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FeaturePoll

You can vote for an existing feature request by adding your name (preceeded by treble star***) below the feature. You can also request an entirely new feature (preceeded with single star*, and double star** for sub categories), with the sole limitation your imagination.

Note that:

• Features that have been implemented in the current stable version are highlighted green. Cf. this overview on new features in LyX 1.4, this overview for new features in LyX 1.5, and this overview for new features in LyX 1.6.
• Features that are under development for the next major version are marked yellow. Cf. this overview on the current developments.
• Features that are very unlikely to be implemented (due to developer design decision, technical reasons, etc.) are marked red.
• Features that are available for sponsorship at http://www.lyx.org/Donate are marked orange.

Tools

Spellchecker

• Spell Checker Dialog
  • "Change All" option→implemented in LyX 2.0
    • Helge Hafting
    • Sam Lewis
    • Günter Milde
  • Spelling language indication on pane (See bug 2208)→implemented in LyX 2.0
    • Georg Baum
    • Martin A. Hansen
    • Helge Hafting
    • Hellmut Weber
    • Mirko Briemle
    • Liviu Andronic
  • Dock widget or even intext popup widget for spellchecker (See bug 2266)→LyX 2.0 features a dock widget
    • Sam Lewis
    • Uwe Stöhr
    • Felipe Morales
    • Helge Hafting
    • Emme Ci
• Spell Checking Workflow
  • Ability to edit while spellchecking (see bug 2529). I often find unrelated errors during a spellchecking session. But if I fix them, spellcheck have to start over from the beginning. It'd be nice to simply continue from the position where it stopped last time.
    →fixed in LyX 2.0
    • Helge Hafting
    • Uwe Stöhr
    • Jean-Pierre Chrétien
  • Continuous spell checking, as you write with wavy underlining (See bug 718)→implemented in LyX 2.0
    →How to sponsor this feature
    • John C. McCabe-Dansted (Yes, not only useful to liberal arts writers...)
    • Benjamin Kellermann
    • Gabriel many
    • Scott Otterson
    • Kirk McDonald (even liberal arts writers should be supported))
    • Marco Rossi
    • Alain Lifchitz
    • Ran Rutenberg
    • Martin Kalling
    • Prakash Manandhar
    • Sylvain Reboux
    • Matthias Gorges (writing in Word and copying it into LyX isn't that great!)
    • Sam Lewis (supposedly increases spelling learn capacity)
    • Francois Beaubert
    • Paul Hines (This method is faster for long documents because one does not need to repeatedly ignore the same set of abbreviations or foreign names. It takes me 20 min to check my thesis as is.)
    • Tim Michelsen
    • Mirko Briemle
    • Christopher Reeve (As said, saves time with documents containing abbreviations and technical words)
    • Dominik Waßenhoven
    • Reiner Wainhold
    • Erez Yerushalmi
    • Liviu Andronic
    • Peter Buxton
    • Rafael Melo
    • Peter Baumgartner
    • Spyros Kotoulas
    • Silvo
  • Turn-off option for spell checking comments or notes (See bug 1509)
    • Gabriel Many
    • Sylvain Reboux
    • Andreas Neustifter
    • Sam Lewis
    • Hellmut Weber
    • Liviu Andronic
    • Benny
  • Allowing sections not to be spellchecked (see bug 1042). This is very useful for computer code, acronyms etc., no more "click click click..." to skip through all these while spellchecking. Also useful with the continous spellcheck mentioned below.
    • Helge Hafting
    • Arkadiusz Danilecki
    • Liviu Andronic

Find and Replace

• Find and replace dialog
  • Dock widget for Find and Replace
    → some work for LyX 2.0 was done by Tommaso Cucinotta (see also this overview and bugs 3998 2625)
    • Emme Ci
    • Sam Lewis
    • Michael Reed
    • Andreas K.
    • Helge Hafting
    • Günter Milde
• Find and replace workflow
  • 'Find and replace source text
    E.g. Able to search for \index{density, able to replace McCabe with M\textsuperscript{c}Cabe etc. Also Unicode regexes. (See bug 3998).
    → Preliminary work done for LyX 2.0, see this overview
    • John C. McCabe-Dansted
    • Kirk McDonald
    • Edward Cherlin
    • Sylvain Reboux
    • Tim Michelsen
    • Helge Hafting
    • Rudi Gaelzer
    • Hellmut Weber
    • Tomasz Kołodziejski
  • Highlight all matches, not just the current one (with a different color for the current one compared to the others) like VIM and Opera.
    • Jim Oldfield

Statistics

• (Word) counting
  • Include character counting (useful for PNAS). → new in 1.5.4
    • Some One
  • An ignore-wordcounting-notes option → new in LyX 1.6.4: notes and inactive branches content will not be counted.
    • Sam Lewis
    • Piero Faustini

Change Tracking/Document Comparison/Revision Control

• Change Tracking (new in LyX 1.4)
  • Show/Hide changes on screen (LyX Workarea)
    for working on long documents it is very confusing always having all deleted text still there especially when lots of changes are made. so it would be great to have an option that would show only the final output on the screen
    • Jan D. Hauck
    • Peter Coles
• Comparing documents (see 3469) →implemented in LyX 2.0
  →How to sponsor this feature

  • Sam Lewis
  • Tim Michelsen (very useful. see: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.editors.lyx.general/38331)
  • Hellmut Weber
  • 'Manveru'
• Revision Control
  • using SVN instead of/additional to RCS → SVN is supported.
  • (Better) version control for windows (I've tried all sorts of way of getting RCS installed on windows (which worked, but lyx can't seem to work with) → lyx should work correctly with rcs as of version 1.6.0 --ps
  • Ryan Cross - (v 1.4)
  • CVS support, with ability to diff a file against other revisions of that file. It would also be nice to be able to include the CVS revision history into the document itself ( ->autogenerated changelog).
    • Jeremy Stashluk
  • Mercurial support. Mercurial is a distributed revision control written in Python. It would be nice if it is available in lyx out of the box.
    • Alvin Sebastian

version control

Date Preferences

• Lyx should provide a drop-down menu list of common Date formats from which a user may choose. The user shouldn't have to supply a date format code -- e.g., %x, etc. The drop-down menu should display example date formats like modern wordprocessors.

