From lyx-users Mon Apr 13 20:25:17 2009 From: Dan Fitch Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 20:25:17 +0000 To: lyx-users Subject: Re: LyX for bill drafting Message-Id: X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=lyx-users&m=123965435003843 Thanks to the list denizens for being incredibly helpful on this thread, already, within the space of a single day. You folks rock, and you obviously have a fierce love of your project! On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 2:35 PM, Charles de Miramon wrote: > Richard Heck wrote: > >> Dan Fitch wrote: >>> 2. Is there a facility for arbitrary section numbering that integrates >>> with LyX? I have seen ERT solutions that allow forcing a numbering >>> change; is there any way to do that through the LyX UI as of v1.6? >>> >>> >> No, but it might be possible to do this via modules. I'm not sure. >> > > The tough part would be the (4) (4c) (4e) (4m) (5) > > How does it work in your actual software ? Is there any logic in the letters > ? > > Cheers, > Charles It is "ad hoc" so they can always insert sections between two existing sections; for example, if there is already a 1 and a 2, they can't renumber those very easily, on account of existing law which may refer to them. So they make a "1m" to go between. That's only one level of the structured document; additionally, the cross references can go across documents. It gets ugly, and it's a very large corpus of text. As some folks on the lists are pointing out, this kind of arbitrary section numbering and referencing is a bad idea for many reasons, not least of which the fact that it clearly causes a huge mess. Of course, labyrinthine systems have built up over the years to try validate the user input. They are unmaintainable. I am basically glorified tech support for this legacy system, so I can't say "DO IT THIS WAY!" We are hoping to push the users in a saner direction someday soon, and that may include something like: - Extending LyX so that the cross reference window has a second tab with a document structure tree, and if they pick an element from that, it checks to see if there is a label there; creating it if not - Reducing their reliance on "implicit" references, where they can say "See chapter 4, section 5.14 (b)" and have that "automatically" turned into a cross reference by The Labyrinth - Convincing them that their current method of referencing is a bit crazy All this cross reference stuff is one thing; the way bills get amended is worse, derived directly from how they used to amend things with typewriters, scissors, and tape by saying "Change line 4 on page 3 to read XYZ". It seems initially like LyX is a pretty good fit for this problem area -- I am curious if anyone else is using it, possibly along with some of the legal LaTeX/TeX packages like jurabib or lextex. Thanks again for all your input! Dan