The L

Y
X Users Guide
by the L
Y
X Team

June 1, 2006

If you have comments or error corrections, please send them to the L

Y
X Documentation
mailing list: [email protected]
Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 What is L
Y
X? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2.1 Invoking L
Y
X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2.2 How L
Y
X Looks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2.3 HELP! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 The L
Y
X Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3.1 Basic File Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3.2 Basic Editing Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3.3 Undo and Redo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3.4 Basic Mouse Bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3.5 Basic Key Bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.4 Using L
Y
X with Other Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4.1 Importing ASCII les . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4.2 Cut and Paste Between L
Y
X and Other X Programs . . . . . . 7
2 L
Y
X Setup and Supporting Applications 9
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2 Basic L
Y
X Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.3 Setting Up the X Keyboard [obsolescent] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.3.1 xmodmap and xkeycaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.3.1.1 xmodmap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.3.1.2 xkeycaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.3.2 Modiers and Mode_switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.3.3 Helpful Hints and Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.4 L
A
T
E
X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.5 Dvips and Ghostscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.5.1 What You Need . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.5.2 Dvips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.5.3 Ghostscript, Xdvi and Ghostview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.6 The Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3 L
Y
X Basics 17
3.1 Document Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.1.2 The Various Document Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
iii
Contents
3.1.2.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.1.2.2 Selecting a Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.1.2.3 Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.1.3 Fine-tuning the Defaults . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.1.4 Paper Size, Orientation, and Margins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.1.5 Important Note: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.2 Paragraph Indentation and Separation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.2.2 Global Indentation Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.2.3 Fine-Tuning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.2.4 Changing Line Spacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.3 Paragraph Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.3.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.3.2 Standard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.3.3 Document Titles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.3.4 Headings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.3.4.1 Numbered Headings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.3.4.2 Unnumbered Headings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.3.4.3 Changing the Numbering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.3.4.4 Special Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.3.4.5 Creating an Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.3.5 Quotes and Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.3.5.1 Quote and Quotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.3.5.2 Verse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.3.6 Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.3.6.1 General Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.3.6.2 Itemize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.3.6.3 Enumerate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.3.6.4 Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3.3.6.5 The L
Y
X List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.3.7 Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.3.7.1 Address and Right Address: An Overview . . . . . . 32
3.3.7.2 Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.3.8 Academic Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.3.8.1 Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.3.8.2 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.3.9 Special Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.3.9.1 Caption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.3.9.2 L
Y
X-Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.3.9.3 Comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.4 Nesting Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.4.1 The Big Deal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.4.2 What You Can and Cant Nest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.4.3 Nesting Other Things: Tables, Math, Floats, etc. . . . . . . . 38
iv
Contents
3.4.4 Usage and General Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.4.5 Some Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.4.5.1 Example #1: The Six-fold Way and Mixed Nesting . 41
3.4.5.2 Example #2: Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3.4.5.3 Example #3: Labels, Levels and other list environments 42
3.4.5.4 Example #4: Going Bonkers . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.5 Fonts and Text Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.5.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.5.2 Global Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.5.3 Using Dierent Character Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.5.4 Fine-Tuning with the Character Layout dialog . . . . . . . . . 46
3.6 Printing and Previewing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.6.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.6.2 Quick Viewing with xdvi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.6.3 Viewing the PostScript Version with ghostview . . . . . . . . 51
3.6.4 Printing the File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.7 A Few Words about Typography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.7.1 Hyphens and Hyphenation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.7.2 Punctuation Marks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.7.2.1 Abbreviations and End of Sentence . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.7.2.2 Quotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.7.3 Ligatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.7.4 Widows and Orphans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4 Tables, Figures, and Notes 57
4.1 Footnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.2 Margin Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.3 Figures and Imported Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
4.3.1 How it works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
4.3.2 Figure Floats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
4.3.2.1 Using Figure Floats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
4.3.2.2 Float Placement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4.3.3 XFig and L
Y
X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
4.4 Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4.4.1 The Table dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
4.4.2 What can be placed inside a table cell? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
4.4.3 Cut & Paste in Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4.4.4 Multiple lines in cells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4.4.5 Table Floats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
4.5 Table of Contents and other Listings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4.5.1 The Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4.5.2 List of Figures, Tables and Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
v
Contents
5 Mathematical Formulae 71
5.1 Basic Math Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5.1.1 Navigating a Formula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5.1.2 Selecting Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
5.1.3 Exponents and Subscripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
5.1.4 Fractions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
5.1.5 Sums and Integrals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
5.1.6 The Math Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5.1.7 Other Math Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5.1.8 Altering spacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5.1.9 Math functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
5.1.10 Accents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
5.1.11 The math editor for L
A
T
E
X users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
5.2 Brackets and decorations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.3 Grouping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.4 Arrays and Multi-line Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
5.5 Equation Numbering and Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
5.6 User dened macros in math mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
5.6.1 How to create macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
5.6.2 How to navigate in macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
5.7 Fine-Tuning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
5.7.1 Typefaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
5.7.2 Math Text Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.7.3 Font Sizes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.8 AMS-L
A
T
E
X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
5.8.1 Enabling AMS-Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
5.8.2 AMS-Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
5.8.3 AMS-Formula Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
6 More Tools 83
6.1 Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
6.2 URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
6.3 Short Titles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
6.4 Branches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
6.5 Previewing snippets of your document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
6.6 Spacing, pagination and line breaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
6.6.1 Extra Horizontal Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
6.6.2 Extra Vertical Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
6.6.3 Changing Paragraph Alignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
6.6.4 Forcing Page Breaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
6.6.5 Blanks/Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
6.6.5.1 Inter-word Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
6.6.5.2 Protected Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
6.6.5.3 Thin Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
vi
Contents
6.6.5.4 More Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
6.6.6 Line breaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
6.7 Spellchecking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
6.7.1 Spellchecker Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
6.7.1.1 Dictionary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
6.7.1.2 Personal dictionary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
6.7.1.3 Further Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
6.7.2 Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
6.8 International Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
6.8.1 Language Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
6.8.2 Keyboard mapping conguration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
6.8.3 Character Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
7 Credits 95
Bibliography 97
vii
1 Introduction
1.1 What is L
Y
X?
L
Y
X is a document preparation system. It is a tool for producing beautiful manuscripts,
publishable books, business letters and proposals, and even poetry. It is unlike most
other word processors in the sense that it uses the paradigm of a markup language
as its core editing style. That means that when you type a section header, you mark
it as a Section, not Bold, 17 pt type, left justied, 5 mm space below. L
Y
X takes
care of the typesetting for you, so you deal only with concepts, not the mechanics.
This philosophy is explained in much greater detail in the Introduction. If you
havent read it yet, you need to. Yes, we mean now.
The Introduction describes several things in addition to L
Y
Xs philosophy: most
importantly, the format of all of the manuals. If you dont read it, youll have a bear
of a time navigating this manual. You might also be better served looking in one of
the other manuals instead of this one. Introduction describes that, too.
1.2 Getting Started
1.2.1 Invoking L
Y
X
Similar to other Linux [and other brands of Unix] programs, you start L
Y
X by simply
typing lyx at the command line. You can, of course, include several command-line
options, including le names. Were not going to repeat all of the command-line
options here, since weve already done that in the man page for L
Y
X. Check there for
more info.
There are one or two things wed like to comment on:
Please note that if you include more than one le name on the command line, L
Y
X
will load them all, though it wont display them all simultaneously. More on that in
a bit.
1.2.2 How L
Y
X Looks
Like most applications, L
Y
X has the familiar menu bar across the top of its window.
Below it is a toolbar with a pulldown box and various buttons. There is, of course,
a vertical scrollbar and a main work area for editing documents. Near the bottom of
the window is a small window containing a single line of text. This is the minibuer
1
1 Introduction
(a term which weve swiped, lock, stock, and barrel, from GNU Emacs), which re-
ally means command buer. Type M-x when you need to type a command in the
minibuer.
Note that there is no horizontal scroll bar. This is not a bug or an oversight, but
intentional. When you read a book, you expect the end of a line to wrap around to
the next line. Text overows onto new pages in a vertical fashion, hence the need for
only a vertical scrollbar.
There are three cases where you might want a horizontal scrollbar. The rst case
is large gures, displayed WYSIWYG. This, however, is due to a aw in the routine
that displays graphics on the L
Y
X screen in a WYSIWYG fashion; it should rescale
the graphics to t in the window, just as youd need to rescale graphics to t on a
page. The second and third cases are tables and equations which are wider than the
L
Y
X window. You can use the arrow keys to scroll horizontally through the table,
but this doesnt work for equations yet.
1.2.3 HELP!
First, the bad news: the help system is not as thorough as that in many commercial
applications. Patience. Were working on it.
Now the good news: the help system consists of the L
Y
X manuals. You can read
all of the manuals from inside L
Y
X. Just select the manual you want read from the
Help menu.
While were at it, wed like to make a comment about the manuals. Theyre not
idiot-proof, not in the least. Heres what one of our authors, John Weiss, once said
about manuals:
I hate manuals.
Yes, weve all dealt with the terse, poorly-translated, or cryptic man-
uals. They are aggravating. I nd, however, that the overly simplied
ones are even more aggravating. First, they spend about half their time
carefully explaining to the user how to operate a mouse, what a menu is,
et cetera, ad nauseum. Please, if someone doesnt know how to use their
own computer, or a GUI, then they should sit down and learn before they
start up a major piece of software.
Second, what information they do provide seems to assume that the
user is stupid. Utter nonsense! Most users, in my experience, are some
combination of clueless and intimidated, not stupid. Besides, if someone
is truly slow on the uptake, they need help that a manual for a piece of
computer software cant give.
Editors Note: With this in mind, Ive instructed all of the other authors to avoid
patronizing you, the reader, and to be more pedagogical than pedantic. As for those
who are too lazy to read and understand the manuals well, as we say here in
America, theres no such thing as a free lunch. - jw
2
1.3 The L
Y
X Interface
1.3 The L
Y
X Interface
1.3.1 Basic File Operations
Under the File menu are the 9 basic operations for any word processor in addition to
some more advanced operations:
New
New from Template
Open
Close
Save
Save As
Revert
Print
Exit
They all do pretty much the same thing as in other word processors, with a few minor
dierences. The File New from Template command not only prompts you for a name
for the new le, but also prompts you for a template to use. Selecting a template
will automatically set certain layout features for the document, features you would
otherwise need to change manually. They can be of use for certain classes, especially
those for writing letters [see sec. 3.1.2]
Note: There is no default le or document named Untitled or scratch. Unless
you tell L
Y
X to open a le or create a new one, that big, blank space is just that
a big, blank space.
The Revert command is useful if more people work on the same document at the
same time
1
. It will simply reload the document from disk. You can of course also use
it if you regret that you changed a document and want to restore it to the last save.
The second matter of note concerns the commands File Close and File Exit. They
both feature a nag box to save us all from our own stupidity. That is, if you try to
close a le with changes [or exit L
Y
X], youll be informed that there are unsaved les.
1
If you plan to do this, you should check out the Version Control feature in L
Y
X also. Read
Extended Features.
3
1 Introduction
1.3.2 Basic Editing Features
Like most modern word processors, L
Y
X can perform cut and paste operations on
blocks of text, can move by character, word, or screenful of text, and can delete
whole words as well as individual characters. The next four sections cover the basic
L
Y
X editing features and how to access them. Well start with cut and paste.
As you might expect, the Edit menu has the cut and paste commands, along with
various other editing features. Some of these are special and covered in later sections.
The basic ones are:
Cut
Copy
Paste
Find & Replace. . .
The rst three are self-explanatory. One thing to note: whenever you delete a block
of text that youve selected, its automatically placed in the clipboard. That is, the
Delete and Backspace keys also functions as the Cut command. Also, if youve selected
text, be careful. If you hit a key, L
Y
X will completely delete the selected text and
replace it with what you just typed. Youll have to do an Undo to get back the lost
text.
The Edit Find & Replace. . . item opens the Find & Replace dialog. The text you
want to nd goes in the Find box. Once youve found a word or expression, L
Y
X
selects it. Hitting the Replace button replaces the selected text with the contents of
the Replace with box. You can click to search again to skip the current word.
Hit Replace All to replace all occurrences of the text in the document automatically.
The Case sensitive toggle button can be used if you want the search to consider the
case of the search word. If the toggle is set, searching for Match will not match the
word match.
The Match Word toggle button can be used to force L
Y
X to only nd complete
words. I.e., searching for match will not match matches, matchbox, etc.
1.3.3 Undo and Redo
If you make a mistake, you can easily recover from it. L
Y
X has a large-capacity
undo/redo buer. Select Edit Undo to undo some mistake. If you accidently undo
too much, use Edit Redo to undo the undo. The undo mechanism is currently
limited to 100 steps to minimise memory overhead.
Notice that if you revert back all changes to arrive to the document as it was last
saved, the changed status of the document is unfortunately not reset. This is a
consequence of the 100 step undo limit, above.
The Undo and Redo work on almost everything in L
Y
X. They have some quirks,
too. They wont Undo or Redo text character by character, but by blocks of text.
4
1.3 The L
Y
X Interface
That can take some getting used to; youll have to play with Undo and Redo to get a
feel for just how much theyll undo/redo, and after time, youll hopefully appreciate
how it works.
1.3.4 Basic Mouse Bindings
Were not going to go into all of the mouse bindings here. Some of the other sections
of this manual cover specic operations you can do with the mouse. Instead, were
going to cover the most basic mouse operations.
1. Motion
Click the left mouse button once anywhere in the edit window. The cursor
moves to the text under the mouse.
2. Selecting Text
Hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse. L
Y
X marks the text
between the old and new mouse positions. Use Edit Copy to create a copy
of the text in L
Y
Xs buer.
Re-position the cursor and then paste the text back into L
Y
X using Edit
Paste.
3. Footnotes, Margin Notes, Figure and Table Floats, etc.
Single click the left mouse button to open or close any of these. Also check the
appropriate section of this manual for more details.
4. Tables
Single click the right mouse button to open a dialog that will allow you to
manipulate the table.
1.3.5 Basic Key Bindings
Again, were not going to cover all of the keybindings. Be aware that there are at
least two dierent primary binding maps: CUA and Emacs. I guarantee you will
cuss when you press Control-d to delete a character, and it starts up a DVI previewer
instead (or vice versa).
Some keys, like Page Up, Page Down, Left, Right, Up, and Down, do exactly what
you expect them to do. Other keys dont:
Tab There is no such thing as a tab stop in L
Y
X. If you dont understand this,
go read Sections 3.2.1 and 3.3, especially Section 3.3.6, right now. Yes,
right now. If youre still confused, look in the Tutorial.
5
1 Introduction
Esc This is the cancel key. Its used, generically, to cancel operations. Other
parts of the manual will go into greater detail about this.
Home and End These move the cursor, respectively, to the beginning and end of a
line, unless you are using the Emacs bindings where they jump to the
beginning or end of the le.
Backspace and Delete If you have your keyboard set up correctly under the X Win-
dows System, Backspace works as expected and Delete deletes the char-
acter under the cursor [if no text is selected].
If you havent set up your keyboard under X, or have no idea what we
mean by that, go read section 2.3 immediately. Youll save yourself a lot
of headaches.
Then there are the modier keys:
Control- This has a couple of dierent uses, depending on which keys its used in
combination with:
With Backspace or Delete, it deletes an entire word instead of a single
character.
With Left and Right, it moves by words instead of characters.
With Home and End, it moves to the beginning and the end of the
document, respectively.
Shift- Use this with any of the motion keys to select the text between the old
and new cursor positions.
Meta- This is the Alt key on many keyboards, unless your keyboard has a distinct
Meta key. Unfortunately, X sometimes has their functionality swapped,
so if you have both keys, you will need to do a little trial and error to
nd out which one actually performs the Meta- function. This key does
many dierent things, but it also activates the menu accelerator keys. If
you use this in combination with any of the underlined letters in a menu
or menu item, it selects that menu item.
For example, the sequence M-e s brings up the Text Style menu. Typ-
ing M-f opens the File menu.
There are also other things bound to the Meta- key, but youll have to
check in the Reference manual for more info.
Hopefully, youll learn more and more keybindings and short-cut keys as you use L
Y
X,
because most mouse actions will prompt a small message in the minibuer which
describe the name of the action, youve just triggered, and any existing keybindings
for that action. The notation for the keybindings is very similar to the notation
6
1.4 Using L
Y
X with Other Programs
used in this documentation, so you should not have any problems understanding it.
However, notice that Shift-modiers are explicitly mentioned, so M-p S-A means
Meta-p followed by a capital A. S-C-S means Shift-Control-s.
1.4 Using L
Y
X with Other Programs
1.4.1 Importing ASCII les
You can import text from an ASCII le using the File Import Ascii text as lines or
File Import Ascii text as paragraphs options.
File Import Ascii text as_lines puts each line of the le into its own L
Y
X paragraph.
This is useful if youre importing a text le with a simple list in it. However, if your
text le contains paragraphs in it, L
Y
X will mangle the paragraphs if you use this
form of import.
File Import Ascii text as paragraphs preserves paragraphs in text les. Often in a
text le, you didnt put the contents of an entire paragraph on one line. You used
Return to break up the paragraph into separate lines. Using the as paragraphs, L
Y
X
wont mangle such paragraphs. Anything between two consecutive blank lines goes
into its own L
Y
X paragraph. Remember: you must make sure there is a completely
blank line between each and every paragraph in your text le. If not, L
Y
X might end
up merging two paragraphs.
1.4.2 Cut and Paste Between L
Y
X and Other X Programs
The Cut, Copy, and Paste operations will transfer text to and from L
Y
X. You can
copy text from L
Y
X to another window in this way: Select the text that you want to
copy, then go to the destination window and paste the text with the middle mouse
button.
Pasting text into L
Y
X also works much the same way as in X. Select the text with
the mouse in another X window. Go to the Lyx window and paste the text with the
middle mouse button.
7
1 Introduction
8
2 L
Y
X Setup and Supporting
Applications
2.1 Introduction
If youre using L
Y
X on a system someone else has set up for you, then you can safely
skip this chapter. It describes all of the things you need beyond the L
Y
X binary and
les distributed with it.
If youre installing L
Y
X on your system, you should read the READMEs that came
with the L
Y
X distribution and then Help LaT
E
X Conguration. Do that rst. This
chapter does not describe installation or setup of the L
Y
X binary [Well, not every-
thing. . . ]. It does describe all of the things youll need to use L
Y
X to its fullest.
1
2.2 Basic L
Y
X Setup
There are two ways to run L
Y
X. The rst way is to install L
Y
X and all of its support
les on your system. Of course, you need root (administrator) privileges to do that.
The second way to run L
Y
X doesnt require root access, letting you install L
Y
X
somewhere in your own account. L
Y
X will automatically detect where it is as long as
the supporting directories are put in the correct places.
There are several features of L
Y
X that can be congured from inside L
Y
X, without
resorting to conguration les. First, L
Y
X is able to inspect your system to see what
programs, L
A
T
E
X document classes and L
A
T
E
X packages are available. It uses this
knowledge to give reasonable defaults to several preferences variables. Although
this conguration has already been done when L
Y
X was installed on your system, you
might have some items that you installed locally and which are not seen by L
Y
X. To
force L
Y
X to re-inspect your system, you should use Tools Recongure. You should
then restart L
Y
X to ensure that the changes are taken into account. As far as L
A
T
E
X
classes and packages are concerned, you will nd information about what has been
found under Help LaT
E
X Conguration.
The second set of settings that you might want to change comprises all the document-
level setting that you can change via the Document Settings dialog. To do this, open
a scrap document, set all these options according to your taste and save them with
the Save as Document Defaults button in the Document dialog. This will create a
1
This is basically where we decided to document a bunch of info about running L
Y
X, including
what other programs youll need to make L
Y
X useful.
9
2 L
Y
X Setup and Supporting Applications
template named default.lyx which is automatically loaded by L
Y
X when you open
a document without template such that the settings are automatically set-up as you
dened them.
There are many other user-congurable options that you can feed to L
Y
X. Upon
startup, L
Y
X reads a global options le called lyxrc.defaults. It will then attempt
to read a le called preferences
2
The Tools Preferences dialog can be used to change these options; the document
Customization contains more information about the preferences dialog and these con-
guration les.
2.3 Setting Up the X Keyboard [obsolescent]
To use L
Y
X properly, X must be set up correctly. This is especially vital if youre
using the international support features of L
Y
X and want to use non-English keyboard
mappings. On modern distributions, this likely has been taken care of, but if not,
you must do this yourself. Administrators of large systems often neglect this, so
dont assume that youre safe if youre using a large system. Also ordinary users can
instruct X how to use his or her keyboard.
2.3.1 xmodmap and xkeycaps
First of all read the man pages for these two programs. They are your best friends
when you are trying to set up X key mapping correctly. If you dont have them,
install them.
2.3.1.1 xmodmap
This document contains no information on how to use xmodmap. There is a sam-
ple .Xmodmap le in Customization. To load the new X keyboard mappings, place
the command xmodmap .Xmodmap somewhere in your startup scripts [e.g. .cshrc,
.profile, .login or .xinitrc are possible].
2.3.1.2 xkeycaps
This program brings up a graphical version of your keyboard, allows you to make
modications, and then spits those modications out to the standard output in a
form readable by xmodmap. It is very useful when youre trying to design a new
.Xmodmap le, though it will require you to do a bit of cut-and-pasting.
2
The preferences le is found in dierent directories on dierent systems. This directory is
called L
Y
Xs user directory. To nd out where it is, use Help About LyX. (You may set up an
alternative user directory from the command line, using the switch -userdir.)
10
2.3 Setting Up the X Keyboard [obsolescent]
2.3.2 Modiers and Mode_switch
L
Y
X supports three modiers: Shift [S-], Control [C-], and Meta [M-]. Moreover, if
one of the keys of your keyboard is congured as a Compose key, then you can use
it to enter some characters not available on your keyboard. This compose key can
be used either as a modier (like Shift or Control) or as a prex key. Here are some
examples of what you can do with a Compose key:
Compose+e+
Compose+O+R
Compose+1+2
Compose+<+<
This input method is particularly handy when you use accented characters only from
time to time. It works by default for latin1 characters, but other input methods will
be used if you setup your locale correctly.
2.3.3 Helpful Hints and Tips
First, open up two xterminals. Use one to edit a new .Xmodmap le and run xkeycaps
from the other. Using xkeycaps, remap your keyboard the way you want it. Theres
a button in xkeycaps to output the new keymap. Once you hit it, xkeycaps will spit
a bunch of stu on the xterm you executed it from. Just copy and paste all of that
into your .Xmodmap le, and youre done.
3
Also, there are some things you can do to help you get oriented. Try executing the
command xmodmap -v -pm. This will show you all of the currently active modiers.
Also try xmodmap -v -pke | more to see which keycode numbers are mapped to
which symbolic names. It will also give you some idea of the syntax of the .Xmodmap
le.
Theres one thing youll need to check. Make sure that your Delete and BackSpace
keys are not dened as the same key symbol by X! Note that giving these two keys
unique symbol names will not necessarily alter the behavior of your programs. Some
programs bind Delete and BackSpace to the same operation. Emacs is one. Other
programs, however, use Delete and BackSpace for dierent operations. L
Y
X is one
of these programs, and if you have Delete and BackSpace labeled with the same key
symbol name, youll have trouble using L
Y
X.
3
You could also save yourself some typing by executing xkeycaps > .Xmodmap. This will create a
usable map le.
11
2 L
Y
X Setup and Supporting Applications
2.4 L
A
T
E
X
If you want to do more with L
Y
X than simply create documents and spit out .tex
les, youll need L
A
T
E
X.
In case you were wondering, L
A
T
E
X is a markup language front end for T
E
X, a
document preparation system invented in 1984 by Donald Knuth.
4
T
E
X takes a set
of commands in an ASCII le and converts it to a device-independent format, or
Dvi, for short. The Dvi le can then be sent to printers. T
E
X is programmable, and
L
A
T
E
X is nothing but a [really huge] set of T
E
X macros. L
A
T
E
X will typically come as
part of a T
E
X distribution, so all you need is a T
E
X package.
Note that on some old systems you may nd that only L
A
T
E
X 2.09 is installed (as
opposed to the more current L
A
T
E
X2

