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List:       lyx-users
Subject:    Re: Graphics/Figures in LyX, Call for Features
From:       Roland Krause <rokrau () yahoo ! com>
Date:       2000-06-07 14:10:04
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I certainly agree that eps is the format of choice for Latex when things
are going to be printed.
I noted though that there are many people out there that have reverted
to create pdf documents, somewhat as a last resort against having to do
M$soft.

Anyway for pdflatex eps is not an option. Also for screen presentations
eps figures are not really a good choice because of the scaling problem.
Screen presentations require a lot more real Wysiwyg than we (Latex/LyX
folks) usually like to care about. Summarizing:

1 For standard Latex based Lyx processing we would like and need eps/ps
figures, the method of choice to include these would be the graphic[sx]
packages. A nice feature would be to automagically detect the creator of
the figure (e.g. xfig) and an option to open the figure for editing...

2 For standard Latex based Lyx processing we would also like the option
to include png jpeg etc. Option for the conversion of these formats to
and from postscript are:
    - pbm tools (Thats what they were called in the early days, I think
they are in libgr on my Mandrake distro now)
   -  ImagaMagick (which has a programming interface so that on the fly
conversion should be possible
If the graphic[sx] package is supported let Latex deal with png, jpeg
etc.

3 Then there are the folks that need/want to create pdf documents. Here
is where things get really ugly. Pdf can be created mainly in two ways.
Directly with pdflatex and in a postprocessing step with either
ghostscript, pstill or afaik Acrobat Distiller. pdflatex wont do eps but
there is a conversion tool in teTeX (epstopdf) to convert  eps/ps to
pdf.

Therefore LyX could  could handle eps figures for latex and pdf files
for latex in a transparent way through bitmap conversion via
ghostscript, much as it does now.

A new figure inset should first check what's available on the system and
make sure the user doesnt do things like trying to use eps figures with
pdflatex.Then it must convert the desired format to a bitmap to be
displayed on the screen.

These would be my wishes/ideas for a new figure inset. I have looked at
the current code and I think it should be rewritten from scratch and the
old one should be left in place while the new one is developed.

Unfortunately, xforms hinders the development of nicer Wysiwim more then
it supports it and it would be much easier to do things in a KDE based
environment where the programmer is actually supported by the libs.
Therefore my usual

<rant>
Why GUI independece? Drop xforms now! Port LyX to KDE
<rant/>

Regards
Roland


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