  • Bruce Bigby (bbigby@rochester.rr.com)

Formatting Tools

• colour and appearance of inserted horizontal lines
  • LyX should provide a simple right-mouse-button-menue to change thickness and colour (and maybe even the style) of inserted formatting horizontal lines.

Citing, Referencing and the Lot

Citing

• Citation workflow
  • Check for hanging citations. It would be nice for Lyx to warn you of citations that you have not in your bibtex databases but still have cross-references referring to them. It's a pain to search through the document looking for the cross-refs. Perhaps it could be added to the new Labels&Reference Navigator. (Edit: Make them a different color, e.g. red, would also help a lot)
    • Jorge Moraleda
    • Jan D. Hauck
    • Benny
  • Change all function. --- In cases where the Bibtex key has changed in the Bib-file it would be cool to have a function in lyx that updates all bibtexkeys referring to the same entry.
    • Jan D. Hauck
    • Benny
• User Interface
• Really easy and slick BibTeX Frontend build into LyX
  →This is very unlikely to happen. A bibliography tool (also a simple one) is a rather complex application, and there are countless applications available that do better than a homebrewn one ever could. However, in LyX 1.6, you can directly open included BibTeX databases via a context menu on BibTeX references. LyX will automatically detect an installed BibTeX editor, such as Jabref or Pybliographic. Also, 1.6 has improved support for searching, etc., references.

  • Kirk McDonald
  • Andrew Loch (JabRef has a nice interface, but is too slow)
  • Martijn Brouwer. Not necessary: checkout pybliographic
  • Ekkehart Schlicht. It would be just cool if it were possible to add new bibliographic items through the citation insert window right away into the Bibtex database used by the document.
  • Gabriel Many
  • Jacob Floyd - I would love to see environment-like bibliography entries, ie: appliying bibliography-book to a book entry would format it correctly in the output, and bibliography-author to the author, bib-section to the section, etc. I can never remember the conventions in bibliographies (emphasize, quote...) so something where I can just tell the app (in this case LyX) what the reference is, and let it format it (WYSIWYM) would be great.
  • John Ward
  • Stefan Statuner - Perhaps some help in working with Endnote (import direct the Endnote format)
  • Ran Gilad-Bachrach
  • Rudi Gaelzer
• Support with built-in bibliography tool for only showing references that are cited.

  • Gabriel Many
• Zotero integration for citing (bug 6300). Zotero is a very popular open source bibliography manager which especially is good at capturing references directly from the Web. It would be nice to have a kind of LyXPipe installed, so that you could transfer the reference directly to your LyX File (Similar the JabRef function).
  → Not a LyX issue proper; however, the new firefox plugin LyZ addresses these issues.

  • Marc Levivier
  • Peter Baumgartner
  • Ingo Bormuth
  • Mikko Rönkkö

  • There is Lytero, which works through a pipe and should work now also on Windows. It is however not maintained and does seem to be working out of the box (at least on Windows) (Petr Šimon)
• Packages and commands
  • Extended natbib support (i.e. superscript citation style, sort&compress, force round brackets)
    • Martijn Brouwer
    • Henrik Nilsen Omma
    • Kirk McDonald
    • Tim Michelsen
    • Gregor Hochschild
    • Michael Spiegel
    • Liviu Andronic
  • Improved jurabib support via gui.
    • John Ward
    • Sergio Morresi
    • Peter Davidson
    • Jeremy Malcolm
    • Gregor Hochschild
  • Support the biblatex package (once it is stable)

Citations

Cross-referencing

• Workflow
  • Automatic cross reference labels. The writer should not need to insert a label to cross-reference section 3.6.1. LyX should offer all numbered entities in the cross reference dialog and auto-generate latex labels as needed. The explicitly inserted label is only for cases where the reference isn't to the start of the section, so that it might go on a different page than the heading.
    • Helge Hafting
    • Steven Webb
    • Rudi Gaelzer
    • Fred Nugen
    • Sylvain Reboux
    • Spyros Kotoulas
    • Jorge Moraleda
    • Benny

• User Interface
  • Better sorting of labels in the cross-reference dialogue. I would like to have them sorted by name (part of the label following the prefix such as "fig:") or by type (prefix such as "fig:" or "sec:"). I would also like to be able to type into this dialog to fast-search for the label I need. When editing a very large document, the current interface is unwieldy.
    →implemented in LyX 2.0
    • Chris Barrington-Leigh
    • Benny
• Extensions
  • Crossreferences to unrelated documents. The package xr allows cross references into other documents that are not part of the same child-master document tree. I.e. "See chapter 2, page 4 in my other report."
    • Helge Hafting
    • Rudi Gaelzer (I've been using/asking this for ages...)
    • Benny
  • Support package nameref. We can then typeset the name of the entity being referenced. See bug 3221.
    • Helge Hafting
  • Support package hyperref. Nice for PDF's. → new in 1.6
    • Helge Hafting

Glossary

• Built in Glossary support (maybe for glotex?)
  *** Glossary support (nomencl package) has been added for 1.5

Index

• Tool for helping inserting and editing labels of index of contents. When using a lot of index labels (for example, people names in a History or Literature article), would be very fine to have even a simple autocompletion tool or a menu, but best thing would be to use conventional labels and then associate once for all occurrencies a output text for each different label. For example: "BARD" label -> output in index "Shakespeare, Williams (1564--1616)" with correct bold, italics and so on, and save a huge amount of time.

  • Piero Faustini

Tables

• More table editing features, such as dashed lines and cell shading.

