LyX
Encyclopedia
LyX is a document processor
following the self-coined "what you see is what you mean" paradigm (WYSIWYM
), as opposed to the WYSIWYG
("what you see is what you get") ideas used by word processor
s. This means that the user only has to care about the structure of and information within the text, while the formatting is done by LaTeX
, an advanced typesetting system. LyX is designed for authors who want professional output with a minimum of effort and without becoming specialists in typesetting
. The job of typesetting is done mostly by the computer, following a predefined set of rules called a style, not by the author. Specific knowledge of the LaTeX document processing system is not necessary but may improve editing with LyX significantly for specialist purposes.
Since LyX largely functions as a front-end to the LaTeX
typesetting system, it can handle documents ranging from books, notes, and theses, to articles in refereed journals, letters, and anything else LaTeX
can handle. LyX also supports right-to-left languages like Arabic
, Persian
, and Hebrew
, and it has substantial support for bidirectional writing
. LyX also supports Chinese
, Japanese
, and Korean
languages. As of LyX 2.0 there is also basic support of XeTeX
and LuaTeX
that aims at supporting a broad range of scripts via direct Unicode support.
Although LyX is popular among technical authors and scientists for its advanced mathematical modes, it is increasingly used by social scientists and humanists for its bibliographic database integration and ability to manage multiple files. LyX has also become popular among self-publishers.
The LyX document processor is available for various operating systems, including Windows
, Mac OS X
, Linux
, UNIX
, OS/2
and Haiku
. LyX can be redistributed and modified under the terms of the GNU General Public License
and is thus Free Software
.
started developing a shareware program called Lyrix in 1995.
It was then announced on USENET
where it received a great deal of attention during the subsequent years.
Shortly after the initial release, Lyrix was renamed to LyX due to a name-clash with a word processor by the Santa Cruz Operation. It was released under the GNU General Public License
, which opened the project to the open-source community. The name LyX was chosen because of the file-suffix '.lyx' for the Lyrix-files.
Besides the main distribution of LyX which requires installation there's also an unofficial portable version integrated with TeXLive called LyTeX.
Document processor
A document processor is a document preparation system that superficially resembles a word processor. However, the emphasis in a document processor is on the arrangement of the document's components, not the formatting of the characters that compose it...
following the self-coined "what you see is what you mean" paradigm (WYSIWYM
WYSIWYM
WYSIWYM is an acronym for What You See Is What You Mean, and refers to a paradigm for document editing...
), as opposed to the WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...
("what you see is what you get") ideas used by word processor
Word processor
A word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....
s. This means that the user only has to care about the structure of and information within the text, while the formatting is done by LaTeX
LaTeX
LaTeX is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The term LaTeX refers only to the language in which documents are written, not to the editor used to write those documents. In order to...
, an advanced typesetting system. LyX is designed for authors who want professional output with a minimum of effort and without becoming specialists in typesetting
Typesetting
Typesetting is the composition of text by means of types.Typesetting requires the prior process of designing a font and storing it in some manner...
. The job of typesetting is done mostly by the computer, following a predefined set of rules called a style, not by the author. Specific knowledge of the LaTeX document processing system is not necessary but may improve editing with LyX significantly for specialist purposes.
Since LyX largely functions as a front-end to the LaTeX
LaTeX
LaTeX is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The term LaTeX refers only to the language in which documents are written, not to the editor used to write those documents. In order to...
typesetting system, it can handle documents ranging from books, notes, and theses, to articles in refereed journals, letters, and anything else LaTeX
LaTeX
LaTeX is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The term LaTeX refers only to the language in which documents are written, not to the editor used to write those documents. In order to...
can handle. LyX also supports right-to-left languages like Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, and Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, and it has substantial support for bidirectional writing
Bi-directional text
Bi-directional text is text containing text in both text directionalities, both right-to-left and left-to-right . It generally involves text containing different types of alphabets, but may also refer to boustrophedon, which is changing text directionality in each row.Some writing systems of the...
. LyX also supports Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, and Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
languages. As of LyX 2.0 there is also basic support of XeTeX
XeTeX
XeTeX is a TeX typesetting engine using Unicode and supporting modern font technologies such as OpenType or Apple Advanced Typography...
and LuaTeX
LuaTeX
LuaTeX is a TeX based computer typesetting system which started as a version of pdfTeX with a Lua scripting engine embedded. After some experiments it was adopted by the pdfTeX team as a successor to pdfTeX . Later in the project some functionality of Aleph was included...
that aims at supporting a broad range of scripts via direct Unicode support.