). L
Y
X cannot be used with L
A
T
E
X 2.09.
If youre using Linux, L
A
T
E
X2

should have come with your distribution. For other

systems, you might need to install L
A
T
E
X yourself.You can obtain a L
A
T
E
X distribution
(and anything and everything related to T
E
X and L
A
T
E
X) from a Comprehensive T
E
X
Archive Network (CTAN) mirror. A complete list of mirrors may be found at
http://www.ctan.org
2.5 Dvips and Ghostscript
2.5.1 What You Need
Theres one more step you need to take if you want to print your L
Y
X documents.
Obviously, youll need to make sure your printer is congured [see next section]. Youll
also need to install these programs (or compatibles), if you dont have them already:
dvips
ghostscript
xdvi
ghostview
The latter two programs are previewer for les in Dvi and PostScript
5
format. If
you dont know what a DVI le is, youve probably also never worked with L
A
T
E
X and
should read the Tutorial document before proceeding further. dvips converts DVI
les into PostScript, which is the format most printers use nowadays. For those of
you using dot-matrix and inkjet printers, youll want to lter the PostScript through
ghostscript, which is capable of creating output for a variety of printers. The
4
A note about pronunciation: T
E
X originated from the Greek letters, , which rhymes with
blech. Thats how you pronounce T
E
X and L
A
T
E
X. [If youre American, just pronounce the
X as a k and youve got it.]
5
PostScript is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated, and is the main page
description language in the UN*X world.
12
2.5 Dvips and Ghostscript
following section on printer setup describes how to do this automatically every time
you print. For now, well concentrate on dvips.
2.5.2 Dvips
Whether youll be running L
Y
X on a large system or a Linux box at home, you should
congure dvips. dvips will either print into a le, or send output directly to the
printer, depending on how its congured. If it is set up to print to a le, and if no
lename is specied, it will simply turn foo.dvi into foo.ps. Most systems have
dvips set up to send output to the default printer. For L
Y
X, youll want the exibility
to do both.
If you are not a mood to congure dvips to adapt its output to your printer, you
can safely skip this section. Be warned however that the output will not match the
quality that you could expect from your printer. At least, it will print.
If you are using teT
E
X (a T
E
X distribution which is particularly popular on Linux),
you should run the program texconfig. To make the name of a new printer recog-
nized by dvips you should then select menu entry Dvips, then add. Enter the required
parameters and, before exiting, remember to select the function Rehash.
Lets turn now to manual conguration: in order to inform dvips how to automag-
ically convert a .dvi le into a .ps le adapted to printer foo, you need to have
a cong-le, config.foo, lying around somewhere. Typically, the config.* les
for dvips will be in /usr/lib/texmf/dvips in most T
E
X distributions. Your system
will probably be dierent, of course, so just look under the main T
E
X directory for a
subdirectory called dvips. Itll be there somewhere.
Typically, there will be at least one cong-le: config.ps. This le is the default
conguration le, which is always read by dvips
6
. Read this le and see what options
could need to be changed for your particular printer. Then create a le config.foo
containing only the relevant lines.
Theres at least one thing you need to do to the cong-le. There may exist a line
that looks like, o | lpr [without the quotes, of course. . . ]. Change it to o | lpr
-Pfoo, so that the output is sent by default to printer foo. However, you should
probably investigate the entries M and D, which dene respectively the Metafont
mode and the resolution of the printer. If you do not know what a Metafont mode
is, you can see it as a printer driver: it adapts the design of T
E
X fonts to ensure
that they give the best possible result on your printer. Be warned however that, if
you dene dierent Metafont modes for dierent printers, dvips will generate several
copies of your T
E
X fonts on disk, and these take valuable space.
Once you are satised that your printers are correctly congured, you should tell
L
Y
X to make use of this conguration. To do this, you should launch the Preferences
dialog (Tools Preferences), select the Printer tab, and set the entries Adapt output
and Spool command.
You can use as many conguration les as you like, one for each of your printers.
6
In particular, this le is not necessarily connected to the existence of a le named ps.
13
2 L
Y
X Setup and Supporting Applications
The default printer for L
Y
X can be specied from the Preferences dialog or with the
PRINTER environment variable. You can also choose the desired printer from inside
L
Y
X, as described in a later section. Once youve done all that, you can print to
either a PostScript printer or le from L
Y
X.
If your printer doesnt understand PostScript, youll need to use ghostscript as
a lter for your print spooler. Thats covered in numerous HOWTOs and manuals.
We also have a section that covers a little bit of this.
Some people dont seem to like using the dvips plus ghostscript combination.
As alternative, you can use a program that converts the DVI le directly into your
printer language. You can specify this program in the Preferences dialog, too. There
is a major disadvantage to this method. You cant include any PostScript les, such
as graphics, in your documents, since the printer-specic conversion programs dont
understand PostScript. For that reason, the L
Y
X team highly recommends using
dvips and ghostscript for printing.
2.5.3 Ghostscript, Xdvi and Ghostview
Xdvi and ghostview are viewers. The former handles .dvi les, while the later
interfaces with ghostscript to allow you to view PostScript les.
A quick note on both of these programs. Both automatically update themselves if
the viewed le
7
changes. You can also force an update. So, once youve opened one of
these two viewers, theres no reason to close it. Also, both programs are functionally
the same, providing all of the same features.
The L
Y
X team recommends using xdvi for ne tuning documents. Why? Its
faster; theres one less layer of processing you need to do before you can view the
changes. Heres an example:
1. Use xdvi to preview a document from L
Y
X, and leave it running.
2. Make changes to the document using L
Y
X.
3. To view those changes, just choose View Update DVI. When L
A
T
E
Xs all done,
click on the xdvi window, and voil! xdvi will update itself.
Now, this doesnt mean ghostview is useless. ghostview is better suited to those
occasions where you must view the PostScript version of the document. For repeated
changes that arent PostScript dependent, youre better o previewing with xdvi.
There is an alternative to ghostview which sports a much better interface: gv. L
Y
X
will automatically use it instead of ghostview if it is available.
2.6 The Printer
Anyone working on a large system shouldnt have any problems here. Your sysadmin
[or you, if you are the sysadmin] should already have the printers set up for your
7
That means the .dvi or .ps le, not the les used to make these.
14
2.6 The Printer
system. All you need to do is nd out the name of the printer you want to use, and
congure your setup as described in the last section.
Those of you using Linux, however, may have a bit more work to do. Many people
now install Linux from an ISO image of one of the popular distributions. They follow
the install instructions, get Linux up and running, but never realize that they need
to set up their printer. The more desktop friendly distributions may do this for you
automatically. However, if you nd that you need to do this by hand, weve written a
little something to help you out with that; check out the A Printer Tutorial chapter
in the Customization manual for help.
15
2 L
Y
X Setup and Supporting Applications
16
3 L
Y
X Basics
3.1 Document Types
3.1.1 Introduction
Before you do anything else, before you ever start writing a document, you need to
decide what type of document you want to edit. Dierent types of documents use
dierent types of spacing, headings, numbering schemes, and so on. Additionally,
dierent documents use dierent paragraph environments, and format the title of
your document dierently.
A document class describes a group of properties common to a particular set of
documents. By setting the document class, you automagically select these properties,
making it easier to create the type of document you want. If you dont choose a
document class, L
Y
X picks one for you by default. So, it behooves you to change the
class of your document.
Read on for info about the document classes you can choose from L
Y
X, and how
to ne-tune some of their properties.
3.1.2 The Various Document Classes
3.1.2.1 Overview
There are ve standard document classes in L
Y
X. They are:
Article for basic articles
Report for basic reports
Book for writing a book
Letter for US-style letters
Slides is used to make transparencies
There are also some non-standard classes, which L
Y
X only uses if you have a L
A
T
E
X
setup that supports them:
Aapaper Journal articles in the style and format used in Astronomy & Astrophysics
17
3 L
Y
X Basics
Amsart Journal articles in the style and format used by the AMS [American Math-
ematical Society]. There are three amsart layouts available. The standard one
uses a typical numbering scheme for theorems, etc., that prepends the section
number to the number of the result. All result-type statements (propositions,
corollaries, and so on) are sequenced together, but denitions, examples, and
the like have their own sequence. The sequential numbering scheme does not
place the section number with each result, but numbers them throughout the
article in a single sequence. Each type of result gets its own sequence. There is
also a layout that dispenses with numbering of statements altogether.
Amsbook Books in the style and format used by the AMS. Only the standard num-
bering scheme is provided, under the assumption that you would not want to
number results consecutively throughout a book, and that you would need to
number results.
Dinbrief fr Briefe nach deutscher Art
Foils is used to make transparencies, but is better than slides
Linuxdoc Used with the SGML-tools package (formerly known as LinuxDoc). It
allows L
Y
X to produce SGML output. SGML is a markup language and is the
predecessor to HTML. The SGML-tools package allows you to convert SGML
to HTML or to the format used by man pages.
Paper for use with the paper L
A
T
E
X document class [not in all L
A
T
E
X distributions]
Revtex is used to write articles for the publications of the American Physical Society
(APS), American Institute of Physics (AIP), and Optical Society of America
(OSA). This class is not completely compatible with all L
Y
X features.
We wont go into any detail about how to use these dierent document classes here.
You can nd all the details about the non-standard classes in the Extended Editing
manual. Here, we will settle with a list of some of the common properties of all of
the document classes.
3.1.2.2 Selecting a Class
You can select a class using the Document Settings dialog. Select the class you want
to use, and make any ne tunings of the options you may need.
3.1.2.3 Properties
Each class has a default set of options. Heres a quick table describing them:
18
3.1 Document Types
Pagestyle Sides Columns Max. sectioning level
article Plain One One Section
report Plain One One Chapter
book Headings Two One Chapter
letter Plain One One none
linuxdoc Plain One One Section
aapaper Plain Two Two Section
amsart Headings One One Section
dinbrief Plain One One none
paper Headings One One Section
There is no default value of Extra Options for any of these classes.
Youre probably also wondering what Max. sectioning level means. There are
several paragraph environment used to create section headings. Dierent document
classes allow dierent types of section headings. Only two use the Chapter heading;
the rest do not and begin instead with the Section heading. Some document classes,
such as the three for letters, dont use any section headings. In addition to Chapter
and Section headings, there are also Subsection headings, Subsubsection headings, and
so on. Well describe these headings fully in section 3.3.4.
3.1.3 Fine-tuning the Defaults
Okay, we know we never told you what most of these default options set by the
Class button do. Thats what this section is for.
Pagestyle This is another list, containing ve options. It controls what sorts of
headings and page numbers go on a page:
1
Default Use default pagestyle of current class.
Empty No page numbers or headings.
Plain Page numbers only.
Headings Page numbers and either the current chapter or sec-
tion title and number. Whether L
Y
X uses the current
chapter or the current section depends on which is
the maximum sectioning level.
Fancy This allows you to create fully customizable headers
and footers if you have the fancyhdr package installed.
At the moment, support in L
Y
X is limited to this set-
ting. To use the full power of this package, you have
to resort to magic codes in your preamble. Check
the documentation for the fancyhdr package for more
details.
1
L
A
T
E
X does this part.
19
3 L
Y
X Basics
Sides No, L
Y
X cant make your printer print on both sides of a sheet of
paper! However, it can use a dierent format for odd-numbered pages
than even-numbered pages. This way, if you do have a printer that
duplexes
2
, your page number will always be in the upper right corner
of the page and the left margin will have extra room for a binding.
There are two radio buttons here: One for single-sided documents,
Two for double-sided documents.
Columns Yes, this does control how many columns each page has. You can
choose, using the toggle buttons, One or Two for the number of
columns.
Note that L
Y
X wont show two columns on screen. Thats impractical,
often unreadable, and not part of the WYSIWYM concept. However,
there will be two columns in the generated output.
Extra Options The L
A
T
E
X command \documentclass takes several options. L
Y
X
sets some of these automatically for you. This text box allows you to
enter in others. Just type in a comma-separated list of options. See
a good L
A
T
E
X book to nd out what kinds of additional options you
can use.
Separation This has its own section. See sec. 3.2.1 for a description of what this
does.
3.1.4 Paper Size, Orientation, and Margins
There are several other options to set in the Document Settings dialog. All of them
are global options, but they have special purposes and only aect certain features.
We describe what these options do in the same section that describes the features
they aect.
There are two options that aect the overall layout of the document, so well
describe them here. Youll nd them in the Paper dialog under the Layout menu:
Orientation Two toggle buttons choose whether to print the output as Landscape or
as Portrait.
Papersize What size paper to print on. The choices are
Default
A3, A4, A5
B3, B4, B5
US Letter
2
i.e. prints on both sides of a sheet of paper
20
3.2 Paragraph Indentation and Separation
US legal
US executive
Custom
Some of these settings require you to have the geometry package installed. This
package will also allow you to set the margins in the Paper dialog.
3.1.5 Important Note:
If you change a documents class, L
Y
X has to convert everything into the new class.
That includes the paragraph environments. Some paragraph environments are stan-
dard; all of the document classes have them. Some classes have special paragraph
environments, however. If this is the case, and you change document classes, L
Y
X
sets the missing paragraph environments to Standard and places an error box at the
beginning of the paragraph. Just click on them and youll get a message dialog that
tells you about the conversion and why it failed.
3.2 Paragraph Indentation and Separation
3.2.1 Introduction
Before describing all of the various paragraph environments, wed like to say a word
or two about paragraph indentation.
Everyone seems to have their own convention for separating paragraphs. Most
Americans indent the rst line of a paragraph. Others dont indent but put extra
space between the paragraphs. L
Y
X uses the same convention you nd among typog-
raphers. The rst paragraph of a section, or after a gure, an equation, a table, a list,
etc., is not indented. Only a paragraph following another paragraph gets indented.
Some people dont like this convention, but if you want to use indented paragraphs,
youll have to live with it.
3
The space between paragraphs, like the line spacing, the space between headings
and text in fact, all of the spacings for just about everything are pre-coded into
L
Y
X. As we said, you dont worry about how much space to add between what. L
Y
X
takes care of that. In fact, these pre-coded vertical spacings arent a single number
but a range. That way, L
Y
X can squish or stretch the space between lines to make
sure gures t on a page with text, so that sections dont start at the bottom of a
page, and so on.
4
However, pre-coded doesnt mean you cant change them. L
Y
X
gives you the ability to globally change all of these pre-coded spacings. Well explain
more later.
3
There is a way to force L
A
T
E
X to indent all paragraphs. L
Y
X wont show this, of course, but L
A
T
E
X
will print it that way. Youll need to get a special package and insert an appropriate command
in the preamble.
4
Actually, L
A
T
E
X does this when L
Y
X goes to produce a printable le.
21
3 L
Y
X Basics
3.2.2 Global Indentation Method
To select the default method of separating paragraphs, select Indent or Skip to indent
paragraphs or add extra space between paragraphs, respectively.
3.2.3 Fine-Tuning
You can also change the separation method of a single paragraph. Open the Edit
Paragraph Settings dialog and toggle the No Indent button to change the state of the
current paragraph. If paragraphs indent by default, this button will be inactive at
rst. If paragraphs have no indentation but use extra space for separation, this button
will be completely ignored (you cant indent a single paragraph by toggling this).
You should only need to change the indentation method for a single paragraph if
you need to do some ne-tuning. Typically, youll select Indent or Skip for the entire
document and edit away.
3.2.4 Changing Line Spacing
In the Document Settings dialog you can choose your line spacing provided you have
the setspace package installed.
3.3 Paragraph Environments
3.3.1 Overview
The paragraph environments correspond to the various
\begin{environment} ... \end{environment}
command sequences in an ordinary L
A
T
E
X le. If you dont know L
A
T
E
X, or the concept
of a paragraph environment is totally alien to you, we urge you to read the Tutorial.
The Tutorial also contains many more examples than this section does.
A paragraph environment is simply a container for a paragraph which gives that
paragraph certain properties. This can include a particular style of font, dierent
margins, a numbering scheme, labels, and so on. Additionally, you can nest the
dierent environments inside one another, allowing one environment to inherit some
of the properties of another. The dierent paragraph environments totally replace
the need for messy tab stops, on the y margin adjustment, and other hold-overs
from the days of typewriters. There are several paragraph environments which are
specic to a particular document type. Well only be covering the most common ones
here.
To choose a new paragraph environment, use the pull-down box on the left end of
the toolbar. L
Y
X will change the environment of the entire paragraph in which the
cursor sits. You can also change the environment of an entire group of paragraphs if
you select them before choosing the new environment.
22
3.3 Paragraph Environments
Note that hitting Return will typically create a new paragraph using the Standard
paragraph environment. We say typically because this isnt always the case.
5
Usu-
ally, starting a new paragraph resets both the paragraph environment and the nesting
depth [more on nesting in section 3.4]. At the moment, all this is context-specic;
youre better o expecting Return to reset the paragraph environment and depth. If
you want a new paragraph to keep the current environment and depth, use M-Return
instead.
3.3.2 Standard
The default paragraph environment is Standard for most classes. It creates a plain
paragraph. If L
Y
X resets the paragraph environment, this is the one it chooses. In
fact, the paragraph youre reading right now [and most of the ones in this manual]
are in the Standard environment.
