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List:       lyx-users
Subject:    Re: RPG Manual with Lyx?
From:       Manveru <manveru () manveru ! pl>
Date:       2009-07-13 13:28:59
Message-ID: 936b14d20907130628g4b18b8d7y369e7da3fa464aa3 () mail ! gmail ! com
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2009/7/13 Luca De Marini <luca.darkmaster@gmail.com>:
> 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
>

You know... My answer to above is that you have to learn TeX and LaTeX
hard, and then design your own style for that with all fountains. Then
you have to prepare layout file for LyX. The example of Beamer shows
that LaTeX allows a lot, really.

If you choose Scribus (which is very professional open-source piece of
DTP software), please keep on mind the designers way of preparing such
documents. You have to write all your text content and prepare all the
graphics at first stage, then at the next step design your styles in
Scribus and then use the elements from both stages to design your
manual. If you start in Scribus and you will experiment with this, you
quickly do a real mess in you design and then you may need to start
from scratch with it.


-- 
Manveru
jabber: manveru@manveru.pl
     gg: 1624001
   http://www.manveru.pl
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