Although LyX is popular among technical authors and scientists for its advanced mathematical modes, it is increasingly used by social scientists and humanists for its bibliographic database integration and ability to manage multiple files. LyX has also become popular among self-publishers.
The LyX document processor is available for various operating systems, including Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, UNIX
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
, OS/2
OS/2
OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 " line of second-generation personal...
and Haiku
Haiku (operating system)
Haiku is a free and open source operating system compatible with BeOS. Its development began in 2001, and the operating system became self-hosting in 2008, with the first alpha release in September 2009, the second in May 2010 and the third in June 2011....
. LyX can be redistributed and modified under the terms of the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
and is thus Free Software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
.
Features
- GUIGuiGui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...
with menus - Automatically-numbered headings, titles, and paragraphs, with table of contents
- Text is laid out according to standard typographic rules, including indents, spacing, and hyphenation
- Standard operations like cut/paste, spell-checking (using GNU AspellGNU AspellGNU Aspell, usually called just Aspell, is a free software spell checker designed to replace Ispell. It is the standard spell checker for the GNU software system. It also compiles for other Unix-like operating systems and Windows. The main program is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public...
) - Notes
- Textclasses and templates similar to the \documentclass[arguments]{theclass} command in LaTeX
- BibTeXBibTeXBibTeX is reference management software for formatting lists of references. The BibTeX tool is typically used together with the LaTeX document preparation system...
Support - Table Editor (WYSIWYG)
- Math Editor (WYSIWYG)
- Ability to import various common text formats
- Ability to natively export the document to DocBookDocBookDocBook is a semantic markup language for technical documentation. It was originally intended for writing technical documents related to computer hardware and software but it can be used for any other sort of documentation....
SGML, XHTMLXHTMLXHTML is a family of XML markup languages that mirror or extend versions of the widely-used Hypertext Markup Language , the language in which web pages are written....
and plain text - SVN-support for collaboration.
- And others - see detailed list.
History
Matthias EttrichMatthias Ettrich
Matthias Ettrich is a German computer scientist known for his contributions to the KDE and LyX projects.- School :...
started developing a shareware program called Lyrix in 1995.
It was then announced on USENET
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
where it received a great deal of attention during the subsequent years.
Shortly after the initial release, Lyrix was renamed to LyX due to a name-clash with a word processor by the Santa Cruz Operation. It was released under the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
, which opened the project to the open-source community. The name LyX was chosen because of the file-suffix '.lyx' for the Lyrix-files.
Versions
- LyX 0.7.0 was released on October 24, 1995.
- LyX 1.0.0 was released on February 1, 1999.
- LyX 1.3.0 was released on February 7, 2003.
- LyX 1.4.0 was released on March 8, 2006.
- LyX 1.5.0 was released on July 27, 2007.
- LyX 1.6.0 was released on November 10, 2008.
- LyX 2.0.0 was released on May 8, 2011.
Besides the main distribution of LyX which requires installation there's also an unofficial portable version integrated with TeXLive called LyTeX.
Pronunciation
According to the project's wiki, the developers pronounce LyX as ˈlɪks, like the English word "licks", or [ˈlʏks].See also
- List of word processors
- Comparison of word processorsComparison of word processors-General information:This table provides general information about selected word processors.-Characteristics:This table gives characteristics of each word processor.-Operating System Compatibility:...
- Document processorDocument processorA document processor is a document preparation system that superficially resembles a word processor. However, the emphasis in a document processor is on the arrangement of the document's components, not the formatting of the characters that compose it...
- Comparison of TeX editorsComparison of TeX editorsThis page shows a table contrasting the features of the text editors that interface to TeX .-Table of editor properties:- See also :* Comparison of word processors* Comparison of text editors...
- Scientific WorkPlaceScientific WorkPlaceScientific WorkPlace is a software package for scientific word processing on Microsoft Windows. It is shipped as a WYSIWYG LaTeX-based word processor, together with the LaTeX document preparation system and an optional computer algebra system.Scientific WorkPlace allows one to edit and typeset...
- A commercial counterpart of LyX - Qt 4Qt (toolkit)Qt is a cross-platform application framework that is widely used for developing application software with a graphical user interface , and also used for developing non-GUI programs such as command-line tools and consoles for servers...
toolkit, which is used for the user interface in LyX.
External links
- Official LyX Website
- LyX Wiki
- A comparative review of Scientific WorkPlace and LyX in Journal of Statistical SoftwareJournal of Statistical SoftwareThe Journal of Statistical Software is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal that publishes papers related to statistical software...
- Collection of thesis and dissertation LyX-templates