text width on screen is limited
+ (both fullscreen and normal view).
+
+* \screen_width <length>: sets the width of the text on screen if \screen_limit is true.
+
+!!!The following pref variables were changed in 2.4:
+
+
+
+!!!The following pref variables are obsoleted in 2.4:
+
+* \font_encoding
+ The font encoding is now automatically set depending on the document
+ fonts and languages.
+
+* \fullscreen_limit
+ Removed in favor of \screen_limit
+
+* \fullscreen_width
+ Removed in favor of \screen_width
+
+* \use_qimage
+ This is no longer necessary due to the rewrite of the painter.
+
+* \use_pixmap_cacheqimage
+ There is no evidence that this painting mode was useful anymore.
-* LyX now supports insertion and automated conversion of Gnuplot scripts,
- recognized by their typical extension ".gp" or ".gnuplot". These can
- directly be inserted in a LyX document using the "Insert->Graphics..."
- dialog, then selecting the Gnuplot script. LyX automatically adds a
- proper "set terminal ..." and "set output ..." line to convert the
- file to the needed output format (e.g., .eps, .pdf), depending on
- whether the document is being previewed on screen or compiled as PDF
- or other formats. Terminal options cannot be fine-tuned at the moment,
- but that's a capability that may come soon, also according to the
- received feedback from users.
+* \date_insert_format
+ The function date-insert has been removed and superseded by info-insert date.
+ The latter does not need a pref value anymore.
-!!!The following pref variables were added in 2.3:
+!!!The following new LyX functions have been introduced in 2.4:
-* \use_converter_needauth
- when enabled, user is asked before calling any (possibly dangerous)
- external converter with the 'needauth' option
+* bibtex-database-list: output a list of all bibtex files used in the current buffer.
+ The function outputs absolute paths in the OS style and separated by the os-specific
+ path separator. This function is intended for bibliography managers.
-* \use_converter_needauth_forbidden
- when enabled, use of external converters with the 'needauth' option is
- forbidden
+* branch-sync-all: Open/close all insets of selected branch (depending on its activation status).
+* buffer-reset-export advises LyX to remove the auxiliary files before doing the next
+ export.
-!!!The following pref variables were changed in 2.3:
+* buffer-write-as-template is a new convenience function to ease saving a document
+ in the (personal) templates folder.
+* export-cancel: Used to cancel background export processes.
-!!!The following pref variables are obsoleted in 2.3:
+* font-nospellcheck marks the word under cursor or selection to the effect that the
+ spellchecker ignores it.
+* ifrelatives is a helper function to check whether a buffer has a master or children.
-!!!The following new LyX functions have been introduced in 2.3:
+* lyxfiles-open opens the new examples or templates dialog.
-* branch-invert
- Toggles inversion status of branch inset.
+* master-buffer-forall executes an lfun in the master and all children of a document.
-* lyx-activate
- Activates the LyX window. Useful in combination with reverse search.
+* paragraph-select is a new convenience function to select the paragraph
+ surrounding the actual cursor position.
-* devel-mode-toggle
- Activate/deactivate the developer mode, which consists mainly in:
- (1) more information shown in the status bar and (2) help file
- opened in editable mode. This state used to be hardcoded at compile
- time.
+* search-string-set [arg] stores the <arg>, the currently selected text or the word under
+ cursor in the search cache that is used by word-find[-backward|-forward] if no argument
+ is given to those.
+* spelling-add-local adds words for a given language to the document's local spelling
+ dictionary.
-!!!The following LyX functions have been changed in 2.3:
+* spelling-remove-local removes words for a given language from the document's local
+ spelling dictionary.
-* quote-insert
- The function now has a second and third optional argument to specify
- the side (left, right, auto) and quotation mark style (english, swedish,
- german, polish, french, danish).
+* index-tag-all adds a copy of the index entry under cursor to after all occurrences of the
+ word that precedes the index inset.
-* inset-modify
- This function now also applies to quote insets. It takes a three-character
- string as an argument, referring (1.) to the style (e = ``english'',
- s = ''swedish'', g = ,,german``, p = ,,polish'', f = <<french>>, a = >>danish<<),
- (2.) to the side (l = left, r = right) and (3.) to the quotation level
- (s = single, d = double). So "eld" means "English left double quotation mark".
- A dot in the string means: take the current value. So "inset-modify changetype e.."
- will only change the style to English, while letting side and level as is,
- "inset-modify changetype f.s" will change the style to French and the level to
- single, leaving the side value.
+* inset-insert-copy inserts the inset's content (in ToC pane) at the position of the cursor.
- This function is most useful when combined with inset-forall. E.g.,
- "inset-forall Quotes inset-modify changetype f.."