  • Steffen Tacke
  • Kirk McDonald
  • Gabriel Many
  • Luiz Souza
  • Ran Rutenberg
  • Sylvain Reboux
  • Liviu Andronic
• Better WYSIWYM Table Environmnent Handling
  Declare paragraph environments for contents of cells (e.g. standard, itemize, enumerate, comment...)
  Create table Environments to declare a cell/row/column a repeating or non-repeating header and automatically format the table in the output as such with some kind of default style or other, so that I don't have to think about formating the tables.

  • Jacob Floyd
  • Kirk McDonald
  • Gabriel Many
  • Sylvain Reboux
  • John Flood
  • Benny
• Improve WYSIWYM Table Handling
  Auto paragraph wrapping in cells to fit a table to the width of the page (possible modifying the right click table dialog box to allow specifying a page span or something like that, the auto wrapping and table layout is what's important). As a start simply getting the table to automatically wrap on screen, even if you still have to configure all the output stuff would be good to eliminate the horizontal scrolling which makes it difficult to work with large tables in LyX.

  • Jacob Floyd
  • Scott Otterson (especially: easy multi-row cells)
  • Kirk McDonald (especially:fit a table to the width of the page)
  • Gabriel Many (ditto Kirk's request)
  • Sylvain Reboux
  • John Flood (same as Kirk & Gabriel)
  • Gretchen Imahori (same as Kirk, Gabriel and John)
  • Tomasz Kołodziejski (especially multi-row)
  • Ivo Pavlík (especially easy multi-row feature)
  • Benny
• Simplify Tabular Data Reordering
  Implement a way to move data (cell(s)) via drag-n-drop. Also, moving rows up and down with M+Up and M+Down (as described for enumerated/itemized lists in another feature request) would be very beneficial.

  • Jacob Floyd
  • Tim Michelsen
  • Benny
• MS Excel-like method for multi column data import, either by paste, or by CSV file.
  → LyX 1.5.4 and 1.6 can iport CSV files

  • Scott Otterson
  • Tim Michelsen
  • Keith Burdis

Graphics/Instant Preview

• Simple Grafik-editor.Vector based
  → rather unlikely; this is a job for external applications.

  • Frank Petitjean
  • Gustav Schweitzer
  • Jim Oldfield - PGF/TikZ would be a good backend for this
  • Klaus Bauer - Would make Lyx the best note taking software I'd know.
• Just inlude Ipe (http://tclab.kaist.ac.kr/ipe/ a simple vector based Grafik-editor) into LyX. Ipe can export .eps and .pdf and supports LaTeX code in the drawing.

  • Gustav Schweitzer
  • Waluyo Adi Siswanto
• A better way of inserting floating figures than FloatFlt. → LyX 1.5.4 uses wrapfig instead.

  • Yann Disser
  • Scott Otterson
  • Gabriel Many
  • Graeme Morrison
• Paste graphic from clipboard: prompt for filename/location (but have reasonable defaults to allow things to go quickly), save clipboard picture, and include into the lyx document at the cursor location. (Motivation: I take notes in LyX during mathematical lectures, and I often want to include figures. With a tablet PC, it's quite easy to get the figure into the computer in real-time, but there are many steps to get that figure into LyX -- it's difficult to do it in real-time. How can that process be streamlined? May also help to allow graphics to be stored within the LyX file, so the user doesn't have to bother coming up with path/filename for each figure?)
  → New in 1.6

  • David Rosenberg
  • Ran Rutenberg
  • Thomas Winkler
  • Andrew Frank
  • Christopher Reeve
  • Iliya Kuznetsov
  • Sasha Gutfraind
• Support for PGF/TikZ or Asymptote preview

  • Sylvain Reboux
  • Francois Beaubert
  • Frank Petitjean
  • Florian Huber
  • David Roberts
  • Peter Foldiak
  • Benny

Math

• Double space to enter math mode. Just like a space exiting the math mode, a space after an existing space in text could enter the math mode, making typing smoother. Repeated spaces are currently not allowed and hence the key combination is dormant. Could also be made optional through Preferences.
• Subequations

  • Martijn Brouwer
  • Alysson Ferrari
  • Uwe Stöhr
  • Kirk McDonald
  • Luiz Souza
  • Rudi Gaelzer
  • Sylvain Reboux
  • Sander Nijdam
  • Espen Myklebust
• Easier inputting of mathematical symbols, as in TeXmacs. For example, instead of typing \alpha or choosing alpha from a math panel, you can hit 'a' and press TAB to loop through the variants in-place. Need a \subset or \prec? Hit '<' and press TAB a couple of times. Also, to make it clearer, enter => and see \implies, <=> and see \iff, and so on. → 1.6 has an auto-completion feature for this

  • John C. McCabe-Dansted
  • Vincenzo Ciancia
  • Kirk McDonald
  • Martin Forsgren
  • Sonja Mauerstein
  • Sylvain Reboux
  • Jan Verfl
  • Frank Denz
• Support for commutative diagrams
  These seem to be pretty fundamental. The XY-pic latex package has lots of capabilities and seems to be pretty standard. Obviously not everything needs to be included. But it would be nice if support for matrix style diagrams was included, with a dialog for customizing arrows.

  • Justin Noel
  • Travis Schedler
  • Masoud Kamgarpour
  • Hans Peter Gumm
  • Vincenzo Ciancia
  • Edward Carter
  • Rudi Gaelzer
  • Mirko Briemle
• Math search and replace. E.g. able to replace $\alpha$ with $\beta$ throughout the document without going into the LyX source code.
  → possible with the Advanced Search feature that is implemented for LyX 2.0.

