LyX 1.2 for DocBookApril 30, 2002GaryMurphyA quick 5-minute review of using LyX 1.2 for DocBook authoring. Keep in mind this is not meant to be an exhaustive review or be any sort of evaluation of LyX on its own merits, this is only a quick review of LyX with regard to editing DocBook articles in relation to the other free XML editing tools such as XXE and Emacs psgml-mode.First ImpressionsThe first item that appears when trying to use the new experimental branch of the LyX word processor for DocBook is the appearance of the same familiar LyX interface; it's not totally obvious that this thing does DocBook at all. The import choices list the long defunct LinuxDoc, along with MsWord, but no DocBook. On closer examination, though, there is a DocBook Article template option.
Selecting that option, it's still not totally obvious. The filename is still a .lyx file. Highlighting text with the intention to mark it as a literal or some other DocBook tag is also not apparently obvious, and there are no interface objects which are obvious as DocBook markup.First CommandsThe first thing that does work as expected is to select a new section. This produces a proper section heading, numbered as one would expect.Selecting a subsection, though, immediate makes the current paragraph into a subsection heading rather than opening a new heading; LyX apparently does not use a “mark and select” editing model, but instead uses the more confusing “set mode and proceed” model.The issue remains, than, of how to introduce docbook markup.Basic MarkupAdding basic markup like subsections follows as the usual LyX sequence of opening a new li!
ne, selecting the mode, and continuing to type, with a carriage return to end that mode and return to standard text. The other buttons, on the other hand, follow a select/op mode where text can be selected, and then the font changed via ! or the little man. The semantic meanings of these markup elements is not explained.Entering tagsThis part is pretty elusive; I'm not going to go to the manual for this because an interface should be self-revealing, but it expect this may be a place where you need to actually educate yourself as to the designer's intentions. Ditto for the buttons which, being xform based, have no tooltips --- it's anyone's guess what a ! or a little man might mean (unless you're an old-hand at LyX). The basic philosophy, then, is “to do this, you got to know how” but I always wonder if it is then true that since you had to learn something to use it anyway, why not simply learn the markup?There's another button marked “font” with an arrow below it, but clicking this only fills the status line with “(Changed) (font-free)” ... whatever that means.you do get itemized listswhich repeat for each itemuntil you back-space over the bulletand then you can't type the next paragraph until you enter a bullet item and use the style-set to change it to standard. Most of the actions of the interface will happen from the style-select box. and this has no concept of what is valid and what is not; you can insert any tag inside any other regardless of the legality of it within the current DTD. Many of these options also have no real meaning for DocBook (such as “paragraph” which changes the font rather than introducing a paragraph break or something tangible like that).I do see !
GUI buttons in the stylesheet, but I've been unable to discover how to add my own; IIRC, LyX lets you insert LaTeX commands inline in the text, and I expect the DocBook way is to use this facility to insert the special elements.Special effectsThere are some special effects in the style menu which may be useful, but it's not obvious what these do or how to use them; you just have to try them and see,Description
this appears to be a description line which probably does the same as an itemized or enumerated list in creating a style that isrepeated
for subsequent lines and continued until you enter a new line and switch it back to the standard markup.If there are hotkeys for these mode changes, there is no indication in the interface.you can always read the manual.
In addition to the style settings, LyX has a menu item caled “insert” which contains some special objects to put into the text.this is a footnote to be inserted into the text streamand it apparently continues regardless of paragraph breaks.to return from these objects, you have to move the cursor outside of the bounding box on the GUI display.a hyperlink insert is also a bit of a break from the flow; my biggest complaint about this mode of working is that it upsets the flow of the writing as you have to stop, fill out some sort!
of box (sometimes a modal dialog, sometimes an inline box) and then jump out of it to return to your prior mode.while you do this in the flow of the text, the formating given by LyX in the GUI display will become skewed as the new element will be inserted inline across the full width of the page; with the note attached to this paragraph, the line of text just prior to the note becomes justified to show only four words on the line equally spaced. This makes proof-reading a little difficult; I can click on the “note” icon to collapse it, but that also moves my cursor to the point before the icon, so I have to re-navigate back to the end of the sentence to continue. Again, there may be hotkeys for all this, and I do hope there are, but there are no clues as to what keys these might be.For the menu items, LyX lets you use Alt-key sequences to first select the menu item by the mnemonic letter, and then select the item. I don't know if there are any su!
ch keystrokes to select styles.Arrow keys appear to get you out of the boxes if you happen to be at the end of the box text. Arrows will also freely navigate within these displayed inline boxes as if they were part of the page.
table formating
navigating by tabs
lets you define tables by specifying the rows and cols and then moving around inside them to add your text, but the control-enter is no longer a forced break.
so it seems
tables are
modal
First DocBookWith a bit of experimentation, it seems LyX saves its document in its native format, but offers an export function to save the current document as SGML DocBook; selecting this option flashes a brief message to say the file has been saved with the same name but with the .sgml suffix.
Working with Structured DocsThis is where LyX has always shined, and 1.2 does not disappoint: The Navigate menu shows the structure in an outline format allowing you to quickly move from section to section.Printing DocBookProducing the printout proved to be painless; the SGML produced is a little ugly but not unworkable (and you could probably use tidy to fix it); passing the exported SGML into xsltproc --html with the xsl-stylesheets produced this file as a beautifully formatted HTML rendering of a DocBook article.ConclusionsFor those who like LyX, I think you're going to be very happy, but for those who don't, be prepared for some oddities and frustrations. This is not an XML editor, it isn't a DocBook editor, it is a structured text editor that just happens to offer a DocBook export format (no idea if it imports DocBook).For my own use, I !
don't think I will switch from psgml-mode, but I may use it as a means to produce simple documents or to rapidly flush out a document which I will later massage with Emacs psgml-mode. Just from this cursory look at the interface, it is apparent you can customize a lot of it, for example, it is preset with CUA keybinding which I expect can be changed to VI or Emacs (although, again, if the user can do this, the user could handle using Emacs in the first place).