You can nest a paragraph using the Standard environment in just about anything
else, but you cant really nest anything in a Standard environment.
3.3.3 Document Titles
A L
A
T
E
X title page has three parts: the title itself, the name[s] of the author[s] and a
footnote for thanks or contact information. For certain types of documents, L
A
T
E
X
places all of this on a separate page along with todays date. For other types of
documents, the title page goes at the top of the rst page of the document.
L
Y
X provides an interface to the title page commands through the paragraph en-
vironments Title, Author, and Date. Heres how you use them:
Put the title of your document in the Title environment.
Put the author name in the Author environment.
If you want the date to have a certain appearance, want to use a xed date, or
want other text to appear in place of todays date, put that text in the Date
environment. Note that using this environment is optional. If you dont provide
any, L
A
T
E
X will automatically insert todays date.
Be sure to do this at the top of the document. You can use footnotes to insert thanks
or contact information.
5
If you are in one of these environments:
Quote
Quotation
Verse
Itemize
Enumerate
Description
List
L
Y
X keeps the old paragraph environment when you hit Return, rather than resetting it to
Standard. L
Y
X will still reset the nesting depth, however.
23
3 L
Y
X Basics
3.3.4 Headings
There are nine paragraph environments for producing section headings. L
Y
X takes
care of the numbering for you. All you need to do is decide what youre going to call
section 3 of chapter 9.
3.3.4.1 Numbered Headings
There are 6 numbered types of section headings. They are:
1. Chapter
2. Section
3. Subsection
4. Subsubsection
5. Paragraph
6. Subparagraph
L
Y
X labels each heading with a series of numbers, separated by periods. The numbers
describe where in the document you are. These headings all subdivide your document
into dierent pieces of text. For example, suppose youre writing a book. You group
the book into chapters. L
Y
X does similar grouping:
Either Chapter or Section is the maximum sectioning level.
Chapters are divided into Sections
Sections are divided into Subsections
Subsections are divided into Subsubsections
Subsubsections are divided into Paragraphs
Paragraphs are divided into Subparagraphs
Note: not all document types use the Chapter heading as the maximum sectioning
level. In that case, the Section is the top-level heading.
So, if you use the Subsubsection environment to label a new sub-subsection, L
Y
X
labels it with its number, along with the number of the subsection, section, and, if
applicable, chapter that its in. For example: the fth section of the second chapter
of this book has the label 2.5.
24
3.3 Paragraph Environments
3.3.4.2 Unnumbered Headings
There are 3 types of unnumbered section headings. They are:
1. Section*
2. Subsection*
3. Subsubsection*
The * after each name means that these headings are not numbered. They work
the same as their numbered counterparts.
3.3.4.3 Changing the Numbering
You can also alter which sectioning levels get numbered and which ones appear in
the Table of Contents. Now, this doesnt remove any of the levels; thats preset in
the document class. Certain classes start with Chapter and go down to the Subpara-
graph level. Others start at Section. Similarly, not all document classes number all
sectioning levels. Most dont number Paragraph or Subparagraph. This is something
you can change.
Open the Document Settings dialog. You should see a counter labelled Section num-
ber depth under the Extra tab. This counter controls how far down in the sectioning
hierarchy L
Y
X numbers a section heading. Unfortunately, the number you choose
with the slider is really goofy, so heres a table of values and what they do:
Sec. Num. Depth L
Y
X numbers these
value: section headings:
-2 no numbering of any kind
-1 add Parts
-0 and 0 add Chapters
1 add Sections
2 add Subsections
3 add Subsubsections
4 add Paragraphs
5 add Subparagraphs
The increasing numbers are cumulative: a setting of 0 will number parts and
chapters, while 2 will number parts, chapters, sections, and subsections. Of course,
if youre using a document class that doesnt use part or chapter headings (e.g. the
default article class), then the numbering begins at the Section heading, and 0 also
corresponds to no numbering.
Theres another counter in the dialog, called Table of contents depth. It works the
same way as Section numbering depth, only it controls which sectioning levels appear
25
3 L
Y
X Basics
in, you guessed it, the Table of Contents. This is a great control to have. Suppose
you wanted to number all sectioning heading, but you only wanted Chapters, Sections,
and Subsections in the Table of Contents. Youd just set Section numbering depth to
5 and Table of contents depth to 2 and voil! Youre all set.
3.3.4.4 Special Information
The following information applies to Chapter, Section, Subsection, Subsubsection, Para-
graph, Subparagraph as well as Section*, Subsection*, and Subsubsection*:
You cannot use a margin note in any of these environments.
You can only use inlined math in these environments.
You cannot nest other environments into these environments.
You can use labels and cross-references to refer to their numbers.
As for examples of these paragraph environments - look around you! Were using
them everywhere in the manuals.
3.3.4.5 Creating an Appendix
To create an appendix, simply start by adding a new chapter or section heading.
Move the cursor back to the beginning of the heading and select Document
Start Appendix Here. A red/brown box will be drawn around the remainder of the le
to indicate there is something special about it, and the numerical chapter or section
label(s) will be changed to a letter.
3.3.5 Quotes and Poetry
L
Y
X has three paragraph environments for writing poetry and quotations. They are
Quote, Quotation, and Verse. Forget the days of changing linespacing and twiddling
with margins. These three paragraph environments already have those changes built-
in. They all widen the left margin and add a bit of extra space above and below the
text they contain. They also allow nesting, so you can put a Verse in a Quotation, as
well as in some other paragraph environments.
There is another feature of these three paragraph environments: they do not reset
to Standard when you start a new paragraph. So, you can type in that poem and
merrily hit Return without worrying about the paragraph environment changing on
you. Of course, that means that, once youre done typing in that poem, you have to
change back to the Standard environment yourself.
26
3.3 Paragraph Environments
3.3.5.1 Quote and Quotation
Now that weve described the similarities of these three environments, its time for
the dierences. Quote and Quotation are identical except for one dierence: Quote
uses extra spacing to separate paragraphs and never indents the rst line. Quotation
always indents the rst line of a paragraph and uses the same line spacing throughout.
Heres an example of the Quote environment:
This is in the Quote environment. I can keep writing, extending this line
out further and further until it wraps. See - no indentation!
Heres the second paragraph of this quote. Again, theres no indentation,
but there is extra space between me and the other paragraph.
That ends that example. Heres another example, this time in the Quotation environ-
ment:
This is in the Quotation environment. If I keep writing, youll see the
indentation. If your country uses a writing style that shows o new para-
graphs by indenting the rst line, then Quotation is the environment for
you! Well, youd use it if you were quoting other text.
Heres a new paragraph. I could ramble on and on, like a politician at
election time. If I did that, though, youd get bored.
That was our other example. As the example notes, Quote is for those people who use
extra space to separate paragraphs. They should put quotes in the Quote environ-
ment. Those who use indentation to mark a new paragraph should use the Quotation
paragraph environment for quoted text.
3.3.5.2 Verse
Verse is a paragraph environment for poetry, rhymes, verses, and so on. Heres an
example:
This is in Verse
Which I did not rehearse!
It could be much worse. This line could be long, very long, oh so long,
so very long that it wraps around. It looks okay on screen, but in the
printed version, the extra lines are indented a bit more than the rst.
Okay, so its turned to prose and doesnt rhyme anymore. So sue me.
To break a line
And make things look ne
Use C-Return.
As you can see, Verse does not indent both margins. Each stanza of the verse or
poem is in its own paragraph. To separate the individual lines of a stanza, use the
break-line function, C-Return.
27
3 L
Y
X Basics
3.3.6 Lists
L
Y
X has four dierent paragraph environments for creating dierent kinds of lists. In
the Itemize and Enumerate environments, L
Y
X labels your list items with bullets or
numbers, respectively. In the Description and List environments, L
Y
X lets you provide
your own label. Well present the individual details of each type of list next after
describing some general features of all four of them.
3.3.6.1 General Features
The four paragraph environments for lists dier from the other environments in several
ways. First, L
Y
X treats each paragraph as a list item. Hitting Return does not reset
the environment to Standard but keeps the current environment and creates a new
list item. The nesting depth is typically reset, however. If you want to keep both the
current nesting depth and paragraph environment, you should use M-Return to break
paragraphs.
You can nest lists of any type inside one another. In fact, L
Y
X changes the labels
on some list items depending on how its nested. If you intend to use any of the list
paragraph environments, we suggest you read all of section 3.4.
3.3.6.2 Itemize
The rst type of list well describe in detail is the Itemize paragraph environment. It
has the following properties:
Each item has a particular bullet or symbol as its label.
L
Y
X uses the same symbol for all of the items in a given nesting level.
The symbol appears at the beginning of the rst line.
The items can be any length. L
Y
X automatically osets the left margin of each
item. The oset is always relative to whatever environment the Itemize list may
be in.
If you nest an Itemize environment inside another Itemize environment, the label
changes to a new symbol.
There are four dierent symbols for up to a four-fold nesting.
L
Y
X always shows the same symbol, an asterisk, on screen.
See section 3.4 for a full explanation of nesting.
Of course, that explanation was also an example of an Itemize list. The Itemize
environment is best suited for lists where the order doesnt matter.
We said that dierent levels use dierent symbols as their label. Heres an example
of all four possible symbols. Note that those of you reading this manual online wont
see any dierence.
28
3.3 Paragraph Environments
The label for the rst level Itemize is a large black dot, or bullet.
The label for the second level is a dash.
The label for the third is an asterisk.
The label for the fourth is a centered dot.
Back out to the third level.
Back to the second level.
Back to the outermost level.
These are the default labels for an Itemize list. You can customize these labels in the
Document Settings dialog in the Bullets tab.
Notice how the space between items decreases with increasing depth. Well explain
nesting and all the tricks you can do with dierent depths in section 3.4. Be sure to
read it!
3.3.6.3 Enumerate
The Enumerate environment is the tool to use to create numbered lists and outlines.
It has these properties:
1. Each item has a numeral as its label.
a) The type of numeral depends on the nesting depth.
2. L
Y
X automatically counts the items for you and updates the label as appropri-
ate.
3. Each new Enumerate environment resets the counter to one.
4. Like the Itemize environment, the Enumerate environment:
a) Osets the items relative to the left margin. Items can be any length.
b) Reduces the space between items as the nesting depth increases.
c) Uses dierent types of labels depending on the nesting depth.
d) Allows up to a four-fold nesting.
Unlike the Itemize environment, Enumerate does show the dierent labels for each
item. Here is how L
Y
X labels the four dierent levels in an Enumerate:
1. The rst level of an Enumerate uses Arabic numerals followed by a period.
a) The second level uses lower case letters surrounded by parentheses.
i. The third level uses lower-case Roman numerals followed by a period.
29
3 L
Y
X Basics
A. The fourth level uses capital letters followed by a period.
B. Again, notice the decrease in the spacing between items as the
nesting depth increases.
ii. Back to the third level
b) Back to the second level.
2. Back to the outermost level.
Once again, you can customize the type of numbering used in the Enumerate environ-
ment. It involves adding commands to the L
A
T
E
X preamble (see the Extended Features
manual), however. As stated earlier, such customization only shows up in the printed
version, not on the L
Y
X screen.
There is more to nesting Enumerate environments than weve stated here. You
really should read section 3.4 to learn more about nesting.
3.3.6.4 Description
Unlike the previous two environments, the Description list has no xed label. Instead,
L
Y
X uses the rst word of the rst line as the label. Heres an example:
Example: This is an example of the Description environment.
L
Y
X typesets the label in boldface and puts extra space between it and the rest of
the line.
Now, youre probably wondering what we mean by, uses the rst word. The
Space key does not add a whitespace character, but separates words from one another.
Inside of a Description environment, the Space key tells L
Y
X to end the label if were
at the beginning of the rst line of an item.
However, what if you want or need to use more than one word in the label of
a Description environment? Simple: use a Protected Blank. [Use either C-Space or
Special Formatting Protected Space from the Insert menu. See sec. 6.6.1 for more
info.] Heres an example:
Second Example: This one shows how to use a Protected Blank in the label of a
Description list item.
Usage: You should use the Description environment for things like denitions and
theorems. Use it when you need to make one word in particular stand out in
the text that describes it. Its not a good idea to use a Description environment
when you have an entire sentence that you want to describe. Youre better o
using Itemize or Enumerate and nesting several Standard paragraphs into them.
Nesting: You can, of course, nest Description environments inside one another, nest
them in other types of lists, and so on.
Notice that after the rst line, L
Y
X indents subsequent lines, osetting them from
the rst line.
30
3.3 Paragraph Environments
3.3.6.5 The L
Y
X List
The List environment is a L
Y
X extension to L
A
T
E
X.
Now, if you jumped here without reading sections 3.3.6.2-3.3.6.4, youve goofed.
The List environment does not create numbered lists. Thats what Enumerate does,
and its documented in section 3.3.6.3.
Like the Description environment the List environment has user-dened labels for
each list item. There are some key dierences between this list environment and the
other three:
item labels L
Y
X uses the rst word of each line as the item label. The rst Space
after the beginning of the rst line of an item marks the end of the
label. If you need to use more than one word in an item label, use a
protected blank as described above.
margins As you can see, L
Y
X uses dierent margins for the item label and the
body of the item text. The body of the text has a larger left margin,
which is equal to the default label width plus a little extra space.
label width L
Y
X uses one of two things for the label width: the actual width of the
label, or the default width, whichever is larger. If the actual width is
larger, then the label extends into the rst line. In other words, the
text of the rst line isnt aligned with the left margin of the rest of the
item text.
default width You can very easily set this default width. Its quite painless, actually.
So, you can easily ensure that the text of all items in a List environment
have the same left margin.
uses You should use the List environment the same way youd use as De-
scription list: when you need one word to stand out from the text that
describes it. The List environment gives you another way to do this,
using a dierent overall layout.
nesting You can nest List environments inside one another, nest them in other
types of lists, and so on. They work just like the other list paragraph
environments. Read section 3.4 to learn about nesting.
As you can see, this is a feature-packed paragraph environment!
To change the default width of the label, select the items in the list to change. You
can also simply move the cursor into a List item if you want to change only its label
width. Now open the Edit Paragraph Settings dialog and nd the Label width text
box. The text in the Label width box determines the default label width. If you really,
really want to, you can use the text of your largest label here, but you dont need
to. We recommend using the letter M multiple times. Its the widest character and
is a standard unit of width in L
A
T
E
X. The default label width in the example List is
31
3 L
Y
X Basics
6 Ms wide. Using M as your unit of width in the Label Width box has one more
advantage: you dont need to keep changing the contents of Label Width every time
you alter a label in a List environment.
Theres yet another feature of the List environment we need to tell you about. As
you can see in the examples, L
Y
X left-justies the item labels by default. You can use
additional HFills to change how L
Y
X justies the item label. Well document HFills
later in section 6.6.1. Here are some examples:
Left The default for List item labels.
Right One HFill at the beginning of the label right justies it.
Center One HFill at the beginning of the label and one at the end centers
it.
Dont worry if you have no idea what HFills are yet. Just remember that you can use
them to customize the look of the List environment.
That does it for the four paragraph environments for making lists. Oh - did we
mention that you should read about nesting environments in section 3.4 if you want
to use any of these list environments?
3.3.7 Letters
3.3.7.1 Address and Right Address: An Overview
Although L
Y
X has document classes for letters, weve also created two paragraph
environments called Address and Right Address. To use the letter class, you need to
use specic paragraph environments in a specic order, otherwise L
A
T
E
X gags on the
document. In contrast, you can use the Address and Right Address paragraph environ-
ments anywhere with no problem. You can even nest them inside other environments,
though you cant nest anything in them.
Of course, youre not limited to using Address and Right Address for letters only.
Right Address, in particular, is useful for creating article titles like those used in some
European academic papers.
3.3.7.2 Usage
The Address environment formats text in the style of an address, which is also used for
the opening and signature in some countries. Similarly, the Right Address environment
formats text in the style of a right-justied address, which is used for the senders
address and todays date in some countries. Heres an example of each:
Right Address
WhoAmI
WhereAmI
When is it? What is today?
32
3.3 Paragraph Environments
That was Right Address. Notice that the lines all have the same left margin, which
L
Y
X sets to t the largest block of text on a single line. Heres an example of the
Address environment:
WhoAreYou
Where do I send this
Your post oce and country
As you can see, both Address and Right Address add extra space between themselves
and the next paragraph. Speaking of which, if you hit Return in either of these
environments, L
Y
X resets the nesting depth and sets the environment to Standard.
This makes sense, however, since Return is the break-paragraph function, and the
individual lines of an address are not paragraphs. Thus, youd use break-line [C-
Return or Special Formatting Linebreak from the Insert menu] to start a new line in
an Address or Right Address environment.
3.3.8 Academic Writing
Most academic writing begins with an abstract and ends with a bibliography or list
of references. L
Y
X contains paragraph environments for both of these.
3.3.8.1 Abstract
The Abstract environment is used for the abstract of an article. Technically, you could
use this environment anywhere, but you really should only use it at the beginning of
the document, after the title. The Abstract environment is only useful in the article