  • Chris Barrington-Leigh
  • Kirk McDonald (important!)
  • Martin Forsgren
  • Luiz Souza
  • Andrej Bona
  • Greg Meymaris
  • Sylvain Reboux
  • Joel Calev
  • Rudi Gaelzer
  • Frédéric Faure
  • Ehtibar Dzhafarov (very important!)
  • Carlos Florentino
• Support for amsmath big Big bigg Bigg delimiters. Right now, the left and right delimiters are very nice because they're very easy to insert using keystrokes, and they look great on screen. Unfortunately, these left/right delimiters are actually more difficult to read when printed. I think things like \bigl( and \bigr) should show up as delimiters of the appropriate sizes. It would be really nice if the \left and \right delimiters could be [optionally] converted to \big -style delimiters during the conversion to latex, so that nested delimiters would always grow in size, but so user doesn't have to think about which of the big,bigg,Big,Bigg to use for each pair.

  • David Rosenberg
  • Kirk McDonald
  • Fred Nugen
• Preview for single equations. I don't use math preview because the math inset is easier to check, and because it slows down Lyx considerably on my machine. Still I would check individual equations occasionally, and it would be good to have a way to switch on math preview for a selected equation.

  • Ekkehart Schlicht
• The ability to define new mathematical functions. AMSMath has the \DeclareMathOperator command, but the usual suspects (sin, cos, etc.) seem to be hardcoded into ControlMath.C. There also seems to be a specification on how they appear in the symbols file. [DR: And/Or \operatorname and \operatornamewithlimits ? I think argmin and argmax are fairly common operators not in the standard collection.]

  • Rónán Daly
  • David Rosenberg
  • Thomas Coffee
  • Leandro Mattioli
  • Raffaele De Feo
  • Fred Nugen
• Add a button to launch the math panel, or even better provide an option so that the math panel is in a separate pane whilst editing an equation. It's annoying having to go to the end of the insert/math menu to get to the math panel. Even if one knows most of the Latex macros, occasionally one needs a more obscure symbol available in the panel.
  →In 1.5.0, there's no more math panel, but a math panel toolbar that can be enabled by a button on the math toolbar or pops up automatically when in math.

  • Matthew Bromberg
  • Abdelrazak Younes (but you can also right-click inside an equation to get the math panel)
• User math panel (see bug 2622) to enhance math macro usability: in short, a graphical cache where to store math constructs and retrieve them later in the document or in another one

  • Jean-Pierre Chrétien
• Implementation of CAS (Computer Algebra Software) interfaces. It's the ability to communicate with external systems in shell-like sessions, making it possible to evaluate commands or mathematical operations of an external CAS system and then display the results in a graphical way. This has been implemented in TeXmacs for some time already. By allowing to evaluate the whole document again, it would be possible to program in LyX (like in MathCad). --> Isn't this already implemented? LyX supports Maxima, Octave, Mathematica, Maple. To use, insert an equation, then Edit > Math > Use CAS.

  • Rudi Gaelzer
  • Matthias Diehl
  • Martijn Brouwer
  • Spinu Vitalie
  • Charles Reid
  • Gustav Schweitzer
  • Waluyo Adi Siswanto
• Extension of the implementation of CAS (Computer Algebra Software). It would be great if LyX would offer the opportunity to communicate with more computer algebra software like Mathcad and Matlab. It would also improve the handling with this tool by providing a simple button in the math toolbar.

Inline elements (Notes, Branches etc.)

• Notes
  • more notes insets different/more types with different colours. also, would be nice to highlight text fragments in that way. or generalise notes into user-configurable "shows up in output" or "hidden".
  • Insert->TODO item which is like a LyX note but shows up as a "List of TODOs" in the outline drop-down list. This could be achieved by generalizing LyX notes to support tagging - zero or more tags could be assigned to any note and a dockable toolbar could provide search facilities on these tags. In this scenario, the user could use "TODO" as a tag.
    • Manoj Rajagopalan
• Branches
  • Option to let active branches add to the exported filename. Example: Export a test as "test.pdf". Enable the "answers" branch, export again and get "test-answers.pdf" This avoids renaming files outside of LyX. See also bug #6048
    →implemented in LyX 2.0
    • Helge Hafting
  • Option to share/copy branches between documents. Useful for multi-file documents.
    • Some One
  • Multiple and/or conditional branches
    • It would be great to have multiple "choose-which-one" branches: i.e. a group of branches in which one can be (in docs settings) selected as the activated one. This could be useful in a lot of environments where you may have more than 1 kind of content. E.g. for multiple-language manuals/slides etc: you can always switch between english, gemrnan or italian, as you already properly defined them.
    • Even greater would be "conditional" branches, based on preamble settings or some other automated switch: in the former example, the system could check the doc default language and activate the right branch. Of course, multiple branches could be conditional as well.
      • Piero Faustini
• Info Insets
  • Insert the document filename. When printing, this thing resolves to the name (and optionally path) of the LyX file. Very useful for "Our ref:".
    → New in 1.6 as InsetInfo. One can also insert menu, shortcut etc.
    • Helge Hafting
    • Rudi Gaelzer
    • Hellmut Weber
  • Insert the last modification date of the document. When printing, this thing resolves to the date the LyX file was last modified (rather than the date it is printed, which is rather misleading). Very useful for printing a copy of a document long after it was written and distributed.
    • Axel Stammler
    • Silvo
    • Liviu Andronic
• Non-math macros. In LaTeX I define all kinds of short-hand for commonly-used or frequently-changed text or, for instance, for uses like customising the way references are shown, or for simultaneously putting a word into the text and into the index, etc, etc. These \newcommand{} definitions are one of the wonderful things about LaTeX. I especially made use of them in my last thesis. But LyX turns them all into ERT. The implementation of math macros is very nice. Why not make non-math macros available, too?

