lyx.local

LyX customization files to make my life easier. With this tool I (and possibly you too) can

• develop local styles in one place with joy,
• deploy and reconfigure easily with shell commands.

Disclaimer: Use this tool at your own risk; it may erase important files in your local UserDir. I would recommend against trying it when you have an approaching deadline.

1. Download and initialize

I assume that you have LyX and bash. git and make are recommended but optional. (You can download ZIP instead of git clone. make init is just and alias for bash etc/init.sh, make deploy for bash etc/deploy.sh, etc.)

If you are on Microsoft Windows, use WSL, MSYS2, MINGW, or Cygwin, though not fully tested on these platforms.

Open a Terminal window, then run

cd path/to/your/favorite/location
git clone https://github.com/kenjisato/lyx.local
cd lyx.local
make init

If you are asked to do so, check etc/config file. Since your system and/or application layout are not supported, automatic initialization failed. You must properly define variables Python, LyX, LyXDir, and UserDir.

MS Windows users don't need to install Python yourself, though it's very useful. LyX's Windows binary is shipped with it.

2. Modify

Take a look at etc/deploy_targets file. It defines three array variables.

• directories: included directories,
• exclude: excluded files, and
• require_backup: important files that need to make backup when a duplicate is found in UserDir.

All paths are relative to LyX and you can use wildcard. By default, anything in the following directories to LyX's UserDir. No exclusion, no backups.

LyX
├── bind
├── clipart
├── doc
├── examples
├── images
├── kbd
├── layouts
├── scripts
├── templates
└── ui

It is highly likely that you will never need some layout files I ship. You can simply remove those file from LyX directory. NB: When I make updates to the repository and when you git pull after, then those deleted files will come back again.

I put blank etc/deploy_targets.local file for your convenience. I promise that I will keep this file as is so that any modification you make to this file won't be affected. This file is read after etc/deploy_targets and so if you re-define the array variables (directories, exclude, require_backup), the original definitions are overwritten.

Example: Maybe you don't want layout files for bxjscls and pxrubrica module (both for documents in Japanese), then you write something like below:

# etc/deploy_targets.local
exclude=('layouts/bxjs*' 'layouts/pxrubrica.module')

3. Deploy and reconfigure

Now you can deploy the customization files. With "deploy", I mean to copy files in LyX directory in the local repository to LyX's UserDir. This is done by

make deploy    # Or,  bash etc/deploy.sh

Then you need to Reconfigure LyX. The following command will execute configure.py from within UserDir.

make reconfigure  # Or,  bash etc/reconfigure.sh

To do both in one go, run

make deploy reconfigure

Restart LyX and you should see the changes take effect.

Tips for Mac users

Clicking the red cross button is not enough. Type ⌘Q to properly shut down the app. Or, if don't want to leave Terminal, you may want to use the following command:

osascript -e 'quit app "LyX"'

Then the following command will re-open your demo document.

open demo/yourdemo.lyx

4. Write demos

When you are developing a module or layout file, you should be writing a LyX file for testing. The place for those demos is the demo direcory.

Place a LyX file there and you can compile it to PDF by running

make demo

This command compiles each LyX file in demo directory when the final PDF output is missing or older than the source file. By default the converter format is set to pdf5, i.e., the PDF file is created with LuaTeX. If you want to use pdflatex, then

make demo FORMAT=pdf2

For your information, LyX understands the following PDF formats:

• pdf (ps2pdf)
• pdf2 (pdflatex)
• pdf3 (dvipdfm)
• pdf4 (xetex)
• pdf5 (luatex)

You may desire to make pdflatex the default driver. Then, please edit your local makefile at the line defining FORMAT variable.

What's next? Someday, you feel comfortable with the behavior of your modules and layouts. Then, move the demo LyX file to LyX/doc directory. By doing so, you can open the document from within LyX.

Wish list

• Provide a way to delete a corresponding file in UserDir when a local development version is renamed.
• Write some more layout and module files.