and report document classes [as well as amsart, which is just a specialized version
of article]. The book document class ignores the Abstract completely, and its
utterly silly to use Abstract in the letter document class.
The Abstract environment does several things for you. First, it puts the centered
label Abstract above the text. The label and the text of the abstract are separated
by some extra vertical space. Second, it typesets everything in a smaller font, just
as youd expect. Lastly, it adds a bit of extra vertical space between the abstract
and the subsequent text. Well, thats how it will appear on the L
Y
X screen. If your
document is in the report class, the abstract actually appears on a separate page in
the printed version of the le.
Starting a new paragraph by hitting Return does not reset the paragraph environ-
ment. The new paragraph will still be in the Abstract environment. So, you will have
to change the paragraph environment yourself when you nish entering the abstract
of your document.
Wed love to give you an example of the Abstract environment, but we cant, since
this document is in the book class. If youve never heard of an abstract before,
you can safely ignore this environment.
33
3 L
Y
X Basics
3.3.8.2 Bibliography
The Bibliography environment is used to list references. Technically, you could use this
environment anywhere, but you really should only use it at the end of the document.
Also, dont bother trying to nest Bibliography in anything else or vice versa. It wont
work.
When you rst open a Bibliography environment, L
Y
X add a large vertical space,
followed by the heading Bibliography or References, depending on the document
class. The heading is in a large boldface font. Each paragraph of the Bibliography en-
vironment is a bibliography entry. Thus, hitting Return does not reset the paragraph
environment. Each new paragraph is still in the Bibliography environment.
At the beginning of the rst line of each paragraph, you will see a gray button
showing a number. If you click on it, you will get a dialog in which you can set a key
and a label. The key is the symbolic name by which you will refer to this bibliography
entry. For example, suppose your rst entry in the bibliography was a book about
L
A
T
E
X. We could choose the key latexguide for that entry. You can also give a label,
which will be displayed in the gray inset box.
The key eld isnt useless. You can refer to your bibliography entries using the
Insert Citation command. Just choose the key inside in the available keys list, then
add a reference by clicking on the left arrow, which will add it to the selected keys
list. Multiple references can be placed by selecting more than one key. An example
of the Bibliography appears at the end of this document. See [4] or [3, Chapter 3]
is an example of how to cite two of the entries in it. In the second one, we used
the Text after eld of the citation dialog to add the text Chapter 3. The texts
latexguide and latexcompanion that you see on screen will be replaced in print by
the number or the label of the bibliography entry.
The more advanced L
A
T
E
X bibliography package BibT
E
X is also supported by L
Y
X.
For a description of how to use it, please refer to the Extended L
Y
X Features document.
3.3.9 Special Purpose
There are three standard paragraph environments that simply dont t any category,
as they are very specialized for a particular purpose. Well point out the highlights
and uses of each.
3.3.9.1 Caption
The Caption environment is the default paragraph environment for Figure Floats and
Table Floats. On the L
Y
X screen, youll see either the label Figure #: or Table #:,
depending on which type of Float its in. The actual reference number is substituted
in this label in the printed output.
You cant really nest things into a Caption environment. Additionally, hitting
Return resets the paragraph environment to Standard, so a Caption can only be a
single paragraph.
34
3.3 Paragraph Environments
You cannot use a Caption environment outside of a Figure Float or a Table Float.
See sections 4.3 and 4.4 for more information on Figure Floats and Table Floats.
3.3.9.2 L
Y
X-Code
The L
Y
X-Code environment is another L
Y
X extension. It type-sets text in a typewriter-
style font. It also treats the Space key as a xed whitespace;
6
this is the only case in
which you can type multiple whitespaces in L
Y
X. If you need to insert blank lines,
youll still need to use C-Return [the break-line function]. Return breaks paragraphs.
Note, however, that Return does not reset the paragraph environment. So, when
you nish using the L
Y
X-Code environment, youll need to change the paragraph
environment yourself. Also, you can nest the L
Y
X-Code environment inside of others.
There are a few quirks with this environment:
You cannot use C-Return at the beginning of a new paragraph [i.e. you cant
follow Return with a C-Return].
You cant follow a C-Return with a Space.
Use a Return to begin a new paragraph, then you can use a Space.
Or: use C-Space instead.
You cant have an empty paragraph or an empty line. You must put at least
one Space in any line you want blank. Otherwise, L
A
T
E
X generates errors.
You cannot get the typewriter double quotes by typing " since that will insert
real quotes. You get the typewriter double quotes with C-" (or C-q if you use
Emacs-like key bindings).
Heres an example:
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
printf("Hello World\n");
return 0;
}
This is just the standard Hello world! program.
L
Y
X-Code has one purpose: to typeset code, such as program source, shell scripts,
rc-les, and so on. Use it only in those very, very special cases where you need to
generate text as if you used a typewriter.
6
In the L
Y
X-Code environment, the Space key is treated as a Protected Blank instead of an end-of-
word marker.
35
3 L
Y
X Basics
3.3.9.3 Comment
The comment paragraph environment can be used to write comments about your
document that will not appear in the nal output. In order to make this clear, L
Y
X
will present the comment environment in a dierent color than the rest of the text.
3.4 Nesting Environments
3.4.1 The Big Deal
Throughout the previous sections, weve been nagging you to go read Section 3.4.
So, youre probably wondering what the big deal is.
The big deal is that L
Y
X diers rather strongly from the traditional wordprocessor-
as-overgloried-typewriter concept. With a typewriter, text is merely ink on a page.
Most word processors arent much better, treating text as pixels on the screen and
bytes in memory. In contrast, L
Y
X treats text as a unied block with a particular
context and specic properties. However, what if you wanted one block to inherit
some of the properties of another block ?
Heres a more specic example: outlines. You have three main points in your
outline, but point #2 also has two subpoints. In other words, you have a list inside
of another list, with the inner list attached to item #2:
1. one
2. two
a) sublist - item #1
b) sublist - item #2
3. three
How do you put a list inside of a list? By now, the answer should be obvious: you
nest one list inside the other.
How to nest an environment is quite simple. Select Increase Environment Depth or
Decrease Environment Depth from the Edit menu to change the nesting depth of the
current paragraph (the status bar will tell you how far you are nested).
You can also use the convenient key bindings S-M-Left and S-M-Right
7
to change
the nesting level. The change will work on the current selection if you have made
one (allowing you to change the nesting of several paragraphs at once), or the current
paragraph.
Note that L
Y
X only changes the nesting depth if it can. If its invalid to do so,
nothing happens if you try to change the depth. Additionally, if you change the depth
of one paragraph, it aects the depth of every paragraph nested inside of it. Its hard
7
M-p Left and M-p Right are alternatives, if you prefer those bindings
36
3.4 Nesting Environments
to describe what exactly L
Y
X does in this case. That depends specically on what
your text looks like. Your best bet is to simply play with changing the nesting depth
and see what happens.
Nesting isnt just limited to lists. In L
Y
X, you can nest just about anything inside
anything else, as youre about to nd out. This is the real power of nesting paragraph
environments.
3.4.2 What You Can and Cant Nest
Before we re a list of paragraph environments at you, we need to tell you a little bit
more about how nesting works.
The question of nesting is a bit more complicated than a simple yes or no, can you
or cant you. Theres also the question of how. Can you nest this environment into
anything else? Can you nest another environment into it? A yes to one of these
doesnt guarantee a yes to the other.
The paragraph environments in L
Y
X can do one of three things when it comes to
nesting. First, an environment may be completely unnestable. Second, there are
environments that are fully nestable. You can nest them inside of things and you can
also nest other things inside of them. There is one last type of environment. You can
nest them into other environments, but thats it. You cant nest anything into them.
Heres a list of the three types of nesting behavior, and which paragraph environ-
ments have them:
8
Unnestable Cant nest them. Cant nest into them.
Bibliography
Title
Author
Date
Fully Nestable You can nest them. You can nest other things into them.
Abstract
Verse
Quote
Quotation
Itemize
8
For some odd reason, L
Y
X allows you to fully nest both Bibliography and Abstract. Also, L
Y
X
allows you to nest Title, Author, and Date into other environments. We urge you not to. L
A
T
E
X
may barf if you try it. Then again, it may not. We dont know for certain. However, it makes
no sense contextually to perform any nesting with these environments, so why would you ever
want to?
37
3 L
Y
X Basics
Enumerate
Description
List
L
Y
X-Code
Nestable-Inside You can nest them inside of other things. You cant nest anything
into them.
Part
Chapter
Section
Subsection
Subsubsection
Paragraph
Subparagraph
Part*
Chapter*
Section*
Subsection*
Subsubsection*
Standard
Right Address
Address
Caption
3.4.3 Nesting Other Things: Tables, Math, Floats, etc.
There are several things that arent paragraph environments, but which are aected
by nesting anyhow. They are:
equations
tables
gures
38
3.4 Nesting Environments
[Note: if you put a gure or a table in a Float, this is no longer true. See below or
look in sections 4.3 or 4.4 for more info.]
L
Y
X can treat these three objects as either a word or as a paragraph. Well, you
cant inline a table, but you can inline math and gures. If a gure or an equation is
inlined, it goes wherever the paragraph its in goes.
On the other hand, if you have an equation, gure or table in a paragraph of its
own, it behaves just like a nestable-inside paragraph environment. You can nest it
into any environment, but you [obviously] cant nest anything into it.
Heres an example with a table:
1. Item One
a) This is (a) and its nested.
a b
c d
b) This is (b). The table is actually nested inside (a).
2. Back out again.
If we hadnt nested the table at all, the list would look like this:
1. Item One
a) This is (a) and its nested.
a b
c d
1. This is (b). The table is not nested inside (a). In fact, its not nested at all.
2. Back out again.
Notice how item (b) is not only no longer nested, but is also the rst item of a new
list!
Theres another trap you can fall into: nesting the table, but not going deep enough.
L
Y
X turns anything after the table into a new [sub]list.
1. Item One
a) This is (a) and its nested.
39
3 L
Y
X Basics
a b
c d
a) This is (b). The table is actually nested inside Item One, but not inside
(a).
2. Back out again.
As you can see, item (b) turned into the rst item of a new list, but a new list inside
item 1. The same thing would have happened to a gure or an equation. So, if you
nest tables, gures or equations, make sure you go to the right depth!
Then there are the so-called Floats. A Float is a block of text associated with
some sort of label, but which doesnt have a xed location. It can oat forward
or backward a page or two, to wherever it ts best. Footnotes and Margin Notes
are oats, as are Table Floats and Figure Floats. When youre editing a document in
L
Y
X, a closed Float looks like a gray button with a red label and goes wherever the
paragraph its in goes. However, because a Float has no xed location in the nal
text, nesting has no eect on its actual location after you feed your document to
L
A
T
E
X.
3.4.4 Usage and General Features
Speaking of levels, L
Y
X can perform up to a six-fold nesting. In other words, level
#6 is the innermost possible depth. Heres an example to display what we mean:
1. level #1 - outermost
a) level #2
i. level #3
A. level #4
level #5
level #6
Once again, L
Y
X has a maximum of 6 levels, regardless of which specic paragraph
environments youre using at a given level.
9
That means that you can perform a
six-fold nesting of a Description list, or a Verse environment, and so on. You can also
mix environments, as we shall see later.
There are two exceptions to the six-fold nesting limit, and you can see both of them
in the example. Unlike the other fully-nestable environments, you can only perform
a four-fold nesting with the Enumerate and Itemize environments. For example, if we
tried to nest another Enumerate list inside of item A., wed get errors.
10
9
Unfortunately, L
Y
X doesnt enforce this limitation. If you try to exceed it, however, L
A
T
E
X will
return errors when you go to produce output for your document.
10
Once again, L
Y
X doesnt enforce this limitation. If you try to exceed it, however, L
A
T
E
X will return
errors when you go to produce output for your document.
40
3.4 Nesting Environments
3.4.5 Some Examples
The best way to explain just what you can do with nesting is by illustration. We
have several examples of nested environments. In them, we explain how we created
the example, so that you can reproduce them.
3.4.5.1 Example #1: The Six-fold Way and Mixed Nesting
#1-a This is the outermost level. Its a List environment.
#2-a This is level #2. We created it by using M-Return followed by M-
p Right.
#3-a This is level #3. This time, we just hit Return, then used M-
p Right twice in a row. We could have also created it the same
way as we did the previous level, by hitting M-Return followed
by M-p Right.
This is actually a Standard environment, nested inside of #3-
a. So, its at level #4. We did this by hitting M-Return, then
M-p Right, then changing the paragraph environment to Stan-
dard. Do this to create list items with more than one paragraph
- it also works for the Description, Enumerate, and Itemize en-
vironments!
Heres another Standard paragraph, also at level #4, made with
just a M-Return.
#4-a This is level #4. We hit M-Return and changed the
paragraph environment back to List. Remember - we
cant nest anything inside of a Standard environment,
which is why were still at level #4. However, we can
keep nesting things inside of #3-a.
#5-a This is level #5. . .
#6-a . . . and this is level #6. By now, you
should know how we made these two.
#5-b Back to level #5. Just hit M-Return followed by
a M-p Left.
#4-b After another M-Return followed by a M-p Left, were
back at level #4.
#3-b Back to level #3. By now it should be obvious how we did
this.
#2-b Back to level #2.
#1-b And last, back to the outermost level, #1. After this sentence, well hit Return
and change the paragraph environment back to Standard to end the list.
41
3 L
Y
X Basics
There you have it! Oh we could have also used the Description, Quote, Quotation,
or even the Verse environment in place of the List environment. The example would
have worked exactly the same.
3.4.5.2 Example #2: Inheritance
This is the LyX-Code environment, at level #1, the outermost
level. Now well hit Return, then M-
p Right, after which, well change to the Enumer-
ate environment.
1. This is the Enumerate environment, at level #2.
2. Notice how the nested Enumerate not only inherits its
margins from its parent environment [L
Y
X-Code], but also
inherits its font and spacing!
We ended this example by hitting Return. After that, we needed to reset the para-
graph environment to Standard and resetting the nesting depth by using M-p Left
once.
3.4.5.3 Example #3: Labels, Levels, and the Enumerate and Itemize
Environments
1. This is level #1, in an Enumerate paragraph environment. Were actually going
to nest a bunch of these.
a) This is level #2. We used M-Return followed by M-p Right. Now, what
happens if we nest an Itemize environment inside of this one? It will be at
level #3, but what will its label be? An asterisk?
No! Its a bullet. This is the rst Itemize environment, even though
its at level #3. So, its label is a bullet. [Note: we got here by using
M-Return, then M-p Right, then changing the environment to Itemize.]
Heres level #4, produced using M-Return, then M-p Right. Well
do that again. . .
i. . . . to get to level #5. This time, however, we also changed the
paragraph environment back to Enumerate. Notice the type of
numbering! Its lowercase Roman, because were the thirdfold
Enumerate environment [i.e. were an Enumerate inside an Enu-
merate inside an Enumerate].
ii. What happens if we dont change the paragraph environment,
but decrease the nesting depth? What type of numbering does
L
Y
X use?
iii. Oh, as if you couldnt guess by now, were just using M-Return
to keep the current environment and depth but create a new
item.
42
3.4 Nesting Environments
iv. Lets use M-p Left to decrease the depth after the next M-Return.
i. This is level #4. Look what type of label L
Y
X is using!
i. This is level #3. Even though weve changed levels, L
Y
X is still using
a lowercase Roman numeral as the label. Why?!
ii. Because, even though the nesting depth has changed, the paragraph
is still a thirdfold Enumerate environment. Notice, however, that L
Y
X
did reset the counter for the label.
b) Another M-Return M-p Left sequence, and were back to level #2. This
time, we not only changed the nesting depth, but we also moved back into
the twofold-nested Enumerate environment.
2. The same thing happens if we do another M-Return M-p Left sequence and
return to level #1, the outermost level.
Lastly, we reset the environment to Standard. As you can see, the level number
doesnt correspond to what type of labelling L
Y
X uses for the Enumerate and Itemize
environments. The number of other Enumerate environments surrounding it deter-
mines what kind of label L
Y
X uses for an Enumerate item. The same rule applies for
the Itemize environment, as well.
3.4.5.4 Example #4: Going Bonkers
1. Were going to go totally nuts now. We wont nest as deep as in the other
examples, nor will we go into the same detail with how we did it. [level #1:
Enumerate]
[Return, M-p Right, Standard: level #2] Well stick an encapsulated description
of how we created the example in brackets someplace. For example, the two
keybindings are how we changed the depth. The environment name is, obvi-
ously, the name of the current environment. Either before or after this, well
put in the level.
2. [Return, Enumerate: level #1] This is the next item in the list.
Now well add verse.
It will get much worse.
[Return, M-p Right, Verse: level #2]
Fiddle dee, Fiddle doo.
Bippitey boppitey boo!
[M-Return]
Here comes a table for you:
one-sh two-sh
red-sh blue-sh
43
3 L
Y
X Basics
[M-Return, Table, M-p Right 3 times, M-Return, Verse, M-p Left]
3. [Return, Enumerate: level #1] This is another item. Note that selecting a Table
resets the nesting depth to level #1, so we increased the nesting depth 3 times
to put the table inside the Verse environment.
Were now ending the Enumerate list and changing to Quotation. Were
still at level #1. We want to show you some of the things you can do
by mixing environments. The next set of paragraphs is a quoted letter.
Well nest both the Address and Right Address environments inside of this
one, then use another nested Quotation for the letter body. Well use M-
Return to preserve the depth. Remember that you need to use C-Return to
create multiple lines inside the Address and Right Address environments.
Here it goes:
1234 Nowhere Rd.
Moosegroin, MT 00100
9-6-96
Dear Mr. Fizlewitz:
We regret to inform you that we cannot ll your order for 50L
of compressed methane gas due to circumstances beyond our
control. Unfortunately, several of our cows have mysteriously
exploded, creating a backlog in our orders for methane. We will
place your name on the waiting list and try to ll your order
as soon as possible. In the meantime, we thank you for your
patience.
We do, however, now have a special on beef. If you are in-