  • Chris Barrington-Leigh
• LilyPond-book integration (or MusixTeX's musixflx double-pass integration)

  • Piero Faustini
• Inset Workflow
  • Quick use of insets
    • Typing a backslash starts an ERT inset with a backslash already typed in.
    • Typing another backslash removes the ERT inset and ends up with a single backslash in text
    • Typing a dollar sign starts inline math, typing two starts display math
    • Whatever else you can think in this direction - but all of it only optional, switched on/off in program preferences
    • Jan Verfl
    • Hellmut Weber
    • Conor Houghton (perhaps ^$ and ^$$ so $ still means dollar)
    • Benny

Editing

Text input

• Unicode input, to bring support for more scripts and thus more languages.
  Done in 1.5
• Word completion → new in 1.6
  • As it happens with Open Office Writer, the possibility of memorizing the words that were used in the last edited documents and automatically present them as an option when typing the first characters of similar words. When this option is activated, the software builds a table (with a previously set maximum number of elements) with the last used words that are lengthier than a ``minimum word length'' option also previously set. If the typist begins to type a word that has the same root than one that exists in that table, the software presents it as an option (either as a tool tip or just finishing the word in a different color) that the typist may or may not accept by pressing a previously chosen key (usually the tab or the space key). This is a feature that indeed accelerates and eases the typing work.
    • Roberto Gorjão

The automatic presentation of completable words is not my favour. I recommend presentation by keystroke. (like vim)

• Tobias Strauß

Document management

• A document management feature for multi-document projects like master or ph.d. thesis. This would mean, having multiple documents open at one time and to have something like a tab-browsing menu for switching quickly between them. → Implemented in 1.5
• Automatic branch generation from lists. What I have in mind is, say, refactoring of tests or exercises: it would be nice to have a master LyX document of problems in a particular subject, and to be able to check/uncheck items in that list for output using an appropriate widget. For example: this semester, I might prepare exercise X in course Y by using items 1, 2, 6 and 9 from my list of exercises compiled over the last few years and adding 2 new exercises to the list. This can be expanded in other directions - allow generic categorization, create random tests and so on. I realize LyX is not a database or content management system, but I have a feeling this would be useful to many people who need to make similar documents often (lawyers making standard contracts with slight variations, anyone writing bills or quotations - there are probably many other examples...).

  • Guy Cohen
• Layout for editing and processing ReSTructured text markup format. ReSTructured markup language supports basic formatting, tables, lists, latex formulas, images etc. and can be processed to html, chm, latex, pdf etc. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReStructuredText, http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html, http://sphinx.pocoo.org/(approve sites)

Work area

• Split-window view (See bug 2143) → new in 1.6

  • Angus Leeming
  • Uwe Stöhr
  • Rudi Gaelzer
  • Tuomas Airaksinen
• Better tab control (closing/ managing tabs on tab panel) → New in 1.6.

  • Sam Lewis
• Remember last window positioning
  LyX always seems to open a document with the same window size and without remembering you had the TOC open on the right. Would be nice if it remembered how the doc was last time and opened it in that same view. → Implemented in 1.5
• The ability to change the margins of the display on the screen. It's nice to run the window maximized to accomodate a long toolbar with less loss of horizontal screen space, but I'd like to be able to have the text I am working on more centered. (Especially on a widescreen display.)

  • M.B.
  • Rahul Gupta
  • Ole Jørgen Brønner
  • Benny
  • Jonathan (This would result in increased readability, and therefore make it easier to write good text)
  • Fredrik R
  • Olof
  • Mia W
• While writing text I have a habit of marking text with highlights, font colour, formatting etc., with absolutely NO intention of a printed output, but as editing reminders, to retouch or rewrite the text in a certain way at a later point (In MSword, if I did not use the review feature, then I have to go back and manually remove them, upon completion of their purpose, before a print). A systematic scheme to change on screen display of text to allow Self Review of text/content, not affecting the output will be much appriciated. (Even in Word review is aimed at peer, not self review)

  • Rahul Gupta
  • (I definitely support this idea. Sure, output should be clean but for creative writing I need visual markups and I miss them very much in Lyx. I would even go one step further and allow - maybe with the help of a check box or module in the preferences - on-screen-only insertion of empty lines. I use this in in latex to visually distinguish parts of the text and clustering them according to my needs. Subsections don't do this job because I don't want this subtle structuring to appear in the outline nor do I want to be forced to name the clusters of text fragments) Benny
  • Mikael Kardell
• An option to turn off the "paste-by-middle-button" feature. I too often discover unwanted pieces of text on spurious places as a result of scrolling though the text (whereby the wheel - acting as the midle button - gets sometimes pushed). I realy hope that none of them has remained in teh final version, but it is very difficult and annoying to check.

  • Jan Verfl
  • Jim Oldfield - or just remove completely on Windows, where this isn't appropriate - middle button means "begin a long scroll"
  • Harry Coules - yes, it should be off by default on Windows.

Selection

• Select drag and drop within a document. Right now its select cut and paste.

  • Ran Rutenberg
  • Sylvain Reboux
  • Francois Beaubert
  • Johannes Knaus
  • Benny

Text formatting

• Support for strike-through text formating →implemented in LyX 2.0

  • ps
• Change Language button for configured languages
  • Currently, when marking spans of text as belonging to a particular language, the user must select from tens of languages. Presumably, Lyx users do not converse in _every_ language on the planet. There should be an option for the user to select his commonly-used languages, and a toolbar button for toggling which of these languages are applied to a selection.
    • Dotan Cohen
    • Gabriel Many (Yes, I use the apply font button, but it would be nice to limit the list)
    • LyX 2.0 provides direct menu access to all currently used languages. This is not exactly what is requested here, but should do for most cases.
• Reset Text Style Button so that customized text styles can be reset with one click instead of 7 to 15 clicks.

  • Liviu Andronic
  • Benny

Document Properties

• Simple way to edit footers and headers from within a document.
  • Currently, the only way I have found to make use of headers and footers have been ERT. It would be a great addition for people without LaTeX knowledge. Right now, on 1.6 you can choose from a menu the use of ``fancyhdr'', but you can't customize without resorting to editing the preamble or ERT. For the user could be like adding a footnote, that would be aplied from then on.
  • (See Bug #2535)
    • Esteban Kuber
    • Liviu Andronic
• Overrideable counters. Any counter (section number, enumeration, etc.) could be overrideable. Move the cursor into one, it turns editable the same way as math does, the user can then change the number explicitly when needed.

