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List:       lyx-users
Subject:    RPG Manual with Lyx?
From:       Luca De Marini <luca.darkmaster () gmail ! com>
Date:       2009-07-13 9:35:40
Message-ID: 388de9300907130235u73886660n106cdedb5ca6c53b () mail ! gmail ! com
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Hallo everybody, I'm writing this because I'd like to start a new adventure
in lyx now that I know a lot about this tool, only fronted-side, not code or
LaTex side, sorry. So, I'm writing a Role Playing game manual here in Italy
and my idea is that of trying to write it with an opensource software. Now,
of course I know that for typography the best tool is Scribus. BUT, I love
Lyx and I managed to create a fantastic colorful thesis for my Architectural
studies with it. It was a 2 columns document with notes, pictures, etc.
An RPG manual is something way more elaborated. WAY MORE. Have a look at
white wolf's manuals to understand the extent of the graphical effort I'm
going to achieve. The problem is, many things cannot be done, from my point
of view, in Lyx to achieve this result. And maybe this is simply not the
tool intended for this kind of result. I need 2 columns pages (OK) with the
possibility to use a picture as a frame for the entire page, or as a
background if you prefer. This picture should be changeable from a section
or from a chapter to another. Say, this chapter has a picture frame of one
kind, then changng chapter I can change the background picture again, etc.
Not only that. I need to be able to put parts of a text, like a citation, a
small emphasized part of the text, something to be outlined, into a fancy
small picture used as a background for it. Fancy tables would be needed too,
but this could even be used with a work-around: I create the tables in Gimp
or something similar, save them as picture and import them into the Lyx
document in a Floating Table frame (for table indexing later).

Now, why I wanna do it in Lyx? Many reasons, the main reasons are:

1) I love Lyx
2) Lyx documents look incredible, very nice, veeeeery professional.
Everything is automated and done for good, it is NOT a WYSIWYG and this is
nice to keep focused on the contents.
3) I'm an opensource fan and leader of a GNU / LInux distro (OPenGEU) and
I'd like to show off to the world the powers of opensource software. Lyx is
in my opinion the best thing around in opensource documents managing.
4) Currently all of this is impossible to do in Lyx with normal tools and
GUI commands. Probably the result is achievable with complex code to be
inserted here and there. This is NOT the solution. People cannot use code,
you can't ask people to. So, probably this effort will help Lyx become more
powerful, many new small adjustements could be implemented with a work of
this kind.

Everybody, coders, users, everyone is invited in participating. I think this
is a great occasion to have a powerfuller Lyx, able of achieving even more
incredible results in many more fields of documents processing. Do you think
this is achievable? Anyone wanna help? Remember I'm not trying to do this
for my only personal achievement. It costs zero to me using Scribus instead
and living Lyx alone. It's just that I think this can be a nice fight to try
and win! :)

Greetings everyone,

Luca D.M.

http://thedarkmaster.wordpress.com
http://www.opengeu.com


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