terested, please return the enclosed pricing and order form with
your order, along with payment.
We thank you again for your patience.
Sincerely,
Bill Hick
That ends that example!
As you can see, nesting environments in L
Y
X gives you a lot of power with just a few
keystrokes. We could have easily nested an Itemize list inside of a Quotation or Quote,
or put a Quote inside of an Itemize list. You have a huge variety of options at your
disposal.
44
3.5 Fonts and Text Styles
3.5 Fonts and Text Styles
3.5.1 Overview
Many modern typesetting and markup languages have begun to move towards spec-
ifying character styles rather than specifying a particular font. For example, instead
of changing to an italicized version of the current font to emphasize text, you use an
emphasized style instead. This concept ts in perfectly with L
Y
X. In L
Y
X, you do
things based on contexts, rather than focusing on typesetting details.
Right now, L
Y
X allows you to specify a global default font, and has two character
styles, Emphasized and Noun. The Emphasized style corresponds to an italics font.
The Noun style corresponds to a font in smallcaps, which some languages and writing
styles use to typeset proper names. The L
Y
X Team has at last (as of L
Y
X version 1.4)
introduced true character styles, but currently these must be dened explicitly in
the document layout le. Theres currently no GUI support to dene new, or tweak
existing, character styles to allow you, the user, to customize which font changes
correspond to what styles.
3.5.2 Global Options
You can set the default font from the Document Settings dialog. There are two
options of interest here, Fonts and Font Size. The possible options under Fonts include
default and a list of fonts available on your system. The option default uses the
standard T
E
X fonts, known as computer modern (cm) or European modern (ec).
Most systems will typically have some version of a Times and Helvetica font, with
other variants. Youll have to examine this for yourself.
As for the Font Size option, there are three possible values: 10, 11, and 12. Re-
member, this is the base font size. L
Y
X actually scales all of the other possible font
sizes (such as those used in footnotes, superscripts, and subscripts) by this value.
You can always ne-tune the font size from within the document if you need to. Its
also rather silly to use an 8pt or 24pt font as the default font size, as this typically
renders your document unreadable.
Note that once you choose a new value for Fonts or Font Size, L
Y
X does not change
the screen. Youll only see a dierence once you generate the nal output. This is
part of the WYSIWYM concept. Besides, you have certainly noticed that "Roman"
text on the L
Y
X screen corresponds to the default font.
3.5.3 Using Dierent Character Styles
As weve already seen, L
Y
X automatically changes the character style for certain
paragraph environments. We also mentioned two other character styles, Emphasized
and Noun. You can activate both of these styles via keybindings, the menus, and the
toolbar.
To activate the Noun style, do one of the following:
45
3 L
Y
X Basics
click on the toolbar button with the person-shaped icon
use the keybinding M-c c
These commands are all toggles. That is, if Noun style is already active, they deac-
tivate it.
One typically uses the Noun style for proper names. For example: Matthias
Ettrich is the original author of L
Y
X.
A more widely used character style is the Emphasized style. You can activate [or
deactivate - its also a toggle] the Emphasized style by:
clicking on the toolbar button with the ! character on it
using the keybindings M-c e
At the moment, the Emphasized style is equivalent to an italicized font. We have
plans to make that association more user-congurable in the future.
Weve been using the Emphasized style all over the place in this document. Heres
one more example:
Dont overuse character styles!
Its also a warning in addition to an example. Ones writing should parallel ordinary
conversation. Since we dont all constantly scream at each other, we should also avoid
the common tendency to overuse character style.
Oh one last note: You can always reset to the default font using the keybinding
M-c Space.
3.5.4 Fine-Tuning with the Character Layout dialog
There are always occasions when youll need to do some ne-tuning, so L
Y
X gives
you a way to create custom character style. For example, an academic journal or a
corporation may have a style sheet requiring a sans-serif font be used in certain situ-
ations.
11
Also, writers sometimes use a dierent font to oset a characters thoughts
from ordinary dialogue.
Before we document how to use custom character style, we want to issue a warning
yet again: Dont overuse character styles. Many modern word processors have a
vast array of fonts available to them, providing you with the power of a printing
press. Unfortunately, there is a tendency to overuse that power. The phrase, Using
a sledgehammer to swat a y, comes to mind. And, as the old saying implies,
documents that overuse dierent fonts and sizes tend to look like someones knocked
huge holes in them.
Enough complaining.
11
Note from John Weiss: There is, in fact, such a style sheet for the L
Y
X Documentation, since
manuals need a certain amount of consistency.
46
3.5 Fonts and Text Styles
To use custom fonts, open the Edit Text Style dialog. There are seven buttons
on this dialog, each corresponding to a dierent font property which you can choose.
You can choose an option for one of these seven properties, or select No change, which
keeps the current state of that property. The item Reset will reset the property to
whatever is the default for the hosting paragraph environment. You can use this to
reset attributes across a bunch of dierent paragraph environments in a snap.
The seven font properties, and their options [in addition to No change and Reset]
are:
Family The overall look of the font. The possible options are:
Roman This is the Roman font family.
Its also the default family. [keybinding = M-c r]
Sans Serif This is the Sans Serif font family.
[keybinding = M-c s]
Typewriter This is the Typewriter font family.
[keybinding = M-c p]
Series This corresponds to the print weight. Options are:
Medium This is the Medium font series.
Its also the default series.
Bold This is the Bold font series.
You can toggle this series on or o with the keybinding M-
c b.
Shape As the name implies. Options are:
Upright This is the Upright font shape.
Its also the default shape.
Italic This i s the Italic font shape.
Slanted This is the Slanted font shape (although it might not be
visible on screen, this is dierent from italic).
Small Caps This is the Small caps font shape.
Size Alters the size of the font. Youll nd no numerical values here; all possible
sizes are actually proportional to the default font size. Once again, you
dont feed L
Y
X the details, but a general description of what you want to
do.
The options [and their keybindings] are:
47
3 L
Y
X Basics
Tiny This is the Tiny font size.
[keybinding = M-s t or M-s 1]
Smallest This is the Smallest font size
[keybinding = M-s 2]
Smaller This is the Smaller font size
[keybinding = M-s S or M-s 3]
Small This is the Small font size.
[keybinding = M-s s or M-s 4]
Normal This is the Normal font size.
Its also the default size. [keybinding = M-s n or M-s 5]
Large This is the Large font size.
[keybinding = M-s l or M-s 6]
Larger This is the Larger font size.
[keybinding = M-s S-L or M-s 7]
Largest This is the Largest font size.
[keybinding = M-s 8]
Huge This is the Huge font size.
[keybinding = M-s h or M-s 9]
Huger This is the Huger font size.
[keybinding = M-s H or M-s 0]
Well warn you yet again: dont go crazy with this feature. You should
almost never need to change the font size. L
Y
X automatically changes the
font size for dierent paragraph environments - use that instead. This is
here for ne-tuning only!
Misc Here you can change a few other things at the character level. Options
are:
Emph This is text with emphasize on.
This might seem like the same as Italic, but it is actually a
bit dierent. If you use emphasize on italicized text, it will
make it upright. In future versions of L
Y
X, we hope to let
you customize the exact behavior of this logical property.
Underbar This is text with Underbar on.
[keybinding = M-c u]
48
3.6 Printing and Previewing
Noun This is text with Noun on.
Like Emph, this is a logical attribute. For the moment, it is
equivalent to Small Caps, but that is bound to change some
day.
Avoid using underbar if you can! Its a holdover from the typewriter
days, when you couldnt change fonts. We no longer need to resort to
emphasizing text by overstriking it with an underscore character. Its
only included in L
Y
X because its also in L
A
T
E
X, and because some people
may need it in order to follow style sheets for journal submissions (and in
fact we use it in these manuals to indicate keyboard shortcuts for menu
items).
Color You can adjust the color of the text with this control. Of course, you need
to have a color printer to exploit this, but you also need to have the color
L
A
T
E
X package installed. Notice that xdvi is not able to display these
colors. Besides No color, which is the standard color, you can choose
between Black, White, Red, Green, Blue, Cyan, Magenta and Yellow text.
Language This is used to mark regions of text as having a dierent language from
the language of the document. Text marked in this way will be underlined
in blue to indicate the change.
You have a huge number of combinations to choose from.
Once youve chosen a new character style via the Edit Text Style dialog, you can
activate it using the toolbar button labelled Font, or select Apply. The toolbar
button lets you toggle the state of your custom character style even when the dialog
isnt visible.
As we stated earlier, to completely reset the character style to the default, use
M-c Space. If you want to toggle only those properties that you have just changed
(suppose you just sent the shape to slanted and the series to bold), set the Toggle
on all these switch and press Apply.
We conclude with the same warning weve been spewing: Dont overuse the fonts.
They are, more often than not, a kludge and a horrible substitute for good writing.
Your writing should speak for itself and will.
3.6 Printing and Previewing
3.6.1 Overview
Now that weve covered some of the basic features of document preparation using
L
Y
X, you probably want to know how to print out your masterpiece. Before we tell
you that, however, we want to give you a quickie explanation of what goes on behind-
the-scenes. We cover this information in much greater detail in the Extended Features
manual as well.
49
3 L
Y
X Basics
L
Y
X uses a program called L
A
T
E
X as its backend. (Actually, L
A
T
E
X is just a macro
package for the T
E
X typesetting system, but to prevent confusion, well just refer to
the whole magilla as L
A
T
E
X.) Think of it this way: L
Y
X is what you use to do your
actual writing. Then, L
Y
X calls L
A
T
E
X to turn your writing into printable output.
This happens in a couple of stages:
1. First, L
Y
X converts your document to a series of text commands for L
A
T
E
X,
generating a le with the extension, .tex.
2. Next, L
A
T
E
X uses the commands in the .tex le to produce printable output.
It doesnt know anything about your printer, however. Instead, L
A
T
E
X produces
whats known as a device-independent le, or DVI for short. The actual output
is in a le with the extension, .dvi. DVI les are completely portable; you
can move them from one machine to another without needing to do any sort of
conversion.
NOTE: The DVI le only contains what was in the L
A
T
E
X le itself. If you
have included PostScript pictures in your document, there will only be a
link to these les. So dont forget these les if you move your .dvi le to
another computer.
3. Consider the .dvi le to be the nal output. Once you have it, you can view
it, print it, or convert it to other formats.
a) You can view .dvi les using a program called xdvi.
b) Some printers and Unix systems understand DVI, and can print your .dvi
le directly.
c) Nowadays, most printers understand the PostScript format. L
Y
X auto-
matically converts the .dvi le to a PostScript le for you when you go
to print out your document. L
Y
X will also let you preview a PostScript
version of your document using the program ghostview.
One advantage of using PostScript is that the converter program [called
dvips] takes any PostScript graphics you may have included in your doc-
ument and puts it into the resulting PostScript version of your document.
It also includes any special fonts you may have used. That makes the
PostScript version much, much more portable than the DVI version.
L
Y
X does all of these steps automagically for you.
As you have seen, a lot of things happen before you get a hardcopy or a preview of
your document. So, dont worry if printing requires a bit more time than with other
word processors. The printed result is worth the wait. Quality always has its price.
50
3.6 Printing and Previewing
3.6.2 Quick Viewing with xdvi
To get a look at the nal version of your document, with all of the pagebreaks in
place, the footnotes correctly numbered, and so on, select View DVI. Then wait a
while.
When all of the behind-the-scenes action is done, L
Y
X calls the program xdvi. You
can now look at the results. [If you want more info on the xdvi program, see the
man-pages.]
Helpful-Tip: Keep the xdvi window open, maybe moving it to another desktop.
Then, after you make changes to your document, just use View Update DVI.
Now click on the xdvi window. The xdvi program will automatically reread
the .dvi le and give you an updated view.
3.6.3 Viewing the PostScript Version with ghostview
In general, using xdvi to view your document is the easiest and fastest way. There
may be times, however, when you want to look at the PostScript version. One reason
is fonts.
12
You can use PostScript fonts in a L
A
T
E
X document, but xdvi wont show
this. Youll need to use ghostview or some other PostScript le viewer to see the
actual results.
To view the PostScript version of your document, select PostScript from the View
menu. When all of the magic behind-the-scenes is done, L
Y
X calls the program
ghostview. You can now look at the results.
Youve guessed what the Update Postscript command from the View menu does,
havent you? Remember to click once in the ghostview window after this command
to update the view.
3.6.4 Printing the File
To print a le, select Print from the File menu, or click on the toolbar button with
the printer on it. This opens the Print dialog.
You can choose to only print even-numbered or odd-numbered pages - this is useful
for printing on two sides: you can re-insert the pages after printing one set of pages,
to print on the other side. Some printers spit out pages face-up, others, face-down.
By choosing a particular order to print in, you can take the entire stack of pages out
of the printer without needing to reorder them.
You can set the parameters in the Destination box as follows :
Printer This is the name of the printer to print to.
13
The printer should understand
PostScript les.
12
Note from John Weiss: Another reason is paranoia. I always like to look at the PostScript le
before I print it, just so I see exactly what went to the printer. . .
13
Note that this printer name isnt for the lpr command but for dvips. That means dvips has to
be congured for this printer name. See the section 2.5.2 or the dvips documentation for details.
The default printer can also be set in lyxrc.
51
3 L
Y
X Basics
File The name of a le to print to. The output will be in PostScript format.
The le will generally be written in the current directory, unless you specify
the full path.
Note that printing may need little time, since L
A
T
E
X, dvips and, if you dont have a
PostScript printer, ghostscript have to process your document.
3.7 A Few Words about Typography
3.7.1 Hyphens and Hyphenation
In L
Y
X, the - character comes in three lengths, often called the hyphen, the en
dash, and the em dash:
1. hyphen - made with -
2. en dash made with --
3. em dash made with ---
4. minus sign a - in math mode
You generate these by using the - character multiple times in a row. L
Y
X automat-
ically converts them to the appropriate length dash in the nal output.
The three types of dash are distinct from the minus sign, which appears in math
mode and has a length of its own. Here are some examples of the - in use:
1. line- and page-breaks (hyphen)
2. From AZ (en dash)
3. Oh theres a dash. (em dash)
4. x
2
y
2
= z
2
(minus sign)
Those of you reading this from within L
Y
X will see no dierence, though there is one
in the printed version.
One more note about hyphenation L
Y
X automatically breaks up words and
inserts hyphens in English text. The words wont be hyphenated until you generate
the nal output.
Actually, its L
A
T
E
X that does this, and it will also hyphenate words in some other
languages. To know whether (PDF)L
A
T
E
X hyphenates for your language, look at any
log le produced by a L
A
T
E
X run: it will say
Babel <v3.7h> and hyphenation patterns for american, french, german,
ngerman, nohyphenation, loaded.
52
3.7 A Few Words about Typography
This tells you that, e.g., if you write in Finnish, youre out of luck. Study (for
the teT
E
X distribution of L
A
T
E
X) the utilities texconfig and fmtutil in order to
switch hyphenation on for your language by uncommenting the relevant line in a
le typically named language.dat. Sorry for the inconvenience.
If, for whatever reason, L
A
T
E
X still cant break a word correctly (e.g., a compound
word), you can set hyphenation points manually. This is done with the menu item
Hyphenation Point under Special Formatting in the Insert menu. Note that these ex-
tra hyphenation points are only recommendations to L
A
T
E
X. If no hyphenation is
necessary, L
A
T
E
X will totally ignore them.
3.7.2 Punctuation Marks
3.7.2.1 Abbreviations and End of Sentence
When L
Y
X calls L
A
T
E
X to generate the nal version of your document, L
A
T
E
X au-
tomatically distinguishes between words, sentences, and abbreviations. L
A
T
E
X then
adds the appropriate amount of space: sentences get a little bit more space between
the period and the next word. Abbreviations get the same amount of space after the
period as a word uses.
Unfortunately, the algorithm for guring out whats an abbreviation and whats
the end of a sentence is really quite brain-dead. If a . is at the end of a lowercase
letter, its the end of a sentence; if its at the end of a capitalized letter, its an
abbreviation.
Here are some examples of correct abbreviations and the end of a sentence:
M. Buttery
Dont worry. Be happy.
. . . and heres an example of the algorithm going wrong:
e. g. this is too much space!
This is I. Its okay.
You wont see anything wrong until you view a nal version of your document.
To x this problem, use one of the following:
1. Use an Inter-word Space after lowercase abbreviations (see section 6.6.5.1).
2. Use a Thin Space between two tokens of an abbreviation (see section 6.6.5.3).
3. Use an End of sentence period found under the Insert Special Character menu to
force the use of inter-sentence spacing. This function is also bound to C-period
for easy access.
With the corrections, our earlier examples look like this:
53
3 L
Y
X Basics
e. g. this is too much space!
This is I. Its okay.
Some languages dont use extra spacing between sentences. If your language is such a
language, you dont need to worry about all of this. For those that do need to bother,
there is help to catch those sneaky errors: check out the Tools Check T
E
X feature
described in Extended Editing.
3.7.2.2 Quotes
L
Y
X usually sets quotes correctly. Specically, it will use an opening quote at the
beginning of quoted text, and use a closing quote at the end. For example, open
close. The keyboard character, ", generates this automatically.
New in version 1.4: To get single quotation marks, you have to press C-". This
produces quotation marks like this: .
You can also select quotes for dierent languages via the Type option. There are
six choices:
Text Use quotes like this double or single
Text Use quotes like this or this
Text Use quotes like this or this
Text Use quotes like this or this
Text Use quotes like this or this
Text Use quotes like this or this
Again, this aects what character the " key produces.
On the other hand, if you want to produce a bona-de quote character, type M-".
This produces: ".
3.7.3 Ligatures
It is standard typesetting practice to group certain letters together and print them
as single characters. These groups are known as ligatures. Since L
A
T
E
X knows about
ligatures, your L
Y
X documents will contain them, too. Here are the possible ligatures:




