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LyX, the Document Processor
Pages: 1, 2

Learning more about LyX

The LyX Documentation Project has overseen the creation of a great deal of free documentation for LyX -- including hands-on tutorials, user manuals, and example documents.



On the LyX Web site is The LyX Graphical Tour, a Web-based tutorial which shows you how to create and edit a simple LyX file.

LyX has a comprehensive set of built-in manuals, which you can either read inside the LyX editor like any LyX document or print out. All of the manuals are available from the Help menu.

For example, to run LyX's built-in tutorial, choose "Tutorial" from the Help menu. This command opens the LyX tutorial in a new buffer, which you can then read on the screen or print out by selecting "Print" from the File menu.

The following table lists the name of the manual as it appears on the menu, and describes what each contains:

Introduction

An introduction to using the LyX manuals, describing their contents and how to view and print them

Tutorial

A hands-on tutorial to writing documents with LyX

User's Guide

The main LyX usage manual, describing all of the commonly-used commands, options, and features

Extended Features

This is "part ii" of the User's Guide, describing advanced features such as bibliographies, indices, and documents with multiple files, and techniques used in special-case situations, such as fax support, SGML-Tools support, and using version control with LyX documents.

Customization

Shows which elements of LyX can be customized, and how to go about doing that

Reference Manual

Describes all of the menu entries and internal functions

Known Bugs

LyX is in active development and, as with any large application, bugs have been found. They are listed and described here.

LaTeX Configuration

This document is automatically generated by LyX when it is installed on your system. It lists an inventory of your LaTeX configuration, including the version of LaTeX in use, available fonts, document classes available, and other related packages that may be installed on your system.

Finally, LyX installs some example documents in the /usr/X11R6/share/lyx/examples directory. Here's a partial listing of these files with a description of what each contains:

Foils.lyx

Describes how to make 'foils' (slides or overhead transparencies) with the FoilTeX package

ItemizeBullets.lyx

Examples of the various bullet styles for itemized lists

Literate.lyx

An example of using LyX as a composition environment for literate programming

MathLabeling.lyx

Techniques for numbering and labeling equations

Math_macros.lyx

Making your own macros in Math mode

Minipage.lyx

Writing two-column bilingual documents

TableExamples.lyx

Examples of using tables in LyX

aa_head.lyx
aa_paper.lyx
aas_sample.lyx

These files discuss and show the use of LyX in the field of astronomy.

amsart-test.lyx
amsbook-test.lyx

Examples of documents written in the format used by the American Mathematical Society

docbook_example.lyx

Example of a DocBook document

multicol.lyx

Example of multi-column format

scriptone.lyx

Example of a Hollywood script

Next week: how Linux can help manage your appointments.

Michael Stutz was one of the first reporters to cover Linux and the free software movement in the mainstream press.


Read more Living Linux columns.




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