- => change all quote insets to French style, maintaining current side and level
- "inset-forall Quotes inset-modify changetype ..s"
- => change all quote insets to single quotes, keeping style and level
- "inset-forall Quotes inset-modify changetype g.s"
- => change all quote insets to German single quotes, keeping left/right setting
+* inset-split is a new convenience function that splits an inset into two at the given
+ cursor position. This is only implemented for text insets currently.
+
+* tabular-style-insert: Insert a table in a specified style.
+
+* tab-group-next, tab-group-previous: Activate another tab group in split view.
+ The new functions bound to F6/S-F6 in CUA bindings.
+
+
+!!!The following LyX functions have been changed in 2.4:
+
+* citation-insert now returns a list of undefined citations if passed through the LyX Server.
+
+* file-insert: optional second parameter "ignorelang" to make the insertion
+ ignore the inserted file's main language (and rather adapt it to the insertion
+ context's language).
+
+* info-insert buffer vcs-*: renamed to info-insert vcs *
+
+* inset-edit recognizes optional argument "nogui" - no editor will be launched in
+ such case, only filename will be returned (for use in scripts).
+
+* outline-in/out can now take argument "local", that restricts their
+ action to the current paragraph.
+
+* set-graphics-group was renamed to graphics-set-group.
+
+* tabular-feature: added toggle parameters "toggle-all-lines", "toggle-border-lines"
+ and "toggle-inner-lines"
* word-delete-forward, word-delete-backward, char-delete-forward,
char-delete-backward
- The pre-2.3 behavior of these functions is equivalent to the 2.3 behavior with
- the "force" option appended. The new default behavior (without "force") is
- to select big insets on the first call and delete them only on the second.
- This new behavior is consistent with how delete works in LyX's math editor.
-!!!The following LyX documents have been moved in 2.3:
+ The 2.4 behavior of these functions is almost equivalent to the
+ pre-2.3 behavior: without argument, it just deletes the
+ next/previous element; with the "confirm" argument however, big
+ insets are selected on the first call and deleted only on the
+ second. This new behavior allow scripts to work intuitively and
+ require the argument only for interactive use.
+
+
+!!!The following LyX functions have been removed in 2.4:
+
+* date-insert: obsoleted by info-insert date.
+
+!!!The following LyX function has been added and then removed in 2.4 development cycle.
+
+* bidi: used as a first solution to provide icons that change
+ direction with language.
+
+
+!!!The following LyX documents have been moved in 2.4:
+
+* As a result of a major restructuring of the templates and example
+ directories, almost all examples and templates files have been renamed and
+ moved to subfolders that reflect the layout category.
+ The files now have much more decriptive (and longer) names, and they use
+ URL encoding for specific special characters such as '(', ')' and '&'.
+ Notably also the file that opens for new users has been renamed (from
+ splash.lyx to Welcome.lyx).
+
+
+!!!The following new files and folders have been added to the LyX directory
+
+* The examples and templates directories have been completely re-organized.
+ They are now much more structured (by means of layout categories) and thus
+ consist of many new subfolders.
+
+* The file images/icon.aliases provides simple string substitution
+ rules that can be used when searching for an icon. This mechanism
+ can be used to handle icons for renamed lfuns or new arguments.
+
+
+!!!The following preferences files have been removed from the tarball in 2.4:
+
+
+
+!!!The following metadata files have been added to the tarball in 2.4:
+
+* Metainfo was updated from appdata.xml to org.lyx.LyX.metainfo.xml
+ and is by default installed to /usr/share/metainfo/ per freedesktop.org
+ recommendation.
+
+
+!!Changes with respect to external programs and libraries in 2.4:
+
+* The Qt5 libraries are now used by default. In order to link against
+ Qt6 the configure option --enable-qt6 has to be used. Qt4 is not
+ supported anymore.
+
+* The dependency on pplatex/dvipost was dropped.
+
+* The dependency on sgmltools was dropped, see DocBook 5 section.
+
+!!! Dependencies to generate ePub files:
+
+* The DocBook XSLT 1.0 style sheets are a required dependency to generate
+ ePub files. All versions since 1.76.0 are supported.
+ Version 1.79.2 is bundled with LyX. If your system already provides xslt
+ style sheets you can use configure parameter --without-xslt-stylesheets to
+ avoid installing them.
-!!!The following new folders have been added to the LyX directory
-* citeengines: Contains the *.citeengine files that determine the citation
- formatting and features.
+* XSLT processor is needed, two options were successfully tested
+ a) xsltproc
+ - Works on Linux and OSX (tested with xsltproc 1.1.32).
+ - Fails on Windows.
+ b) Saxon
+ - Tested on Linux, OSX and Windows.
+ - Java is a required dependency. Any JVM for Java 1.4 should be supported.
+ - Only Saxon versions 6.5.4 and 6.5.5 are supported.
