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List:       lyx-devel
Subject:    Re: lyx file format ?
From:       "Jose' Matos" <jamatos () fc ! up ! pt>
Date:       2004-08-24 15:48:26
Message-ID: 200408241648.26360.jamatos () fc ! up ! pt
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On Tuesday 24 August 2004 02:49, Gerard Briscoe wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I am looking to create a latex editor which works similarly to how
> dreamweaver works for HTML, where you can edit both the latex markup
> language and the output in a split pane window.
>
> I came across Lyx, and I am very curios to know why the 'lyx' file
> format is not 'tex'. I have looked over a 'lyx' file, and it seems to
> me closer to RTF than anything else.

  This discussion appears periodically in the mailing list. :-)
  If search for it you in the archives you will see several threads along 
the years where this is discussed.

  If you look at the end of this page
  http://www.devel.lyx.org/tasks.php3
you will see a strong stance about this:
           ------------------- * -----------------------------
Things that we are not going to do after all! 

Switch to LaTeX as fileformat 

After (surprisingly little) discussion it was decided to postpone this. 
Perhaps forever. 
           ------------------- * -----------------------------

> Are there serious problems with using a 'tex' file format, which you do
> export too, limitations which would make the LyX GUI hard to code ?

  Certainly the question is not the GUI but the core.

  TeX is a complex beast, which subset would we support?
  This complexity can be witnessed in the different attempts to convert 
latex to lyx, first reLyX and then tex2lyx. To parse tex code is not an 
easy task unless you have TeX itself.

  What would we gain with such a change?

> I would be most grateful for any insight you could give me! :)

  We control the file format and can make it evolve and mature at our own 
pace. Our intention is to move the lyx format to xml.

> Thanks
> Regards
> Gerard
>
>
> P.S. I have tried to join the mailing list twice, not sure if I am
> on.... how do you check?

  If we got this message then you are here. :-)

> Gerard Briscoe
> Research Asisstant
> Digitial Business Ecosystems Project
> Intelligent Systems and Networks
> Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
> Imperial College London
> http://www.iis.ee.ic.ac.uk/~g.briscoe

-- 
José Abílio

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