How do I upgrade my existing LyX system to version 1.6.x?
---------------------------------------------------------
-* Upgrading from LyX 1.4.x and earlier:
+* Upgrading from LyX 1.5.x:
+
+The format of preference and session files has changed. LyX 1.6.x is
+able to read old files but will save them in the new format.
+
+The format of layout files has changed but, as before,
+layout2layout.py will convert older versions to the new format
+automatically.
+
+* Upgrading from LyX 1.4.x:
The biggest change in 1.5 is the switch to Unicode. Please refer to
the section "Document transfer" below for some things you might take
The format of the preferences file has changed slightly. LyX 1.5.x is
able to read old preferences files, but it will save them in the new
format, so it is not possible to run LyX 1.4.x and 1.5.x with the same
-personal configuration directory. If you are upgrading from 1.4.x and
-do not intend to continue using 1.4.x, you should delete your existing
+personal configuration directory. If you are upgrading from 1.4.x and
+do not intend to continue using 1.4.x, you should delete your existing
preferences file and allow LyX to create a new one.
The list of recently open files is now stored in a different location.
* Upgrading from LyX 1.3.x:
-The format of the external template file has changed substantially with
-LyX 1.4.0. Automatic conversion is not available, so you need to convert
+The format of the external template file has changed substantially with
+LyX 1.4.0. Automatic conversion is not available, so you need to convert
your external templates manually. The new format of the external template
configuration file is described in chapter 6.5 of the Customization Guide.
Build requirements
------------------
-LyX 1.5 uses the Qt 4.x toolkit (version 4.1.1 or newer). Contrary to
+LyX 1.6 uses the Qt 4.x toolkit (version 4.2.0 or newer). Contrary to
previous versions of LyX, it won't build against Qt 2.x or 3.x.
Furthermore, the XForms frontend was dropped.
* Compatibility with older documents/layouts
-LyX 1.5.x uses an external python script, lyx2lyx, to import documents
+LyX 1.6.x uses an external python script, lyx2lyx, to import documents
written using previous versions of LyX. All versions of LyX as far back as
-0.12 are supported, so any klyx users still holding out for an alternative
+0.10 are supported, so any klyx users still holding out for an alternative
to xforms will finally be able to put their dinosaur to rest ;-)
-Of course, this means that you must have python (at least version 2.3)
-installed in order to use LyX 1.5.x with your old documents.
+Of course, this means that you must have python (at least version 2.3.4)
+installed in order to use LyX 1.6.x with your old documents.
-lyx2lyx also has the framework in place to be able to convert documents
-to an earlier format (which requires python 2.3.4 at least). However,
-these converters have only been written for the conversion from 1.5.x
-to 1.4.x and 1.3.x, so versions of LyX older than 1.3.0 will NOT be able
-to read documents saved with LyX 1.5.x. The conversion from 1.5.x to
-1.4.x/1.3.x is lossless as long as no new features are used. lyx2lyx
-tries hard to find something equivalent for new features such as boxes,
-but this is known to fail sometimes. LyX 1.4.5.1 contains an updated
-lyx2lyx that can read documents in 1.5.x format. LyX 1.5.x can also
-export to 1.4.x format for document transfer to older 1.4.x releases.
+lyx2lyx also has the framework in place to be able to convert
+documents to an earlier format (which requires python 2.3.4 at
+least). However, these converters have only been written for the
+conversion from 1.6.x to 1.5.x, 1.4.x and 1.3.x, so versions of LyX
+older than 1.3.0 will NOT be able to read documents saved with LyX
+1.6.x. The conversion from 1.6.x to 1.5.x-1.3.x is lossless as long as
+no new features are used. lyx2lyx tries hard to find something
+equivalent for new features such as boxes, but this is known to fail
+sometimes. LyX 1.5.7 contains an updated lyx2lyx that can read
+documents in 1.6.x format.
-Furthermore, LyX uses a converter layout2layout.py, also written in python
-that will convert old layout files on the fly. You can also call it manually
-on your layout files if you want to convert them to 1.5.x format permanently.
+Furthermore, LyX uses a converter layout2layout.py, also written in python
+that will convert old layout files on the fly. You can also call it manually
+on your layout files if you want to convert them to 1.6.x format permanently.
* Preparing for Unicode:
- Inset encodings and Conversion from earlier LyX versions
- As part of the transition to unicode, lyx2lyx (the scripts used for converting
- back and forth between different versions of the lyx files) converts old .lyx
- files, which may use a number of different encodings, to UTF-8. This conversion
- depends on correctly identifying the language of the text. There were previously
- some edge-cases (insets embedded in different-language text type scenarios) in
- which the language was incorrectly identified, which caused some text to
- appear incorrectly after having upgraded from older versions. This has now been
- fixed. Unfortunately, however, the fix cannot be applied to files which have
- already been converted past format 249. So if you have already converted
- your old files (using a development version or release candidate), this fix
- won't help, unless you still have the originals lying around (and haven't
+ As part of the transition to unicode, lyx2lyx (the scripts used for
+ converting back and forth between different versions of the lyx
+ files) converts old .lyx files, which may use a number of different
+ encodings, to UTF-8. This conversion depends on correctly
+ identifying the language of the text. There were previously some
+ edge-cases (insets embedded in different-language text type
+ scenarios) in which the language was incorrectly identified, which
+ caused some text to appear incorrectly after having upgraded from
+ older versions. This has now been fixed. Unfortunately, however, the
+ fix cannot be applied to files which have already been converted
+ past format 249. So if you have already converted your old files
+ (using a development version or release candidate), this fix won't
+ help, unless you still have the originals lying around (and haven't
yet made too many changes to the newer versions ;) ).
-Generally, it is probably wise to keep a backup of the old version of your
-files, at least until you are sure that the upgrade went smoothly (which it
+Generally, it is probably wise to keep a backup of the old version of your
+files, at least until you are sure that the upgrade went smoothly (which it
almost always will).
* Languages/encodings and insets
-One of the bugs fixed in LyX 1.5.0 is that previously, there were certain
-specific cases in which the LaTeX generated did not correctly reflect
+One of the bugs fixed in LyX 1.5.0 is that previously, there were certain
+specific cases in which the LaTeX generated did not correctly reflect
language/encoding transitions in and around insets (footnotes, LyX notes).
After much deliberation, it was decided not to change older files such that
they will still reflect the old LaTeX output; rather, they will now correctly
-reflect the situation as it appears in the GUI. This means, however, that if
+reflect the situation as it appears in the GUI. This means, however, that if
you mangled the text in the GUI in the older versions, in order that it
-generate the correct LaTeX output, the LaTeX will now generate the mangled
+generate the correct LaTeX output, the LaTeX will now generate the mangled
text. If this is problematic for you, please get in touch with us on the
developers mailing list, we do have some possible solutions for this.
-The effects of this will be more pronounced for RTL (Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi)
+The effects of this will be more pronounced for RTL (Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi)
users -- though they affect users of other languages as well.
* Floatflt in 1.2.x and older
projects / lyx.git / commitdiff