+Public release of LyX version 1.5.0
+===================================
+
+We are pleased to announce the release of LyX 1.5.0.
+
+Since the announcement of release candidate 2, we have fixed bugs and
+we have updated the documentation.
+
+Following the ad hoc tradition of 1.5.0 pre-releases, called
+respectively Ruby (alpha), Towny (beta) and Quinta ("farm" in
+Portuguese for the release candidates) this release starts the Vintage
+selection that is (will be) the 1.5 series.
+
+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 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.
+
+* 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 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
+the unicode transition still exist. Please have a look at the Known
+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.
+
+* Integrated CJK support
+
+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!
+Also note that you may need to run qtconfig and set appropriate default
+or substitution fonts to display CJK characters under some circumstances.
+
+* 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
+
+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 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 management 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 has been implemented,
+providing beautiful and elegant tabulars.
+
+* Nomenclatures
+
+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.
+
+* 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, 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 superceded by the toolbars.
+
+* Frontend News
+
+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 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 have been rewritten, addressing
+several problems that existed in the previous implementation.
+
+* Converter file cache
+
+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 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, 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
+
+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
+
+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.
+
+* Limited support for local class and layout files
+
+Lyx can not create, but can open a .lyx file with .cls and .layout files
+stored in the same directory as the .lyx file. That is to say, if you send
+your co-author a .lyx file with associated class and layout files, s/he
+can view and modify the .lyx file directly, without having to install the
+.cls and .layout files, reconfigure and restart lyx. Note that the .cls and
+.layout files have to be copied to every directory your .lyx files reside,
+should you use different directories for master and child documents.
+
+* 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 ;-)
+
+
What's new in version 1.5.0 (release candidate 2)
----------------------------
projects / lyx.git / commitdiff