  • Helge Hafting
  • Rudi Gaelzer
  • Hellmut Weber
  • Liviu Andronic
  • Benny

Package support

• Support package SIunits (see bug 3483). Often requested on the user's mailing list.

  • → LyX 1.6 supports the units package (in math), but siunit(x) support is still desirable
  • Helge Hafting
  • Peter Brett
  • wvengen
• Support ledmac/ledpar packages for line-counting and (editing) parallel bilingual editions.

  • ps
  • asolove
  • Fred Church
• The most recent version of the FiXme package is quite flexible in terms of the kinds of notes one can write (for either collaborative writing, or notes-to-self) -- having either a layout module for this, or having built-in support for it would be great. There is already a layout for the todonotes package, but todonotes seems rather limited by comparison.

Layout files and Classes

Layout handling

• Document defaults in the .layout The .layout file should be able to specify a default font, page size, margins (any document setting the .layout author deems appropriate.) Today, I can mail a coworker a .layout for "in-house a5 brochures", but he still have to set page size, margins and font for each and every document he makes. Saving settings does not help, for these settings are not wanted as generic document defaults.

  • Helge Hafting
  • Rudi Gaelzer
  • Hellmut Weber
  • Gregor Hochschild
  • Benny
• User defined text styles and .layouts Through LyX or a helper app – so users won't need to know .layout syntax.

  • Helge Hafting
  • Rudi Gaelzer
  • Gabriel Many
  • Frédéric Faure
  • Gregor Hochschild
  • Liviu Andronic
  • Benny

New classes/class extensions

• A \pause command available through Insert -> Special Character that would be useful for creating slides with the texpower, powerdot and beamer packages and would make the ugly corresponing ERT unnecessary. Such an additional special character could further be used for other commands (or characters) by appropriately redefining it in the preamble. (we have a Pause paragraph style (selectable from the Paragraph style combo), an inset is not necessary [jspitzm]

  • Ekkehart Schlicht
  • Jean-Pierre Chrétien I find the style sufficient and visually clear

Saving and Backup

• Saving multiple files to an archive.
  It'd be nice to save the master document, possibly some child documents, and all figures into a single .tar.gz file. Such a file makes it easier to pass a book project around. Making LyX open such a file isn't that hard - just unpack the .tar.gz into the temp directory instead of copying individual files.

  • Helge Hafting
  • Hellmut Weber
  • Benny
  • Witold Firlej (Like in Scribus File->Collect for output http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/How_can_I_move_a_Scribus_file_to_another_computer_along_with_its_images%3F)
• More comprehensive backing up (See bug 5521). I would like LyX to retain the automated backups that it makes. In the config you can set it to backup every "n" minutes (normally 5), and you can set "Maximum last files" (normally 16, I think). That could be used to set how many backups to keep. In $LYXHOME/backups or somewhere, the last 16 copies of the 5 minute autosaved copies could be kept. This would allow you to recover from mistakes made up to 4 hours ago. That would be sweet. LyX files are small. This wouldn't take up much room, and the hooks for the system are already there for the #filename.lyx# backups. Also, a gui for recovery would not be needed immediately, as the backup files would be standard LyX files.

  • Cam Stone

Exporting

• Additional export formats
  • Export to TEI XML or SGML
    • Jeremy Malcolm
    • Mirko Briemle
  • Native mode or export to "Docbook 4.4 XML"(approve sites). O'Reilly used to accept troff and LaTeX, but now advise their authors use Docbook 4.4 XML "cf Chpt2: The Proposal"(approve sites); the tools they recommend are now all proprietary. Ideally this would be a native-mode XML with in-line XML/Docbook grammar parsing and context-sensitive selection of available objects.
    • Douglas Ray
  • native export to RTF or Openoffice. This may be limited with complex texts which contain a lot of formulas but could work with simple texts.
    • Alejandro Gutierrez (in fact, export to ODF the ISO/IEC 26300 standard)
    • Liviu Andronic
    • Witold Firlej
  • Export to DITA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Information_Typing_Architecture
    • Gabriel de Perthuis
    • Mark Barratt
  • Direct Import and Export function of .doc and .docx files
    • Maximilian Peters
• Exporting workflow
  • Add an option to "Rebuild All" when exporting/previewing in any supported format. LyX 1.4.3 does not seem to handle file dependencies reliably, especially when exporting/previewing an unchanged parent document that has child documents which have changed. The exported/previewed parent often does not include the recent changes, because LaTeX has not been run on all the changed files. This problem is very noticeable with grandchild documents, i.e., when a child document itself has children. At present, the only solutions I have found are very messy: exit and restart LyX, or manually delete the master DVI file from LyX's temporary workspace.
    • Note: Please report such cases to lyx-devel, so that we can fix them at the core.
    • Graeme Morrison
    • Hellmut Weber
  • Drive lyx exporters from the command-line. Could be used to generate documentation in a commit hook. → lyx already know --ps
  • Collect for output - Export with dependencies (images). Export .lyx file and all used images to folder/zip/tar/7z/whatever. Like in Scribus File->Collect for output http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/How_can_I_move_a_Scribus_file_to_another_computer_along_with_its_images%3F
    • Witold Firlej
• Integration of parts of the LyXtoX scripts created by Chris Karakas.
  • At some point in the future it would be great if some of these scripts, lyxtox scripts integrated into the lyx project in some way.
  • Currently new versions of LyX appear to output SGML that does not work correctly. As a result the SGML output is incompatible with the lyxtox scripts which are currently only compatible with LyX 1.2.1, part of lyxtox does a cleanup of the LyX SGML output, it would be great if such cleanup scripts were not needed and lyxtox's functionality could be more closely intertwined with LyX itself.
  • If you want an example of what the overall output looks like of a LyX document processed with lyxtox see GNU Linux Tools Summary
  • I think this could be a great selling point for LyX if these scripts were more integrated with LyX (it would be great to have a button from LyX that could do part of this functionality).
    • Jeremy Malcolm
• More support for literate Programming with Lyx. Ideally what I'd like to see is the ability to insert code from a scripting language or other programming language that gets compiled and executed prior to the final production of the document. This could, for example run some code that produces graphical output that would get included and embedded in the final product, or for example produce values that would be presented in a table. I believe you would want the ability to execute the code segments independently from the document itself. If I had my choice of scripting languages I would choose Lua, because it's lightweight, fast (e.g. LuaJit) and easily embeddable. However some kind of generic programming or plug in interface would be nice.

