[Pkg-lyx-devel] Bug#356954: lyx: New upstream version available (1.4.0)

Benjamin Piwowarski benjamin.piwowarski at laposte.net
Wed Mar 15 00:27:29 UTC 2006


Package: lyx
Version: 1.3.6-1.1
Severity: wishlist

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and been replaced by the brand new and shiny tex2lyx.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 ;-)



-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.15-1-686
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages lyx depends on:
ii  groff                      1.18.1.1-11   GNU troff text-formatting system
ii  imagemagick                6:6.2.4.5-0.7 Image manipulation programs
ii  libtiff-tools              3.8.0-3       TIFF manipulation and conversion t
ii  lyx-common                 1.3.6-1.1     High Level Word Processor - common
ii  lyx-qt                     1.3.6-1.1     High Level Word Processor - Qt fro
ii  mime-support               3.36-1        MIME files 'mime.types' & 'mailcap
ii  preview-latex-style        11.82-1       LaTeX style files for editor embed
ii  tetex-bin                  3.0-14        The teTeX binary files
ii  tetex-extra                3.0-15        Additional library files of teTeX

Versions of packages lyx recommends:
ii  acroread [pdf-vi 7.0.5-0.3               Adobe Acrobat Reader: Portable Doc
ii  aspell           0.60.4-3                GNU Aspell spell-checker
ii  cupsys-bsd [lpr] 1.1.23-15               Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  evince [postscri 0.4.0-1                 Document (postscript, pdf) viewer
ii  firefox [www-bro 1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.1-3      lightweight web browser based on M
ii  gnuhtml2latex    0.3-1                   A Perl script that converts html f
ii  gs-esp [postscri 8.15.1.dfsg.1-1         The Ghostscript PostScript interpr
ii  gv [pdf-viewer]  1:3.6.1-13              PostScript and PDF viewer for X
ii  hevea            1.08-3                  translates from LaTeX to HTML, inf
ii  ispell           3.1.20.0-4.2            International Ispell (an interacti
ii  kdeprint         4:3.5.1-1               print system for KDE
ii  kghostview [pdf- 4:3.5.1-2               PostScript viewer for KDE
ii  konqueror [www-b 4:3.5.1-1               KDE's advanced file manager, web b
ii  latex2html       2002-2-1-20050114-4     LaTeX to HTML translator
ii  linuxdoc-tools   0.9.21-0.2              SGML converters for the LinuxDoc D
ii  lynx [www-browse 2.8.5-2sarge1           Text-mode WWW Browser
ii  mozilla-browser  2:1.7.12-1.1            The Mozilla Internet application s
ii  opera [www-brows 9.0-20051020.6          The Opera Web Browser
ii  rcs              5.7-18                  The GNU Revision Control System
ii  sgmltools-lite   3.0.3.0.cvs.20010909-13 convert DocBook SGML source into H
ii  w3m [www-browser 0.5.1-4                 WWW browsable pager with excellent
ii  wv               1.0.2-0.1               Convert and preview Microsoft Word
ii  xpdf-reader [pdf 3.01-7                  Portable Document Format (PDF) sui
ii  xpdf-utils [pdf- 3.01-7                  Portable Document Format (PDF) sui

-- no debconf information




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