54
3.7 A Few Words about Typography

Once in a while, though, you dont want a ligature in a word. While a ligature may
be okay in the word, grati, it looks really weird in compound words, such as cuf-
ink or the German Dorest. To break a ligature, use Insert Special Formatting
Ligature Break. This changes cuinks to culinks and Dorest to Dorffest.
3.7.4 Widows and Orphans
In the early days of word processors, page breaks went wherever the page happened
to end. There was no regard for what was actually going on in the text. You may
remember once printing out a document, only to nd the heading for a new section
printed at the very bottom of the page, the rst line of a new paragraph all alone at
the bottom of a page, or the last line of a paragraph at the top of a new page. These
dangly-bits of text became known as widows and orphans.
Clearly, L
Y
X can avoid breaking pages after a section heading. Thats part of the
advantage of paragraph environments. But what about widows and orphans, where
the page breaks leave one line of a paragraph all alone at the top or bottom of a page?
There are rules built into L
A
T
E
X governing page breaks, and some of those rules are
there to specically prevent widows and orphans. This is the advantage L
Y
X has in
using L
A
T
E
X as its backend.
Theres no way we can go into how T
E
X and L
A
T
E
X decide to break a page, or how
you can tweak that behavior. Some L
A
T
E
X books listed in the bibliography [such as [3]
or [4]] may have more information. You will almost never need to worry about this,
however.
55
3 L
Y
X Basics
56
4 Floats: Tables, Figures,
Footnotes and Margin Notes
4.1 Footnotes
Unlike other typesetting programs, L
Y
X uses foldable boxes instead of displaying
its footnotes at the bottom of the screen or somewhere else in your text. When you
insert a footnote with Insert Footnote, youll rst see a grey box with a red label
foot appearing within your text. This box is L
Y
Xs representation of your footnote.
You can enter your text into this box. If you click the foot label, the box will
fold. Clicking on the button again will unfold the footnote.
1
You will not see any
numbers within L
Y
X. You dont need to worry about those, anyhow, because L
Y
X
does the numbering for you, as well as putting the footnote at the bottom of the
correct page, when it processes your le. If you want to turn already existing text
into a footnote, simply mark it and click on the footnote button (a picture of text
with an arrow pointing to stu in the bottom margin).
What L
Y
X cannot do, yet, is take care of special needs like setting the footnote
numbering back to 1 after each section in the article document class or changing
the counter style. Youll need to insert L
A
T
E
X commands like those described in the
Tricks for Footnotes and Marginpars section of Extended Features.
NOTE: A oat in L
A
T
E
X and L
Y
X isnt a simple paragraph as with usual word proces-
sors. It is a complex text structure that may contain everything except oats.
That means you can use all the layouts inside a oat, even gures and tables.
You may not need this too often, but if you do occasionally need it, its a neat
feature.
4.2 Margin Notes
Margin notes look and behave just like footnotes in L
Y
X. When you insert a margin
note via Insert Margin Note or the toolbar button (which contains a picture of text in
a margin with an arrow pointing to it), youll see a grey box with a red label margin
appearing within your text. This box is L
Y
Xs representation of your margin note. This is a mar-
gin note. You can enter your text into this box. If you click the margin label, the box will
fold. You can access it at a later time by clicking on the label again, thereby
unfolding the margin note.
1
To close this footnote, click on the red box at the top left.
57
4 Tables, Figures, and Notes
As a default, L
Y
X uses 1.9 cm (0.75 inches) as the margin width to allow room for
margin notes. This might not be what youre looking for, but as with footnotes, L
Y
X
cannot yet do everything L
A
T
E
X has to oer. You might want to consult your L
A
T
E
X
handbook for additional commands.
4.3 Figures and Imported Graphics
No document preparation system is complete without the ability to import graphics
from other utilities into the document. In L
Y
X, these are referred to as gures
whether they are actually gures in the traditional sense or simply some kind of
imported image.
Note that gures referred to here are do not have captions and sit wherever in the
document you place them. If you need one of these features, see sec. 4.3.2.1 below.
To place a gure in your document, click on the second right-most icon on the
toolbar, or select Insert Graphics... from the menu.
A dialog will appear for you to choose the le to load. You can also change any
settings you need to in this dialog.
This dialog has numerous parameters, though most should be self-explanatory. The
File tab allows you to choose your image le (note that a wide variety of image formats
are supported automatically). The gure can be transformed by setting a rotation
angle, using a bounding box, and scaling. Table 4.1 describes all available units.
It is possible to set a bounding box automatically for some image formats (see the
Bounding Box tab). Note that it is possible to control the display of the gure in L
Y
X
and the display in the nal document separately, which can be very useful for large
gures. L
A
T
E
X wizards can specify additional L
A
T
E
X options in the Extras tab. You
can also set the Subgure option here, for use in gure oats (see Section 4.3.2.1).
4.3.1 How it works
L
Y
X has the ability to handle literally any graphics format in the known universe so
long as a conversion path from this graphics format to the target output format can
be created. If that sounds a little obtuse, consider how L
Y
X handles Encapsulated
PostScript gures. L
A
T
E
X provides native support for this format, so L
Y
X needs do
58
4.3 Figures and Imported Graphics
Table 4.1: Units for setting the image size
unit name/description
mm millimetre
cm centimetre
in inch
pt point (72.27 pt = 1 in)
pc pica (1 pc = 12 pt)
sp scaled point (65536 sp = 1 pt)
bp big point (72 bp = 1 in)
dd didot (72 dd 37.6 mm)
cc cicero (1cc = 12 dd)
Scale% % of original image width
text% % of text width
col% % of column width
page% % of paper width
line% % of line width
theight% % of text height
pheight% % of paper height
ex height of letter x in current font
em width of letter M in current font
mu math unit (1 mu = 1/18 em)
nothing other than use the \includegraphics L
A
T
E
X command to insert the gure
in the nal document.
To view the gure on the L
Y
X screen, however, some additional work is required
because neither the XForms nor the Qt GUI libraries can load PostScript gures
themselves. The XForms library can load gures in the following, widely used graphics
formats: bmp, gif, jpeg, pbm, pgm, ppm, tif and xbm whilst the Qt library can also
handle mng, png and xpm format gures. Thus, L
Y
X must initiate a conversion from
Encapsulated PostScript to a loadable graphics format.
It does this using the powerful, congurable converters mechanism exposed in the
Converters section of the Edit Preferences dialog. If L
Y
X cannot create a conversion
path (which might have many steps) from Encapsulated PostScript to one of the
loadable formats listed above, then it defaults to the use of ImageMagicks convert
utility. If, after all that, L
Y
X still cannot load the gure, then itll tell you so with a
message Error converting to loadable format in place of an on-screen view of your
gure. If youre presented with such a message, then youll need to augment the list
of known converters.
This strategy is used both to generate on-screen views of your image and when
generating the nal document. In the latter case, the L
A
T
E
X compiler must be supplied
with graphics les in PostScript format. Similarly the PDFL
A
T
E
X compiler requires
59
4 Tables, Figures, and Notes
les in pdf, png or jpeg format. L
Y
X will handle the necessary conversions behind
the scenes.
4.3.2 Figure Floats
4.3.2.1 Using Figure Floats
The problem with inserting gures straight into your text is that they might make
the pagination of your document extremely awkward. To suit the L
Y
X mentality of
automating such processes, you might nd it preferable to use Figure Floats, which
L
Y
X (actually, L
A
T
E
X) is free to move about your document as it deems necessary for
a good t. In return, L
Y
X automates the listing of these gures and allows you to
place a caption on them, using the Caption environment explained in Section 3.3.9.1.
To place a Figure Float simply select Insert Float Figure from the menu bar. You
will get a oat without a gure in it; use the toolbar icon described above to insert
the actual gure.
Figure 4.1: M.C. Escher on acid.
It seems simple, but there is subtlety involved in the placement of the caption.
If you prefer your caption to appear below the gure, then you must press return
when the cursor is at the very start of the caption, and insert the gure in the new
paragraph created above the caption; or you can delete the caption and recreate it by
selecting the Caption environment after the gure has been inserted. This is what we
did for gure 4.2. If the cursor is in a paragraph after the caption when you insert the
Figure then it will be inserted after the caption, as was the case for 4.1. It is preferred
to use one Figure per Float. This allows L
Y
X [actually L
A
T
E
X] to best position each
gure.
Right-clicking on a oat opens a dialog where you can alter the placement options
that L
A
T
E
X uses for positioning the oat (see 4.3.2.2). Span columns is only useful for
60
4.3 Figures and Imported Graphics
Figure 4.2: A severely distorted platypus in a oat.
61
4 Tables, Figures, and Notes
two-column documents: if you select it, the oat will span across both columns on
the page instead of being conned to just one.
This gure also shows how we place a label and create a cross-reference to it; as you
would expect from reading section 6.1 you can simply insert a Label in the caption
and refer to it using a Cross Reference as normal. It is especially important to use
these with gure oats, rather than using vague references to the above gure, as
L
A
T
E
X will reposition your oats for you in the nal document; it might not be above
at all. If it is not possible to t the oats neatly on the same page as the text which
refers to it, the gures will be placed on a separate page by themselves. Rest assured
that the overall eect is usually quite nice.
Note that the caption is used in a List of Figures (as described in Section 4.5.2)
automatically, should you choose to include one in your document.
4.3.2.2 Float Placement
Now, the whole idea behind Figure Floats [as well as Table Floats, which we introduce
later] is to allow L
Y
X to place a gure [or table] on a page in a consistent, sensible
fashion. The rules L
A
T
E
X uses are rather arcane; refer to the L
A
T
E
X documentation
for the exact details. You can use check boxes in the oat dialog to set placement
for a particular oat. By default, each oat uses the documents default placement
rules. You can change these, if you wish, in the Document Settings dialog. The
Float placement box takes a L
A
T
E
X-style placement specication. You can place any
combination of four letters in the Float placement box, in any order:
h for here
t for top
b for bottom
p for page
The letters correspond to the following behaviour:
Here: L
Y
X tries to put the Float at the same point in the text where you put it.
If there isnt enough room, L
Y
X tries one of the other three location types.
Top: L
Y
X tries to put the Float at the top of the current page. If the gure wont t
on the current page, it goes to the next page.
Bottom: L
Y
X tries to put the Float at the bottom of the current page. If there isnt
room, it goes to the next page.
Page: L
Y
X tries to put the Float (or a number of Floats) on a page of its own.
62
4.3 Figures and Imported Graphics
There is some subtlety to how this all works. The order species what location L
Y
X
should try rst. If that one fails, it tries the next one, and so on, though h will
always take precedence if it appears in the list. The default placement list is tbp:
try the top of a text page rst, then the bottom of a text page, then on a page by
itself. If you want L
Y
X to try really hard to place the gure where you command
it, precede the list with an exclamation point; for example !htbp. Here are some
example entries and what they do:
1. hbp
Try putting the gure/table at its actual position in the text. If that doesnt
work, put it on the bottom of the page. If that fails, put it on a separate page.
2. !hbp
Try really hard to put the gure/table at its actual position in the text. Then
the bottom of the page, then on a separate page.
3. tp
Put the gure/table at the top of each page. If its too long, put it on a separate
page.
4. p
Always put gures and tables on their own page.
4.3.3 XFig and L
Y
X
One obvious question is how would I create the gures? Fortunately, the answer
is included in most Linux and/or L
A
T
E
X distributions. XFig is a powerful though
slightly awkward drawing tool. If you want to include gures that you have created
with XFig there are several ways. We recommend the following:
1. Export the gure as Encapsulated PostScript. This could be very easy included
into L
Y
X as described in the previous sections. The great advantage of this way
is, that you have the full power of PostScript available. That means Bezier
curves, colors, all line thicknesses and many more. If you have inserted text
into your g-document this will be printed with PostScript fonts, which is OK.
The gure can be manipulated like any other EPS gure, as described above.
The only disadvantage is that you cannot create formulas as PostScript text
except by hand. If you also need formulas or simple exponents or indices in
your gure, the next way is recommended.
2. Export the gure as L
A
T
E
X. This is just as easy to include into L
Y
X, with the
advantage that you may use all L
A
T
E
X commands within the text inside XFig.
Therefore you have to set the special ag for text in XFig. This is automatic
if you invoke XFig with xfig -specialtext. If this is done and you have also
63
4 Tables, Figures, and Notes
chosen a L
A
T
E
X font you may simply write $H_2$ in XFig. If you export
this gure as L
A
T
E
X and include it in L
Y
X with Insert Child Document (see
description in Extended Features) this text will appear as H
2
.
The disadvantage of this way is that the graphical power of L
A
T
E
X isnt as strong
as PostScript. You cannot use all thicknesses of lines and, more annoyingly,
not all slopes. This is why we recommend the third way for more complex
gures.
3. Export the gure as L
A
T
E
X/PostScript combined. Then XFig [transfig, really]
will generate two les:
a) the PostScript part foo.pstex, that contains all painting.
b) the L
A
T
E
X part foo.pstex_t, that contains all text and a link to the
PostScript part.
Then you just have to include the L
A
T
E
X part as described above. This will auto-
matically include the PostScript part, too.
2
This way you have the full PostScript
and L
A
T
E
X power combined except for the possibility to scale the gure after creating.
So if you want scalable pictures, the PostScript format is your only choice. Another
little advantage of letting L
A
T
E
X typeset the font is that the same font will appear in
your gures as in your text, which looks a little nicer.
4.4 Tables
L
Y
X has powerful table support, but L
A
T
E
X can do many more things with tables than
L
Y
X is currently capable of, so you might want to look at a good L
A
T
E
X book if the
features described here should turn out to be inadequate.
You can insert a table using either the table toolbar button or Insert Table. A
dialog will appear, asking you for the number of rows and columns. The default table
has lines at the top and to the left of every cell, a line to the right of the rightmost
column and a line at the bottom of the lowest row, forming a box around the table.
Additionally, the topmost row also has a line at the bottom, which causes this row
to appear separated from the rest of the table. Heres an example:
2
If you get an error like unknown graphics extension pstex you have to declare these graphic
extensions. I think this is a transfig bug that occurs with L
A
T
E
X2

. Simply add a line like

\@namedef{Gin@rule@ps_tex}#1{{eps}{ps_tex}{#1}}
in the le /usr/lib/texmf/tex/latex/graphics/dvips.def. Then add pstex to the exten-
sion:
\def\Gin@extensions{eps, ps, pstex, eps.gz, ps.gz, eps=2EZ}
This should x the whole thing. Alternatively you may export the postscript part as foo.eps
and change the L
A
T
E
X part foo.pstex_t manually. But this is annoying.
64
4.4 Tables
12 45 98
A
B multi
C
4.4.1 The Table dialog
You can alter a table by clicking on it with the right mouse button, which brings up
a settings dialog. Among these options are:
Adding/removing border lines from a row or column. If you remove the top line
from one of the rows, youll get a dotted line in L
Y
X, but no line will appear in
the printout. If you set the bottom line of one row and the top line of the row
below, then the rows are separated by a small space, as you can see with the
top row in the example above. You can do the same vertically if you set the
right line of a column and the left line of the column to the right.
Text alignment in a column
Appending rows and columns
Deleting rows, columns, or the entire table
Multicolumn
Setting a xed width for a column
Longtable options - this is useful if your table is higher than the paper. Then
the table is split on the bottom of the page and continued on the next one,
instead of running of the end of the page.
Rotate the whole table or a single cell sideways, by 90 degrees
You can also use the menu to perform these operations. Try Edit Table or Edit
Rows&Cols when the cursor is inside a table.
Most of these options also work on selections. This means that if you select more
cells, columns or rows the action is done on all of your selection. Note that there is
a dierence between selecting the contents of the cell, and the cell itself. If you can
see a red border inside a cell, then a selection will select the contents. If you press
Escape or click outside of the box, then the selection will select cells (whether you use
the mouse or the normal cursor-movement keys).
When you append a row, it is added below the row containing the cursor. Similarly,
columns are appended to the right of the cursor. This makes it dicult to add columns
on the left edge of a table without a lot of cutting and pasting. Deletion is always
performed on the row or column containing the cursor.
The multicolumn option merges two or more adjacent cells on a given row. For
example, in the above table, row B has had multicolumn applied to the columns
65
4 Tables, Figures, and Notes
labelled 45 and 98. To use it, you must rst select the cells, then choose Multicol-
umn from the menu. This will not work vertically - see the Table Examples document
for how to do this.
You can also use Multicolumn if you need to have a special handling for a single
table cells top and bottom border lines and text alignment. Here an example of this
special handling of a cell:
* x y
point a & b 103 9
point b & a 599 340
point abc 1009 52
point abcd 96 11
You see here that the header line cells are aligned to the center, whereas the left
column is aligned to the left, and the other columns are aligned to the right. Also
the bottom and top line of two cells have been removed.
If you want your column to have a xed width, then you can insert a width in the
Width input-eld of the Table dialog. This will then allow the cell to have multiple
paragraphs of text.
If your table becomes too large to t on a portrait document layout, you can select
the Rotate 90 button, and the table will appear sideways (this means landscape in a
portrait document style). You might also like to rotate single table cells to give them
more horizontal space. The example below demonstrates why it is useful to rotate
single cells.
Note: This Rotate 90 option will not display on screen, and works only for
PostScript output. So, if you want to preview them, use View Postscript, as View DVI
will not show the table properly.
Description F
l
a
g
1
F
l
a
g
2
F
l
a
g
3
F
l
a
g
4
F
l
a
g
5
F
l
a
g
6
F
l
a
g
7
F
l
a
g
8
F
l
a
g
9
F
l
a
g
1
0
Total
Desc. 1 * * * * * * * 7
Desc. 2 * * * * * * * * * 9
Desc. 3 * * * * * * * * 8
Desc. 4 * * * * * * 6
Total 30
4.4.2 What can be placed inside a table cell?
Many objects can be placed inside a table cell. Any single line of text, an equation
(not a displayed or multilined equation, though), or a gure can be in a cell; in fact,
all three kinds of objects can be placed in the same cell. Font sizes and shapes can
be altered, and the table will adjust to display them properly. However, you cant
put a special environment in a cell (like Section*, etc.), nor set spacing options etc.
for the cells paragraph.
66
4.4 Tables
4.4.3 Cut & Paste in Tables
Cutting and pasting between tables works reasonably well. You can cut and paste
even more than one row. Selection with the mouse or with Shift plus the arrow keys
works as usual. The values in the second table below were cut and pasted from the
rst, using the mouse to select and paste.
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
1 2 3
4 5 6
7
Note that you can also copy and paste the entire table as a single unit by starting
the selection from outside the table.
4.4.4 Multiple lines in cells
It is possible to have multi-line entries in tables, but not in a completely WYSIWYM
manner. Dene a xed length for the column in the Table dialog. After this, your
text is automatically split into more lines and the cell enlarged vertically when the
length of the text exceeds the given xed length. An example:
1 2 3
4 This is a multi-
line entry in a
table.
5
6 This is longer
now.
7
8 This is a multi-
line entry in a
table. This is
longer now.
9
Text within a cell will not normally wrap to t the page, so if a line of text in a
table is too long, the table will extend beyond the right margin of the page. Similarly,
tables will not split themselves at the bottom of a page, and so might extend below
the bottom margin. You have these options to resolve this problem:
1. Split it into two tables.
2. Select the Longtable button in the Table dialog. This automatically splits the
table over more pages, if it is too tall. After doing this, the list of Longtable
buttons activate themselves and you may now dene:
67
4 Tables, Figures, and Notes
a) First header: The current row and all rows above that dont have any
special options dened are dened to be the header rows of the rst page
of the longtable.
b) Header: The current row and all rows above that dont have any special op-
tions dened are dened to be the header rows of all pages of the longtable;
except for the rst page, if First header is dened.
c) Footer: The current row and all rows below that dont have any special op-
tions dened are dened to be the footer rows of all pages of the longtable;
except for the last page, if Last footer is dened.
d) Last footer: The current row and all rows below that dont have any special
options dened are dened to be the footer rows of the last page of the
longtable.
If you set more than one option in the same table row, you should be aware of
the fact that only the rst ag is used in the given table rows. The others will
then be dened as empty. In this context, rst means rst in this order: Footer,
Last footer, Header, First header. See the TableExamples.lyx example le to
see how this works.
The check box in the long table options can be used to specify specic rows to
break the page on as well.
3. A table can also be placed in a oat, as described below, which will allow T
E
X
to place it as well as it can within the page.
4.4.5 Table Floats
Outside of a oat, the table will be positioned exactly where it is placed in the
document. Using a Table Float from the Insert Float menu will enable L
A
T
E
X to place
the table where it ts best, rather than exactly where you insert it. Float placement
for table oats is similar to that for gure oats 4.3.2.1, and is described in section
4.3.2.2. Captions also work the same way as with gure oats, as described in section
4.3.2.1. Table 4.2 is an example of a table oat.
Table 4.2: A table oat.
1 2 3
Joe Mary Ted
_
x
2
dx
_
a b
c d
_
1 + 1 = 2
68
4.5 Table of Contents and other Listings
4.5 Table of Contents and other Listings
One of the really nice features of L
A
T
E
X is the ease with which it lets you create
various Lists, such as a Table of Contents. All you need to do is to use certain
environments and insert a reference at the place where you want the list to appear.
4.5.1 The Table of Contents
In order to get a Table of Contents, you need to do four things:
1. Use a document class that includes support (all but letter).
2. Set paragraph environments appropriately: Chapter, (Sub...) Section, (Sub...),
Paragraph. Note that styles with a *, like Section*, will not appear in the Table
of Contents.
3. Make sure you set the Section number depth and Table of contents. depth in the
Document Layout dialog to the appropriate value as described in 3.3.4.3
4. Insert the ToC command at some place in the document. Youll nd it under
Insert List / TOC Table of Contents.
You can also bring up a dialog for navigating through your document with Document
Table of Contents.
4.5.2 List of Figures, Tables and Algorithms
Table, gure, and algorithm lists are very much like the table of contents. You can
insert them from the Insert List / TOC submenu. If you want gures, tables, or
algorithms to appear in the list, you must place them inside a oat of the relevant
type and add a caption.
69
4 Tables, Figures, and Notes
70
5 Mathematical Formulae
5.1 Basic Math Editing
To create a math formula, you can just click on the toolbar icon with
a+b
c
on it. That
will open a little blue square, with purple markers around it, on the corners. That
blue square is the formula itself; the purple markers indicate what level of nesting
within the formula you are at. You can also choose a particular formula type to insert
via the Insert Math menu; or you can use a keyboard macro, M-c m, M-m m, or C-m
(CUA binding only).
If you simply need to type a single Greek letter, such as , there is a special
shortcut. Just type M-m g a to get , M-m g b to get , etc.
Editing the parameters of a formula may be done from the Insert Math Math Panel
dialog, by Edit Math, or by clicking the right mouse button on the formula. The
math panel is very useful, so you may want to open it and leave it somewhere on the
screen. If youre not already in a formula, selecting anything from the math panel
will insert a formula for you.
5.1.1 Navigating a Formula
The best control over cursor position within an existing formula is achieved with
the arrow keys. Mathed uses small squares to indicate places where something can
be inserted. The arrow keys can be used to navigate between parts of a formula.
Pressing Space will leave a fraction or other formula construct (a square root

2, or
parentheses (f), or a matrix
_
1 2
3 4
_
). Pressing Escape will leave the formula, placing
the cursor after the formula. Tab can be used to move horizontally in a formula; for
example, through the cells of a matrix or the positions in a multi-line equation.
Space seems to do nothing in Mathed, since it does not in fact add a space between
characters, but it does exit a nested structure. For this reason, you have to be
careful about using Space. For example, if you want

2x + 1, type \sqrt then
Space, then 2x+1, not \sqrt Space 2x Space + Space 1, since in the latter case only
the 2x will be under the square root sign,

2x + 1. For those who learned to space
out expressions in this way, it takes a little unlearning.
You can leave many parts of a formula, like this matrix, partially lled in, such as:
_
_
_

1
.
.
.

n
_
_
_
.
71
5 Mathematical Formulae
If you leave a fraction only partially lled in, or a subscript with nothing in it, the
results will be unpredictable, but most constructs dont mind.
5.1.2 Selecting Text
You can select text within a formula in two dierent ways. Place the cursor at one
end of the string of text you want, and press Shift and a cursor movement key to
select text. It will be highlighted as with regular text selection. Alternatively, you
can select text with the mouse in the usual way. That text can then be cut or copied,
and then pasted within any formula (not in a plain text region in L
Y
X, though).
5.1.3 Exponents and Subscripts
You can use the math panel to add superscripts or subscripts, but the much easier
way is to use the standard T
E
X method. To get x
2
, type (in Mathed) x^2 then Space.
The nal Space puts the cursor back down on the base line of the expression, instead
of in the superscript. If you type x^2y, you will get x
2y
, to get x
2
y, type x^2 then
Space then y. Subscripts are similar, to get a
1
, type (in Mathed) a_1 then Space.
Note that by default, the superscript or subscript is only for the single symbol to
the left, which changes the spacing and alignment; you should read section 5.3 if you
need to alter this.
5.1.4 Fractions
Create a fraction with either \frac (in Mathed) or using the fraction icon in the
Math Panel dialog or the Math menu item Fraction. You will be presented with an
empty fraction, with two Mathed insertion squares top and bottom. The cursor moves
immediately to the top of the fraction. To move to the bottom, simply press Down.
To move back up, press Up. Any math structure can be placed in a fraction, as this
example shows:
_

_
1
_
2 3
4 5
_
_

_
5.1.5 Sums and Integrals
Sum (

) and integral (
_
) signs are very often decorated with one or more sets of
limits. These limits can be entered in L
Y
X by entering them as you would enter a
superscript or subscript, directly after the symbol. Sum will automatically place its
limits over and under the symbol in display style, but will move them to the side
when inlined, such as

n=0
1
n!
= e, versus

n=1
x
n
n
= ln
_
1
1 x
_
.
72
5.1 Basic Math Editing
Integral signs, however, will not by default move the limits to directly over and under
the integral sign in display style, as in
_
x
a
f(t)dt := F(x), versus
_

dx
1 + x
2
= .
Both symbols will be automatically re-sized when placed in display mode. In display
mode, the placement of the limits (directly above and below, or oset to the right
from the sign) can be changed by placing the cursor in front of the sign and hitting
M-m l. Exactly what change occurs depends on the sign.
Certain other mathematical expressions have this moving limits feature as addi-
tion, such as
lim
x
f(x),
which will place the x underneath the lim in display mode, but not in inlined
mode, lim
x
f(x). Note that the lim was entered as a function - you get it in L
Y
X
by typing \lim in math-mode, or choosing from the functions menu in the math
panel; see 5.1.9.
5.1.6 The Math Panel
The Math Panel dialog (accessible via Insert Math) has a more extensive list of sym-
bols and structures. As stated earlier, you can keep the math panel open when writing
mathematics. The use of the panel should be fairly obvious; well describe some of
the details in later sections.
Note that right-clicking on a formula opens the panel as well.
5.1.7 Other Math Symbols
Most math symbols can be found in the math panel under one of several categories;
including Greek , operators , relations