  • Matt Bromberg
  • Ole Jørgen Brønner

Output (Printing, compiling)

• More extended print dialog that support options like printer selection, double sided printing, selection of the paper source, etc.

  • Martijn Brouwer
  • Steffen Tacke
  • Kirk McDonald
  • Ran Rutenberg
  • Rudi Gaelzer
  • Simon Brown
• When updating DVI bring xdvi window to front

  • John C. McCabe-Dansted
• Compile (for viewing, updating, exporting) in the background, so that user can carry on working on the document.
  →implemented in LyX 2.0

  • C P Barrington-Leigh
  • Piero Faustini
• Progress bar while running LaTeX: Not necessarily have are real progress bar, but have a Dialog, in front, that tells you what is going on. My doc needs time, and the statusbar is kinda not verbose, so a Log-View would be nice. E.g. have all the non LaTeX Errors ( 'unable to convert Grafic to EPS') instead of modal Boxes in a Log-list as "Error: ....".
  →implemented in LyX 2.0

  • Reiner Wainhold
• A "revert to last successful compile" feature. E.g. if the "latex" command successfully generates a dvi file, back up the LyX file (and maybe included files etc.). If the latex command fails to generate a dvi file then offer to restore the LyX file to the last known "good" state. Integration with change tracking may also be good.

  • John C. McCabe-Dansted
  • Kirk McDonald
  • Luiz Souza
  • Benny

LaTeX, TeX, tex2lyx, ERT...

LyX<->LaTeX intercharge

Note: By a general consensus of the developers, using LaTeX as a native format of LyX is no option. Query the lyx-devel archieves for details.

• Better Latex import/export: Because of the errors caused with each lyx/latex transform, I'm finding it difficult to collaborate with pure Latex users if I use Lyx.

  • Scott Otterson
  • Marco Rossi
  • Peter Davidson
  • Luiz Souza
  • Andrea Del Prado
  • Francois Beaubert
  • Ryan Cross
  • Sylvain Reboux
  • Gabriel de Perthuis
  • Manuel Fernandez - use latex as lyx file format
  • Viktor Nilsson - use LaTeX as lyx file format
  • Angus MacLean
  • Carlos Florentino
  • Jim Oldfield - specifically: on import be able to recognise theorem-like environments, including adding the appropriate module (this is easily the biggest cause of ERT in documents that I import), and on export use \newcommand in preamble for math mode commands instead of the weird \def concoction that gets output at the moment (I guess that this would only work for commands defined at the start of the document, but defining this later is bad style anyway IMO).
  • John Horsemoon - Ideally use latex as lyx file format. Even if this is not possible in the short term, allow latex as a native file format, in the sense that lyx then has the option of opening and saving tex files directly, without going through import-export menus and confirmation for overwriting existing files. Internal representation can still be done in the lyx format. Tex/Latex is the universal format that everyone can use for collaboration, whereas lyx file format is specific to a particular application. The end product (tex file) of scientific writing should be independent of a particular application or platform.
• Paste Latex Section (Relyx in Place). And if LyX know the latex constructs it relyx's them. I have a lot of old latex documents wich i want to reuse. But not all of it, just some tabels and stuff. But if I paste the into LyX i have them as evil red. Or have to create a file and must run relyx and copy and paste.

  • David Rosenberg
  • Marco Rossi
  • Luiz Souza
  • Francois Beaubert
  • Rudi Gaelzer
  • Benny
  • John Horsemoon (Very useful. The capability is already there. Just needs an interface, e.g. Paste Special --> Paste as Latex)
  • Carlos Florentino (99% of my collaborators and colleagues that use LaTeX, are compiling it with programs much worse than LyX (for this purpose), like emacs, winedit, texshop, etc... If I had to name one feature, it's pretty obvious that this is now THE MOST important feature that everyone is urgently needing to start using LyX. Please include it in version 2.0. I do not believe it is difficult to implement, as J. Horsemoon, says "it's already there. Just needs an interface"!!!)

Source Code View/Editing

• Edit source mode
  I'd like it if there were an edit source mode. It could basically just allow you to indicate your preferred text editor. Then, when you pressed the edit source button, the LyX file would open up in the editor as a temporary text file. When you save the temporary text file, LyX would automatically detect the changes in the file and update (vice-versa also working would be super cool). (long term, a view codes mode (now in 1.5.x, a view-source dialog showing the underlying latex/docbook/linuxdoc source code) like Word Perfect would be even better, but that'll be years in the future). Right now I'm stuck with closing LyX and opening up the file in an editor, then closing the editor and opening up LyX again (handy for doing things like moving all of my citations into footnotes). If this feature is already in there, make it more obvious!
  One example of "fair" use is when doing lot of search and replace (for instance changing all the _x subindices for _y) It is way more easy to the prefered text editor. I am aware that LyX round-trip edition may be tricky and not fully safe, but at least for me it would be enough if I could directly send the .lyx file from LyX to an external editor.

This without closing lyx document and with no file lock problems, edit the text, save and that lyx automatically reloads the document. Some editors even support positioning the cursor after opening. It depends on the user not to mess the document so much that LyX is not able to read it again.
I do this a lot now and it is just an inconvenience to have to save, close, open, look for cursor position, edit, save, open again. Just a bit of integration with some text editor would be desirable.

