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This page contains some tips for posting on the Lyx User's list and the Lyx developers list
First of all, don't be afraid... they won't bite you :-) Below are some tips for making your posts easier for other people to read and respond to your questions:
§1. Terminology
The terms article, e-mail and post will be used as synonyms, all meanining a text sent to one of the mailing lists or news groups.
§2. Writing your first post (i.e. e-mail to one of the lists)
- Do not hijack threads. This happens when you start completely new issue/problem by replying to some unrelated message you see in maillist. Instead compose the message from scratch and fill the mail address of list by hand.
- A descriptive title on the article is often useful, but if you can't think of anything good that's ok...
- Make sure to include details of your system and the version of LyX you are running.
- Before your first message is actually sent to the list, the mail server will send you an e-mail that you have to reply to. Once the mail server has gotten that reply your message will be sent to the list.
§3. What information should I put in a mail to the User's list?
Matej preaching about posting correct questions to a list:
- State clearly what environment you have, i.e. not only LyX-version, but also the rest — Windows?, Mac OS X?, Linux? Which distribution? which version and which distribution of (La)TeX?
- State clearly what did you do (do you use BibTeX? which class document?
- state clearly what was desired effect,
- state clearly what happened,
- Post short (minimal) example showing the problem.
Note: Minimal means that the example only contains what is needed and no more.
§4. Replying to someone else's article
Please bottom-post instead of top-post:
- Most "old-timers" on the lists prefer you to write your reply after the original message (bottom-posting)... the reason is that they get so follow so many messages that they can't keep track of them otherwise (senile old buggers;)
- To avoid long messages, try to remove parts of the original post that is not needed
- See this ListExampleReply
§5. Signature
Some mail software (e.g. Pine) can recognize signatures if you put a
line containing two hyphens and one space just before the signature (-- ).
The mail program can then automatically remove the signature when a
reply is composed. In a thread with several levels, the advantage of
skipping signatures should be obvious.
Below is an example:
--
John Doe, Non-existant LyX-user since forever...
§6. Tips
Use the command lyx -version to have LyX output various information, i.e:
$ lyx -version
LyX 1.3.2 of Tue, May 6 2003
Built on May 13 2003, 10:42:46
Configuration
Host type: i686-pc-linux-gnu
Special build flags:
C Compiler: gcc
C Compiler flags: -g -O2
C++ Compiler: g++ (2.96)
C++ Compiler flags: -O -fno-exceptions -ftemplate-depth-30 -Wno-non-template-friend
Linker flags:
Frontend: qt
Qt version: 3.0.3
LyX binary dir: /pkg/lyx/1.3.2qt/bin
LyX files dir: /pkg/lyx/1.3.2qt/share/lyx
§7. Netiquette
Here's one link to some pages about "Netiquette". Feel free to add more links below...
- Nicely written page with some guidelines and also reasoning why they are useful.
- Top-posting v.s. bottom posting
- Some rants (i.e. things not to do) by Rick Moen:
- "This mailing list's software should auto-add a Reply-To header to all list posts, pointing back to the list."
- "Please send all replies (to my newsgroup/mailing list query) via private e-mail."
- You sent a private-mail reply to my attempt to help you on a mailing list, and failed to mention having done so.
- You posted my private mail to you, sent to you in confidence, to third parties and/or a public forum.
- You cross-posted your plea for help to multiple newsgroups, or mailing lists.
§8. Links
§9. Top-posting vs. Bottom-posting
Users of the LyX lists in general prefer bottom-posting. If you have no idea what this is, read on.
FAQ Netiquette
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