=, arrows , large operators

_
,
and the dreaded miscellaneous. There are also the additional symbols provided by the
American Mathematical Society (AMS). If you know the standard L
A
T
E
X macro for
a particular symbol you which to use, you do not have to use these dialogs, but they
will help for those symbols whose L
A
T
E
X name you do not know. Note that the AMS
symbols will not be displayed as symbols in L
Y
X unless you install the right fonts as
described in the relevant manual.
It is possible to get an nth root symbol. In the minibuer, type math-insert
root. This generates a root symbol with an extra box above the root sign. Use Up
and Down to move between the two boxes. You can also use the key binding M-m-r.
5.1.8 Altering spacing
You may want to create blank spaces that diers from the standard spacing that
L
A
T
E
X provides. We dont recommend this as a matter of course, since the whole
73
5 Mathematical Formulae
idea of WYSIWYM is that you dont think about the typesetting, but the content.
However, there are situations where you will want to add spaces. The rst thing to
do is to type C-Space. This generates a small space, and shows a small marker on
the screen within L
Y
X: a b. The next trick is to change that space to dierent sizes.
Before you move the cursor, after typing C-Space, if you hit Space again, you will
change the size of the space, through a number of variable sizes. The last ones in the
list are red, and are a negative space. For example: a b, or ab. You can also insert
these spaces via the math panel.
5.1.9 Math functions
The math panel contains a number of functions, such as sin, lim, etc. (you can
type them in a formula by typing \sin etc). Standard mathematical practice is
that functions which are names, like sin, should not be italicized. Entering just the
letters sin within Mathed will give italics, of course, so these special macros are
available. They do more to the nal output than just change the typeface, however.
For example, the expression sin t will typeset with a little extra space between the n
and the t. For words which are more sophisticated mathematical objects, like lim,
the macro changes the way that subscripts are placed, depending on whether the
math-inset is inlined or displayed: lim
x0
f(x) = L versus
lim
x0
f(x) = L.
These two expressions were typed the same way, but using the macro \lim alters the
appearance (actually, it is the inlined version that is altered, to improve linespacing).
5.1.10 Accents
In a formula you can insert accented characters in the same way as in text mode.
This may depend on your keyboard, or the bindings le you use. You can also use
T
E
X macro equivalents, as macros. That is, you can enter a to get the same eect if
your keyboard does not have accents enabled. This is entered by typing \hat a in
Mathed. These are the equivalences between the text names and the macro names
for the various accents:
74
5.1 Basic Math Editing
text math example
circumex hat a
grave grave ` a
acute acute a
umlaut ddot a
tilde tilde a
dot dot a
breve breve a
caron check a
macron bar a
vec a
Finally, you can choose one of these accents by selecting an item from the Decora-
tions symbol set in the math panel; this will apply to any selection you have made
within a formula too.
5.1.11 The math editor for L
A
T
E
X users
Editing mathematical expressions in L
Y
X can be done in one of two ways. You can use
the native L
Y
X support for rendering the formulae in a WYSIWYM fashion. L
A
T
E
X
users might like to be able to use the keyboard to enter things like $\alpha$ (this
gets, in ordinary T
E
X, an in the nal document), believing that it is faster than
chasing around menus for a symbol. Heres a testimonial of one of those old L
A
T
E
X
users, David Johnson:
I was nally convinced that the math editor was the way to go when I
found that, with a few modications, I could use it the same way I was
accustomed to writing T
E
X. As an example, I created this by typing the
following keys: First type M-c m to enter math-mode, then type \alpha ,
then Space and Esc. As soon as I typed that Space the was right there
on the screen.
The M-c m sequence inserts a formula (you may also use C-m or M-m m), the \alpha
is of course the standard T
E
X command for a Greek alpha letter, and the Esc leaves
the formula. Some of the advantages of this approach are:
You have immediate visual feedback to be sure your T
E
X was correct
You have the real mathematical expression on the screen, correctly displayed,
to make sure your mathematics is correct (correctly written, at least)
All the new L
A
T
E
X fuss with special environments and such are taken care of by
L
Y
X, not you
You wont have to chase through the code trying to nd that missing $ or extra
{ any more
75
5 Mathematical Formulae
If you dont remember the L
A
T
E
X name of a particular symbol, like , you can
nd it in the dialogs
5.2 Brackets and decorations
There are several brackets available through L
Y
X. For most purposes, using just the
keys [{]}()|\<> should suce, but the eect, especially if you want to surround a
large structure, such as a matrix or a fraction, or if you have several layers of brackets,
is better using the math panels Delimiter dialog [see sec. 5.1.6]. For example, thats
how you would construct the brackets around a standard matrix such as :
_
1 2
3 4
_
,
and to make it easier to see the layers of parentheses of an abomination such as:
1
_
1 +
_
1
1+(
1
1+x
)
__
or:
f (g (h (k (l (x))))) .
The parentheses, and other brackets, from that menu will automatically re-size to
accommodate the size of what is inside (This is done in straight L
A
T
E
X by \left(
blah \right) ).
It is very easy to construct the braces you want to use. Click on the brace you
want on the left side with the left mouse button, the right side with the right button,
and place them in the document by clicking on the button. If you want one side to
not have a bracket, use the blank button. It will appear in L
Y
X with a dotted line,
but nothing will print.
If you decide after the fact to place parentheses (or other math structure, like a
square root, or other decoration) around some math structure, you can do that by
highlighting (selecting) the structure that is to go inside the parentheses (that is done
by holding the Shift key down and moving the cursor with the arrow keys, or selecting
with the mouse). Then, choose the appropriate brackets for left and right, and click
on Apply. The parentheses will be drawn around the selected structure.
If youre trying to enter a L
A
T
E
X { for grouping, you should read 5.3.
5.3 Grouping
You may need to group a set of symbols. In L
A
T
E
X, for example, the typesetting of
{x^y}^z is dierent from x^{y^z}:
x
yz
diers from x
y
z
76
5.4 Arrays and Multi-line Equations
However, trying to type the } in L
Y
X gives an actual closing brace in the output.
To create this grouping, you need to use the key sequence \{ then type space. Inside
L
Y
X, you will see red braces indicating the grouping. The example directly above
shows how this works.
5.4 Arrays and Multi-line Equations
Arrays, such as matrices, are easily entered in L
Y
X. In the Math Panel there is a matrix
button, which will open a dialog for you to choose the number of rows/columns. Here
is an example:
_
_
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
_
_
.
The parentheses arent automatic, but you can add them as usual. Remember that
you can add this after the fact, by highlighting the matrix inside Mathed (Position
the mouse on one side of the matrix, hold the Shift key down, and hit the appropriate
arrow key to move the cursor across the matrix). You can, when you construct the
matrix, decide whether the columns (or some of them) will be left-, right-, or center-
justied. The specication is ccc by default. Each letter corresponds to the relevant
column. For example, lcr means that the rst column will be left-justied, the second
will be centered, and the third column will be right-justied.. It will look like this:
this this column this column
column has has right
has left alignment center alignment alignment
.
You can add more rows to an existing matrix by hitting C-Enter while in the matrix,
and you can add columns, or delete either, via the Edit Math and Edit Rows&Cols
menus.
There are numerous other arrays used in L
A
T
E
X math-mode, particularly with the
AMS-L
A
T
E
X packages included, such as \cases and commutative diagrams. Not all
of these are supported in L
Y
X but some are, see Insert Math.
Multi-line equations are very easy to construct in L
Y
X. A formula will automatically
switch to an eqnarray format (L
A
T
E
Xs multi-line displayed equation format) if you
hit C-Enter. The best way to do this, if you decide you want a multi-line displayed
equation, is to insert a new line (with C-Enter) immediately. Each line then has three
regions, left, center, and right, which you can move through using either the arrow
keys, the mouse, or the Tab key. Here is an example:
3 = 1 + 2
4 + 5 = 9.
You can also turn an existing displayed formula into a multi-line formula by hitting
C-Enter while the cursor is anywhere on the original formula. However, L
Y
X will not
77
5 Mathematical Formulae
try to decide where to break the formula up into three parts, but places everything
in the left side of the line. To change the alignment points of the equation, place the
cursor where you want to start the middle part of the line, and hit C-Tab. It then
puts everything to the right of the cursor in the middle region of the equation (which,
by the way, is not typeset by L
A
T
E
X in display-math size, so you should not put large
expressions like fractions there). Move to where you want the right side of the line to
begin, and hit C-Tab again. The extra insertion points in the line will disappear.
5.5 Equation Numbering and Labels
Equation numbering is very easy in L
Y
X. All it takes to change a displayed equation
like:
1 + 2 = 3
into the numbered equation :
1 + 2 = 3 (5.1)
is to go to the Insert menu, and select the Label... option. This opens a dialog in
which you must enter some string as the label. There is no need to call it by a spe-
cic number, since L
A
T
E
X will take care of re-numbering the equation. Labels will not
appear as such on the nal output. L
A
T
E
X will insert appropriate numbers for the
equations. The labels are used internally for cross-referencing. You can turn on num-
bering without a specic label with the menu option Edit Math Toggle Numbering
while the cursor is in the equation, such as:
1 + 1 = 2. (5.2)
You can toggle it on or o with this menu item. You can reference a labelled (not
just numbered) equation, (cf. (5.1)) by using the Cross-Reference dialog, which you
open using Insert Cross-Reference... .
For numbered (or labelled) multi-line formulas, the default is that all lines are
numbered separately. Once you attach a label to make the equation numbered, all
subsequent lines receive a label of #. That label can be changed to another so that
you can refer to that line, like (5.4) below.
1 = 3 2 (5.3)
2 = 4 2 (5.4)
4 7. (5.5)
You can turn o numbering of a specic line with Edit Math Toggle numbering of line
while the cursor is on that line of a multi-line numbered equation. This also toggles.
For example :
1 = 4 3 (5.6)
2 = 7 5 (5.7)
78
5.6 User dened macros in math mode
1 = e
2i
16 2 (mod 7) (5.8)
Note that the rst equation in this set (5.6) is labelled, the next is numbered but
unlabelled, the third is unnumbered, and the last (5.8) is again labelled.
5.6 User dened macros in math mode
L
Y
X allows the user to dene macros for use in math mode. A macro denition box
appears on screen as purple box with the name of the macro in blue (math color). It
contains two cells initially marked empty by blue rectangles that can be edited as if it
were ordinary math. Just try it: The contents of the rst cell will be used when the
macro denition is written during export as L
A
T
E
X. The contents of the second cell,
however, will be used for drawing the macros expansion on screen. In the common
case where both export and drawing use the same representation, the second cell can
be left empty and L
Y
X will use the contents of the rst cell will be used for export
and drawing automatically.
Now, to use this macro in other math boxes just type the name in T
E
X mode, in
this case \macro, and it will be automatically expanded: c = a+b. As you can verify,
the cursor cant go inside the macro, the whole macro is like a single character, and
the T
E
X generated code of this expression is c = \macro.
However the cursor could go inside of some kind of macros, those that have argu-
ments. In a macro denition box an argument looks like a # followed by the argument
number:
Once expanded, this macro includes the usual empty rectangle to indicate that you
can insert there whatever you want: \macrowarg = 2+