+ - Version 6.5.5 is bundled with LyX. If your system already provides Saxon
+ (or xsltproc) you can use configure parameter --without-saxon to avoid
+ installation of this library.
-* xtemplates: Contains the *.xtemplate files that define the external templates
- (previously in the external_templates file).
+* bash_completion script was updated for a newer syntax.
-!!!The following preferences files have been removed from the tarball in 2.3:
+!!Known issues in version 2.4.0
-* external_templates. This files has been split into multiple *.xtemplate
- files that are now shipped as content of the xtemplates directory.
+* Various versions Qt6 have a problem with key events handling (QTBUG-123848).
+ This issue is documented in bug #12641 (e.g. LyX is unresponsive to
+ Control-Command keyboard shortcuts).
+ The fix for the Qt bug is announced for Qt 6.7, 6.5 and 6.2.
+* Gnome environments defaulting to Wayland + mutter compositor might be missing
+ proper window decorations. This is a generic problem which can be for Qt-based
+ applications (including LyX) alleviated by setting QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=gnome
+ environment variable prior to running LyX.
-!!!The following metadata files have been added to the tarball in 2.3:
+* For others see http://www.lyx.org/trac/wiki/BugTrackerHome
-!!Changes with respect to external programs and libraries in 2.3:
+!!Caveats when upgrading from earlier versions to 2.4.x
-* Inkscape SVG with separate LaTeX + PDF output is experimentally supported.
+* LyX now uses the parskip package for vertical paragraph separation. Since the
+ output differs from the previous (sub-optimal) approach which applied paragraph
+ separation to sections, lists etc. as well, existing documents
+ are converted to use preamble code that maintains the previous layout.
+ The downside is that the workarea looks as if paragraph indendation rather
+ than paragraph separation was used (output is correct). We encourage you
+ to try if the new layout suits you, remove the respective preamble code
+ and re-set the paragraph separation to use the new layout.
-* Add some editor/viewer applications to (re)configure checks.
+* Autotools monolithic build option for building LyX binaries was removed,
+ for compilation speedup use parallel building on multiple cores instead.
+* Several ttf fonts (esint10.ttf, stmary10.ttf, wasy10.ttf) were changed
+ to reflect the fact that newer Qt libraries do not support displaying certain
+ codepoints anymore (bug #8493, #10161).
+ Distribution packagers need to repack those font files in case they are
+ delivering the fonts as a separated package dependent from core LyX
+ in order to display correctly math symbols like \oint.
-!!Known issues in version 2.3.0
+* Parentheses inside custom insets (defined in the local layout or in a
+ custom module) which has the "PassThru" tag set to true, in a hebrew text
+ will be reversed after conversion of existing documents.
+
+ To avoid that remove the "PassThru" tag, and restore it after
+ the conversion, or add the name of the inset, inset and the argument,
+ or layout and argument to the appropriate list, or dictionary in
+ the function "convert_hebrew_parentheses(document)" in lyx_2_4.py.
+!! If upgrading from a LyX version before 2.3.0
-!!Caveats when upgrading from earlier versions to 2.3.x
+* Please additionally see the release notes from the versions in-between:
+ https://wiki.lyx.org/LyX/ReleaseNotes
-* The external_templates file has been split into one file per template,
- which are now located in lib/xtemplates/*.xtemplate. This makes it easier
- to add new templates or modify existing ones. If you have modified
- the external_templates file, you will have to move the modifications to
- the respective *.xtemplate file manually.
-* If using TeX fonts and en- and em-dashes are output as font ligatures,
- when exporting documents containing en- and em-dashes to the format of
- LyX 2.0 or earlier, the following line has to be manually added to the
- unicodesymbols file of that LyX version:<br>
- 0x200b "\\hspace{0pt}" "" "" "" "" # ZERO WIDTH SPACE<br>
- This avoids "uncodable character" issues if the document is actually
- loaded by that LyX version. LyX 2.1 and later versions already have the
- necessary definition in their unicodesymbols file.
+!!Detailed list of 2.4 changes
-* If trying to compile documents using R scripts and sweave/knitr, LyX
- 2.3.x would not allow for re-running the R scripts, unless the user:
- 1) explicitly disables the "Forbid use of needauth converters"
- option in the LyX preferences;
- 2) provides explicit consent to the use of the converter on the first
- compilation of the R-enhanced document.
+* For more comprehensive list of changes and new features in LyX 2.4 see
+ https://wiki.lyx.org/LyX/NewInLyX24
-* LyX now gives a warning if a document mixes title and non-title layouts.
- In some cases, this warning is harmless, but in other cases the document has
- a serious problem even though the LaTeX command does not exit with error. For
- example, create a document with a title layout, then a standard layout, and
- then an author layout, and you will see in the PDF that the author is not
- typeset as an author.