. Example: b = 2+

x 2.
When exported to L
A
T
E
X, a macro denition will produce the command
\newcommand{\macrowarg}[1]{2+\sqrt{#1}}
5.6.1 How to create macros
To create a macro denition box use this syntax in the minibuer:
1
math-macro <macro name> [number of arguments]
For example, \macro was created with math-macro macro, and \macrowarg was
created with math-macro macrowarg 1.
To insert an argument mark (only inside a macro denition box) simply type
#<number> or use math-macro-arg <number>
The argument mark in \macrowarg was introduced with math-macro-arg 1.
You can use no more than 9 arguments, numbered from 1 to 9. An argument can
be repeated inside the macro denition box, but of course can be edited only once.
1
Macro names mustnt contain numbers!
79
5 Mathematical Formulae
5.6.2 How to navigate in macros
With the arrow keys: Opening a macro from the left side will put the cursor in the
rst argument, to move to the second argument use the TAB key. Remember
that pressing the Space bar will get the cursor out and at the right side of the
macro.
With the mouse: As usual, click on the desired argument box. Sometimes this fails
if the box is empty or too small.
Currently it is only possible to dene command macros, but not environment macros.
5.7 Fine-Tuning
5.7.1 Typefaces
You can use various typefaces in a formula. The standard font for text is italic, text,
but for numbers the standard is Roman. To set a font in a formula, choose it from
the math panel, or by entering the L
A
T
E
X command for it directly, as follows:
Font L
A
T
E
X Command
Roman \mathrm
Bold \mathbf
Italic \mathit
Typewriter \mathtt
BLACKBOARD \mathbb
Fraktur \mathfrak
CALLIGRAPHIC \mathcal
SansSerif \mathsf
L
A
T
E
Xs math mode does not support all characters in all fonts, and only letters
will be supported with these font styles; some only support capital letters.
For any of these fonts, you have to be careful how you enter the text. If there is
text to the right of the entry point, the font reverts to that style after one character.
To be able to type a string in a particular font, make sure there is a protected-space
to the right of the cursor. Also, entering a protected-space will revert subsequent text
to standard font. The font styles are nestable, as L
A
T
E
X does. This can be a little
confusing, as selecting a dierent font on a selection will not change the selection,
but insert a new nested level with the new typeface.
It is possible (in AMS-L
A
T
E
X) to embolden (not italicize) numbers and special
symbols. However, L
Y
X does not yet support this in WYSIWYM manner. It will
print correctly, though. To get emboldened symbols, for example a bold , enter
\boldsymbol{\alpha} in Mathed. The closing brace appears (in red) automatically
when you type the opening brace. This works for all symbols, as well as numbers.
A number of other options are available as well, via Insert Math Font Change.
80
5.7 Fine-Tuning
5.7.2 Math Text Mode
Typefaces are useful for entering variable names in some given font, but certainly not
for anything else, and in particular not text. For typing longer pieces of text, use
math text mode, which is obtained by typing M-m m while already in math mode.
(The same command will get out of math text mode, too.) Math text mode appears
on the screen in black instead of blue. You cannot enter punctuation or font changes
in your text
2
, but it works for simple text. Heres an example:
f(x) =
x if I say so
x otherwise
5.7.3 Font Sizes
There are four (relative) font sizes (or styles) used in math-mode, which are auto-
matically chosen in most situations. These are called textstyle, displaystyle, script-
style, and scriptscriptstyle. For most characters, textstyle and displaystyle are actually
the same size, but fractions, superscripts and subscripts, and certain other eects,
are set larger or placed dierently in displaystyle. Except for some operators, which
re-size themselves to accommodate various situations, all text will be set in these
various sizes as L
A
T
E
X thinks is appropriate. These choices can be over-ridden by
using the math-size function in the minibuer. For example, you can set
1
2
normally
(textstyle), or you can make it larger, which also changes the line-spacing, by entering
math-size displaystyle in the minibuer while the cursor is in the main line of
the math-inset,
1
2
. Careful, though, if the cursor is on the denominator of that frac-
tion, only the numerator will be enlarged, e.g.
1
2
! This reects a L
A
T
E
X unintended
feature
3
, not a L
Y
X one. These font-size changes are not as apparent in L
Y
X as they
are in the output. Here are some text in the various styles: displaystyle, textstyle,
scriptstyle, scriptscriptstyle.
All these math-mode font sizes are relative, that is, if the whole math inset and
surrounding text are set in a particular size, all these sizes will be adjusted. Simi-
larly, if the base font size of the document is changed, all fonts will be adjusted to
correspond.
Here is a paragraph in largest font, with symbols:
.
This applies to math fonts in titles, etc. as well.
2
Moreover, math text mode outputs its contents inside a \textrm{}, whereas and \mbox (or AMS-
L
A
T
E
Xs \text) might have been a better choice
3
That is, a bug.
81
5 Mathematical Formulae
5.8 AMS-L
A
T
E
X
The American Mathematical Society (AMS) provide a L
A
T
E
X packages that are in
common use. L
Y
X includes some support for these packages.
5.8.1 Enabling AMS-Support
In the Document Settings dialog there is a checkbox, Use AMS Math. If selected, this
will include the AMS-package in the document, and make the facilities available.
5.8.2 AMS-Symbols
The AMS-L
A
T
E
X packages add support for some mathematical symbols that are not
accessible from plain L
A
T
E
X (or L
Y
X), but are fairly common in mathematical type-
setting, such as the old-German Fraktur font and the stylized blackboard bold fonts
commonly used to denote the real or complex numbers, or the integers. Once ac-
tivated, all AMS-L
A
T
E
X symbols and environments are available. You will run into
trouble if you include these packages from the preamble, since L
Y
X now denes a
few of the macros used in these packages on its own. The AMS-layouts include these
packages automatically.
5.8.3 AMS-Formula Types
AMS-L
A
T
E
X provides a selection of dierent formula types. L
Y
X allows you to choose
between align, alignat, flalign, gather, and multline. Refer to the AMS-
documentation for the dierences between these formula types.
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6.1 Cross-References
Those of you reading this manual online will see a grey box with text in it, right
before the beginning of this sentence. This is a Label. Properly speaking, it is one
half of a cross-reference. The other half is the Reference proper, and it looks like this:
6.1. Again, those of you reading the manual online will see a gray box with text in
it. Those reading printed versions, however, will see a number in this case, the
number of this section. There are also other varieties of cross-reference: for example,
83. This is the page number containing the location of the label. Thats what cross-
references do: they let you reference other parts of your document. You dont need
to remember which section number was what anymore L
Y
X will do that for you!
All you need to do is use a Label to mark a section, gure, table, formula, etc., and
then refer to it via a Reference.
To insert a label, use Insert Label. A box will appear where you can enter your
label. You can change the name of the label at a later time by simply clicking on the
gray box and reopening the label dialog.
To insert a reference, select Insert Cross Reference. The Insert Cross-Reference
dialog appears with a list of labels. Selecting a list item, then clicking OK inserts
a reference into the text; changing the Reference type allows you to insert a page
number or other reference variant instead.
Note that if you cut & paste text from another document that contains a Label or
Reference, or if you delete a label in your text, L
A
T
E
X will complain:
LaTeX Warning: Reference X on page Y undefined on input line
Z
LaTeX Warning: There were undefined references
Youll also see two question marks in the output instead of the reference.
There are a few more comments we need to make about the Labels. They always
print the number of the section heading closest to them. So if you want to put a
label on a Chapter, but a Section heading immediately follows it, you need to put the
Label into the Chapter environment. It doesnt matter where, and it will look weird
on the L
Y
X screen. However, you need to do this if you want to label the Chapter
separately from the Section. The same goes for all other section headings.
Also, a Label only makes sense in numbered section headings and table and gure
oats. Bare gures and tables arent numbered, so, like unnumbered section headings,
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you cant really use a Label on it.
1
See sections 4.3.2.1, 4.4.5, and 5.5 for details on
using a Label with gures, tables, and equations, respectively.
6.2 URLs (Uniform Resource Locators)
It is often desirable to include long verbatim items in a document such as Web site
URLs, e-mail addresses, etc.; these things typically do not contain any spaces and
are thus dicult to typeset properly. Such items will often fall on a line boundary
if they cannot be split, resulting in an overfull or underfull line depending on the
circumstances. You can use Insert URL within L
Y
X to enter a long URL and have it
split gracefully (if necessary) along automatically determined boundaries.
At the point in the document where you want to enter the URL (or other address-
like entity) simply select Insert URL; a dialog will appear where you can enter
the full URL (in the Url: eld). In its simplest usage, thats all you need to do.
Click on the following gray box to see how L
Y
Xs homepage would be entered:
http://www.lyx.org.
2
If you would like to associate some denite phrase with the URL, enter it into the
Name eld of the dialog; it will be typeset as plain text immediately before the URL.
For example, I might say that you can nd all things related to L
A
T
E
X at
CTAN http://ctan.tug.org. On the printed page, the last sentence ends as all
things related to L
A
T
E
X at CTAN http://ctan.tug.org.
[Authors Note: somebody needs to document the HTML Type button]
6.3 Specifying Short Titles with Optional
Arguments
Some section or chapter titles, such as this one, can get quite long. This can cause
over-runs when there is limited horizontal space. For example, if the header of the
page is set to show the current section title, a long title will over-run past the edges,
and look awful.
L
A
T
E
X allows you to specify an optional argument to the section commands that
species a shorter version of the title
3
. This shorter version is used in the header and
in the actual Table of Contents, avoiding the problem mentioned. L
Y
X allows you to
1
Well, you can, but only if you use the Page number reference. The regular Reference the one
that refers to a section/table/gure number wont work, because theres no numbered thingy
to refer to! You could also use bare Labels as page markers, then refer back to them using the
Page number reference. Once again, the regular Reference wont work very well. It will refer to
something, but that something will typically be the number of the previous numbered section
heading.
2
Important note: When you use the following characters: "%", "#", "^", you have to write
them with a backslash before, e.g. \#. URLs mustnt end with a backslash!
3
For those who dont know L
A
T
E
X, commands look like this: \command[optionalargument]{the
content}
84
6.4 Branches
specify this optional argument by selecting Insert Short Title. This will insert a box
(labelled opt, which stands for optional) which you can use to enter the short title
text. This also works for captions inside oats.
The title of this section is a good example of using this feature.
6.4 Branches
Sometimes you wish to be able to output to paper multiple versions of the same
document. The most extreme version of this is, when you want to prepare a single
document in two or more dierent languages, but as a single document le, with
corresponding pieces of text adjacent in the le and on-screen. This can be achieved
with branches.
First, you have to dene the branches available within a particular document.
This is done in the Document Settings Branches tab. You can also associate a
background colour with each branch, e.g., red for the English language, blue for the
German language branch. Then, you create a branch inset from the Insert Branch
menu item. The inset will contain the text that you want to be output when this
branch is activated.
Activation or deactivation of a branch is done from the document settings menu. All
insets belonging to deactivated branches will be automatically closed, those belonging
to activated branches automatically opened.
Other possible applications of the Branches paradigm include a teachers version
of a textbook containing the answers to questions, etc.
6.5 Previewing snippets of your document
L
Y
X allows you to generate previews of sections of your document on the y so you
can see how theyll look in the nal document without having to break your train of
thought with View DVI. If youd like to see your math formulae typeset by L
A
T
E
X then
install the necessary software (see below) and select the Instant preview On pulldown
item in the Tools Preferences dialog. (It can be found in the Look and feel Graphics
pane in the Qt frontend and the Look & Feel Misc tab in the XForms frontend.)
Previews are generated when you load a document into L
Y
X and when you nish
editing an inset. Previews of an already loaded document are not generated just by
selecting the Instant preview check box.
L
Y
X will generate previews of math insets. It will also generate previews of include
insets or child documents if you select the Show preview check box in the insets
dialog. This latter is useful if you wish to generate a preview of a L
A
T
E
X gure, for
example. Coming in version 1.4 are previews of the external inset also.
To get previews working, youll need some additional software. First, youll need
the preview.sty L
A
T
E
X package. Find it on your local CTAN mirror at
CTAN/support/preview-latex/. Thereafter, youll need the usual tools: latex,
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dvips and gs.Finally, youll obtain prettier results if you install pnmcropfrom the
netpbm package.
6.6 Spacing, pagination and line breaks
6.6.1 Extra Horizontal Space
HFills are a special L
Y
X feature for adding extra space in a uniform fashion. An HFill
is actually a variable length space, whose length always equals the remaining space
between the left and right margins. If there is more than one HFill on a line, they
divide the available space equally between themselves.
Note: if an HFill is at the beginning of a line, and its not the rst line in a
paragraph, L
Y
X ignores it. This prevents HFills from accidentally being wrapped
onto a new line.
HFills can be inserted with Insert Special Formatting Horizontal Fill. Here a few
examples what you can do with them:
This is on the left side This is on the right
Left Middle Right
Left 1/3 Left Right
That was an example in the Quote environment. Here: :is one in
a standard paragraph. It may or may not be apparent in the printed text, but it is
sitting in-between the two :.
Remember that we said that an HFill always lls the remaining space between the
margins? There may be more than one set of margins on a line. Heres an example
with the List environment.
one two :three four ve six
The : marks the beginning of the item. (There is actually a hidden HFill inside
of the label of the List environment; its put at the end of the label automatically.)
HFills work similarly in other multi-margin situations, like two-column mode.
6.6.2 Extra Vertical Space
To add extra vertical space above or below a paragraph, use Edit Paragraph Settings
to open the Paragraph Settings dialog.
We will not provide an example of a VFill, as it would waste paper. They work
the same as any other type of ller, including HFills: they ll the remaining vertical
space on a page with blank space. If there are several VFills on a page, they divide
the remaining vertical space equally between themselves. You can therefore use VFills
to center text on a page, or even place text 2/3 down a page, or 1/4, and so on.
Note that for paragraphs at the top/bottom of a page, the extra space is only added
if you have also checked the option Edit Paragraph Settings Spacing Keep space.
86
6.6 Spacing, pagination and line breaks
6.6.3 Changing Paragraph Alignment
You can also change the paragraph alignment with the Edit Paragraph Settings dialog.
There are four possibilities:
Justied
Left
Right
Center
The default in most cases is justied alignment, in which the inter-word spacing
is variable and each line of a paragraph lls the region between the left and right
margins. The other three alignments should be self-explanatory, and look like this:
This paragraph is right aligned,
this one is centered,
this one is left aligned.
In some paragraph environments, the default is something other than justied
alignment.
6.6.4 Forcing Page Breaks
If you dont like the way L
A
T
E
X does the page breaks in your document, you can force
a pagebreak where you want one. In general, this will not be necessary because L
A
T
E
X
is good at pagebreaking, as was already mentioned in section 3.7.4.
So in general there is no need to use the option described below, and we recommend
not using it until the text is nished, and until you have checked in the preview to
see if you really have to change the pagebreaking.You can force a pagebreak above or
below a paragraph in the Edit Paragraph Settings dialog by selecting the checkboxes
to add a pagebreak above or below the paragraph.
You might try to use a pagebreak to ensure that a gure or table appears at the
top of a page. This is, of course, the wrong way to do it. L
Y
X gives you a way of
automatically ensuring that your gures and tables appear at the top of a page [or
the bottom, or on their own page] without having to worry about what precedes or
follows your gure or table. See sections 4.3 and 4.4 and read about Floats to learn
more.
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6.6.5 Blanks/Spaces
A blank is a blank? Not in good typography. While you might be used to press the
space key anytime you want to separate two words in ordinary word processors, L
Y
X
oers you more spaces: Spaces of dierent width and spaces which can or cannot
be broken at the end of a line. The following sections will show you some examples
where those spaces are useful.
6.6.5.1 Inter-word Space
Some languages (e. g. English) have the typographical convention to add extra space
after an end-of-sentence punctuation mark, and L
Y
X honors those conventions (see
section 3.7.2.1). Sometimes, you want a normal space nevertheless. In this case,
insert one with Insert Special Formatting Inter-word Space or with C-M-Space.
6.6.5.2 Protected Space
The protected space: It is used to tell L
Y
X (and L
A
T
E
X) not to break the line at that
point. This may be necessary to avoid unlucky linebreaks, like in:
A good documentation should weight no more than 1
kg.
Obviously, it would be a good thing to put a protected space between 1 and kg.
A protected space is set with Insert Special Formatting Protected Space or with C-
Space.
6.6.5.3 Thin Space
A thin space is a blank which has half the size of a normal space (and it is also
protected). The typographical conventions in a lot of languages propose the use
of thin spaces in cases where normal spaces would be too wide, for instance inside
abbreviations:
D. E. Knuth has developped our beloved typesetting program, i. e. T
E
X.
You can insert a thin space with Insert Special Formatting Thin Space or with C-S-
Space.
6.6.5.4 More Spaces
Apart from the ones described, there are still some more spaces. Although L
Y
X
supports them natively, they can only be reached via the minibuer. To get them,
just type space-insert <command> into the minibuer, where <command> is one of
the following:
88
6.7 Spellchecking
command width protected?
normal 1/3 em no
protected 1/3 em yes
thin 1/6 em yes
enspace 0.5 em yes
enskip 0.5 em no
quad 1 em no
qquad 2 em no
negthinspace -1/6 em yes
6.6.6 Line breaking
You can force line breaks within a paragraph by selecting Insert Special Formatting
Linebreak or with C-Return. You should, however, not use this to correct L
A
T
E
Xs
linebreaking, as L
A
T
E
X is very good at linebreaking. . . (see section 6.6.4). There are,
however, a number of situations where it is necessary to actively set a linebreak, e.g.
in a poem or for an Address (see sections 3.3.5.1, 3.3.5.2 and 3.3.7.2).
6.7 Spellchecking
L
Y
X itself has no built-in spellchecker. Rather it uses the external ispell program
as a backend or the newer and generally better aspell. This section assumes you
have already installed and set up one of these programs.
The spellchecker can be started with the menu entry Tools Spellchecker. Checking
will start just after the current cursor position. A dialog window will appear showing
any incorrect (or unknown) word found, allowing you to edit and replace it in a second
line. Whenever an unknown word is found, the word is highlighted and the view in
your text buer is updated to make the word visible. In the Spellchecker dialog, there
is also a box showing suggestions for a correction, if any could be found. Clicking on
one of the corrections will copy the near miss into the replace input eld (double-click
to invoke replace).
6.7.1 Spellchecker Options
The following options can be set in the Tools Preferences dialog.
6.7.1.1 Dictionary
By default, the dictionary le to use is determined by the language of the text youre
checking, which is set in the Document Settings dialog. If you do not have a dic-
tionary for the document language, the spellchecker will not work. In this case, you
can specify another dictionary le in the dialog by specifying a dierent alternative
language.
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If youre using ispell, you may need to make a link from say deutsch.(aff|hash)
to german.(aff|hash) or whatever applies for your language. This is because these
ispell les normally have the native language name (deutsch) whereas ispell,
when started from L
Y
X, searches for the English version of the name used with the
L
A
T
E
X babel package (german).
You may also have problems the font encoding is not correct for that dictionary.
If you use a language with latin1 encoding and set the Encoding option in the
Document Settings dialog to latin1 (or other than default), you must have this option
in your language dictionary as well. If your dictionary doesnt support the Encoding
you chose, youll have an error like this on stderr:
ispell: unrecognized formatter type latin1
The spellchecker gives you an error that it couldnt start the ispell process and
that you probably have some problems with your dictionary le.
There are four solutions to this problem. The easiest is to try the Use Input Encoding
option. If that does not help, you can set Encoding to default when calling the
spellchecker (which is probably annoying). The third is to add the latin1 option to
your dictionary < language> .aff le and recompile the dictionary (which probably
isnt easy if you installed the whole stu with some distribution and dont have the
language directory of the ispell sources). Read the ispell documentation for this
task! The fourth is to send a message to your package-maintainer, or better yet to
the maintainer of the dictionary le in question and ask him to solve your problem.
6.7.1.2 Personal dictionary
If you want to use a dierent le from the spellcheckers default choice as your personal
dictionary, you can set this in the dialog. Specifying a lename which does not already
exist will result in an error message on stderr which you can ignore (ispell will create
the le when you nish checking your spelling).
6.7.1.3 Further Options
The Spellchecker Options dialog has some additional options which are self-explanatory:
Accept compound words
Prevent the spellchecker from complaining about compounded words like
passthrough.
Escape characters
Allows you to add nonstandard characters to what the spellchecker considers
words, e.g. German umlauts. This should not normally be needed.
6.7.2 Limitations
Some users have expressed a wish to be able to globally change the spelling of a par-
ticular word, rather than having to change the spelling separately for each occurrence
90
6.8 International Support
of the word. Per-document word lists would also be useful. Neither of these features
are present as of this writing.
Unless youre using the pspell spellchecker, L
Y
X cannot correctly spellcheck doc-
uments containing multiple languages. This, does, however, work with pspell, as-
suming you have marked the dierent languages appropriately.
6.8 International Support
This section describes how to use L
Y
X with any language you want. L
Y
X comes with
a default conguration which supports the English language on a U.S.-style keyboard,
with a standard U.S. paper size and the spellchecker set to U.S. English. You can
change any or all of these settings as desired, and you can make the changes apply
to the current session only, or use them as your new default conguration.
If you have a keyboard suited to the language you are using (for example, a German
keyboard for writing in German), and you have correctly congured your X environ-
ment, all you need to do for L
Y
X is tell it your language, the character encoding, and
desired paper size. Refer to 6.8.1 for more information.
If, however, you have a U.S.-style keyboard and want to write in a dierent language
than English, you can use an alternate keymap. For example, if you have a U.S.-style
keyboard but want to write in Italian, you can congure L
Y
X to use an Italian keymap.
Refer to 6.8.2 for details.
Finally, you may just want to change a few key mappings or create an entirely
dierent keymap (for Vulcan, for instance). You may, for example, normally write in
Italian on a U.S. keyboard but want to include an occasional quotation in German.
In such a case, you can write your own keyboard mapping or modify an existing one
to support the characters you want.
The details of how to customize L
Y
X to your own language are way beyond the
scope of this manual. You can not only alter the keyboard layout, you can also change
the names of the menus buttons, etc., to reect your language. If you want to learn
more about writing keymap les and tailoring L
Y
X to your native tongue, please see
the Customization manual for details.
6.8.1 Language Options
The Document Settings dialog lets you set the language and character encoding for
your language.
Choose your language by clicking on the arrow in the Language combobox of the
Document Settings dialog. The default is U.S. English. Scroll to nd the language
you want and then click on your choice. The language name appears in the window.
4
4
In L
A
T
E
X terms, selecting a language other than default adds Babel support. If you do not have
Babel installed, refer to the dierent L
A
T
E
X distributions for it.
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6 More Tools
The Encoding box lets you choose the character encoding map you want to use.
The default is the Latin1 encoding, which includes the characters required by the
various Western European languages.
6.8.2 Keyboard mapping conguration
The preferences dialog allows you to choose up to two keyboard mappings. This
allows you to choose the keymap of your choice for your U.S.-style keyboard. You
can choose primary and secondary keyboard languages and then select which one you
want to use.
6.8.3 Character Tables
Table 6.1 shows the Latin1 character set. You should be able to enter the characters
in the rst eight columns directly from the keyboard.
There are a few things you need to know about this table. This manual is set up
by hand, mind you to print all of these characters. That aint the default.
Nowhere near, in fact. Here are some of the details youll need to bear in mind when
using characters from the Latin1 character set:
The characters at entries A2, A4, A5, A6 and AD the cent, the yen, the
generic-currency-symbol, the broken vertical bar and the short dash are just
plain missing in the default encodings. We dont know where they are or why
this is the case.
Even if youve selected latin1 in the Document Settings dialog, users who have
only the T1-fonts for L
A
T
E
X [or who have the T1-fonts but arent using them]
will still miss a few characters: D0, F0, DE, FE, AB, and BB the uppercase
and lowercase eth and thorn, and the french quotes wont show up.
Users of T1-fonts can, however, get the french quotes [characters AB and BB]
if they include the either the package umlaute.sty or german.sty in their
documents.
5
The following is a full list of all of the accented characters L
Y
X can display directly.
It includes not only the accented characters from the previous table, but also the
characters from ISO8859--2 through 4.
From ISO8859--1:
diaeresis
^ circumex
5
This only holds when you want to input these quotes by yourself. The automatic quote feature
described in Section 3.7.2.2, will generate automatically L
A
T
E
X code adapted to available fonts
and packages.
92
6.8 International Support
Table 6.1: The latin1 character set
00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 A0 B0 C0 D0 E0 F0
00 0 @ P p
01 ! 1 A Q a q
02 2 B R b r
2

03 # 3 C S c s
3

04 $ 4 D T d t
05 % 5 E U e u
06 & 6 F V f v
07 7 G W g w
08 ( 8 H X h x
09 ) 9 I Y i y
1

0A * : J Z j z
0B + ; K [ k {
0C , < L \ l |
0D - = M ] m }
0E . > N ^ n ~
0F / ? O _ o
grave
acute
~ tilde
cedilla
macron
6
From ISO8859--2 through 4:

Sc gs circumex
acute

U u tilde
R LG rl gN K nk cedilla
7

Ee

U a o u macron
hungarian umlaut
All the characters above are actively supported by T
E
X fonts. In addition T
E
X allows
diacritical marks on almost all characters . Also make sure youre using the T1
6
The dead macron in usually not needed, as you will use a nondead key for this instead. For
example, S-M-minus, or if .Xmodmap is correct, S-M-macron.
7
These characters might not look very nice on screen, but they will be just ne when run through
L
A
T
E
X and printed.
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6 More Tools
font-encoding and have the package umlaute.sty with the denition le iso.def
installed.
94
7 Credits
The documentation is a collaborative eort between many dierent people (and we
would encourage people to contribute !).
First, we need to give due credit to those who came before us. They gave us the base
upon which the new manuals are built, and some continue to provide information:
Matthias Ettrich wrote the original documentation, from which this manual
is built, as well as the introduction to this manual [or the L
Y
X Manifesto, as
some of us call it].
Lars Gullik Bjnnes wrote several minidocs, including some of the infor-
mation about international support in L
Y
X.
Ivan Schreter also wrote a minidoc about international support, specically
about international keyboard maps and customization.
Pascal Andr originally documented the LinuxDoc SGML interface.
Alejandro Aguilar Sierra originally documented math mode and provided
the entries for the math functions in Reference.lyx
Special thanks to the L
Y
X Team [1] for help and answers to questions.
Next, its time to give credit to the L
Y
X Documentation Team, all of the people who
helped rewrite the old documentation into the form it had after L
Y
X version 0.10:
David Johnson:
Contributor to the FAQ and the old HowDoI-.lyx [now defunct].
General editing assistance.
Documentation of:
math mode
tables
spellchecking
Rich Fields:
Primary contributor to Reference.lyx
95
7 Credits
Documentation of the basic L
Y
X interface in UserGuide.lyx
Paul Evans:
Former maintainer of the FAQ and the old HowDoI-.lyx [now defunct].
Documentation of LinuxDoc in UserGuide.lyx
Paul Russel:
Documentation of gures and imported graphics in UserGuide.lyx
John Raithel:
Documentation of internationalization features in UserGuide.lyx
Robin Socha:
Documentation of:
footnotes
margin notes
table of contents
cross-references
Amir Karger
Primary contributor to Tutorial.lyx
Matthias Zenker:
Documentation of
manual ne-tuning
using L
A
T
E
X from within L
Y
X
John Weiss:
General organization and format of the documents.
Documentation of :
L
Y
X setup
paragraph environments, document layout, nesting, typography notes,
fonts
Also responsible for Introduction in Tutorial.lyx
Editor of the documents. [from 6/96-fall 1997]
After fall of 1997, the L
Y
X Team as a whole took over maintenance of the documen-
tation.
96
Bibliography
[1] The L
Y
X Team: CREDITS
[2] Leslie Lamport: L
A
T
E
X: A Document Preparation System. Addison-Wesley, second
edition, 1994
[3] Michel Goossens, Frank Mittelbach and Alexander Samarin: The L
A
T
E
X Compan-
ion. Addison-Wesley, 1994
[4] Kopka and Daly: A Guide to L
A
T
E
X2

[5] Donald E. Knuth. The T

E
Xbook
97