• Gabriel Many
• David Rosenberg
• Chris Barrington-Leigh
• Bo Peng (view-source is done in 1.5, editing is more difficult)
• Mauricio Velasco
• John Ward
• Peter Davidson
• Luiz Souza
• Francois Beaubert
• Dominik Waßenhoven
• Rudi Gaelzer
• Roberto Gorjão
• Ryan Cross
• Viktor Nilsson
• David Roberts
• Angus MacLean
• Alejandro Paltrinieri
• Ahmed Omran
• Antonio Martos
• Carlos Florentino
• Thomas Weyn
• BEnny

It would be nice for it to function more like the OpenOffice formula editor, where one can view and edit the source in a separate window, and have it updated in real time. I'm sure this would be difficult, and may introduce bugs, but sure would be nice. If it had an autosave function, then any huge mistakes by the user would result in reloading an autosaved file?? ANyway, I like Lyx.

LaTeX distribution handling

• Easier installation of new ctan latex style files into LyX. At present it is possible (in linux at least) but requires a bit of latex/cli mastery.

  • Note: TeXLive has a graphic Package manager, MikTeX as well.
  • John C. McCabe-Dansted
  • Marco Rossi (some developer could write layout for .cls classes requested by the user's community)
  • Peter Davidson
  • Ran Rutenberg
  • Francois Beaubert
• TeX Information (the lists of classes and styles that LyX knows about) should be sortable. As it is, the list shows the location/directory, but it would be nice to sort it alphabetically insead. → implemented in LyX 1.4

Navigating

• Outliner
  • Outline mode
    Like MS Word/Powerpoint, I would like to be able to edit in the TOC window, using TAB and Shift-TAB to quickly promote/demote headings; and add and remove and cut-n-paste headings.
    → implemented in 1.5
  • promote/demote nested headings in the outliner at once

• Content hiding
  • Folding editor for nested enumerate/itemize environments: It would be nice to be able to hide and expose all things below a certain depth, e.g. by clicking a triangle next to the parent of those things you'd want to expose or hide.
    • David Rosenberg
    • Scott Otterson
    • John Ward
    • Sylvain Reboux
    • Atle Gjengedal
    • David Breuer
    • Anna Stief
    • Benny
    • Richard Ashcroft
• Separate panels for selecting the environment navigating the sections of the document (basically pullaway versions of the environment listbox and Navigate menu).
• Content Locking
  • It should be possible to lock editing of content of marked sections to prevent accidental edits to that section. It should be further possible to enable and disable navigation to them ie show or hide a particular section. This will be particularly useful in long documents to prevent accidental changes. Also a toggle where it is possible to show/hide text or equations only in another section. Possible implementation may also allow a user to open a read-only version on a second tab where different things may be shown or hidden. E.g. He/She might be able to edit a section in one tab, while viewing all the equations in that section/entire document in another tab.
    • Rahul Gupta
    • MIkael Kardell

Distribution (Installers, Platforms, etc.)

• Portable version
  • Portable as Windows Version on a stick on workstations without admin rights.
    → LyX 1.6.2 works fully with USBTeX! (See http://wiki.lyx.org/Windows/PortableInstallation)
    • Gabriel Many
    • Marco Rossi
    • Leandro Mattioli
    • Michael Chen
    • Roberto Gorjão
    • Marcelo Faria
    • Ehrlich Andreas
    • Nelson Almeida
    • Mario Merino
    • Liviu Andronic
    • David Muelheims
    • Joshua Bearden
    • Zulkifli Hidayat
    • Matt Oates
    • I Made Riko
    • Steven Gilberd
    • Aurélien Gentils
  • Possibly a remastered Damn Small Linux embedded using QEMU. - Lyx 1.5.3 is part of Knoppix 5.3.1 live dvd
• Easier installation of Windows version, fixing the problem with the reporting of a missing textclass.lst file (see Windows.LyX137, Installing LyX, Note) (new in LyX 1.4.2)

  • Anonymous
  • Matt Bromberg (It's still a problem with the v1.5 install. Or perhaps more precisely this file gets corrupted somehow.)
• Always win32 installer for newest LyX version on the website would be nice (new in LyX 1.4.2)

  • Yann Disser
  • Kirk McDonald (Agree!)
  • Bo Peng, please, a all-in-one 10 min installer.
• I don't know how easy it is, but here is my idea: it would be nice to have a Cocoa-based version of LyX for Mac. This would allow the use of the system-wide spell checker built in OS X, so no need for additional coding efforts or to download dictionaries, etc.

  • Lawrence Raso
  • Manuel Marques (yes!)
  • Maximilian Wollner (I think it is quite a lot of work, so unless someone has way too much spare time, it won't happen for long...? (I wish I knew how to code in Cocoa))
  • Christoph Kochmann (or at least a way to get rid of the toolbars above the edit window and put it into an inspector window)
  • John Stein
  • Andrey Trebler (Qt 4.5 is bringing both 64 bit and Cocoa to Mac OS; would it be great to make LyX for Mac the best looking and most powerful LyX?)
  • Andrew Fecheyr

Development

Look/Aesthetics

• Prettier Icons: The current icons should be replaced with ones from the Tango Project.
  • Lugh Komesaruk
    • Luis Gomes
  • Icons for dark themes (current icons use black color, relying on the fact of theme being bright). Changing to Tango Project perhaps fixes this automatically?
    • Guillem Pastor

Tag me

Misc

• Provide a dialog box or a page setting view where graphically page setting may be performed to be stored in a .layout file, Including how titles subtitles section etc. are placed and their display etc. But perhaps on lorem-ipsum as the text in it.

  • Rahul Gupta
• More comprehensive typography interface. It'd be great to see non ERT (icon/menu-accessible) features added based on their relevance/presence in typographic tradition and theory. For instance, I'd like to see a dialogue or menu for a number of different recognized means of starting a new paragraph---i.e. outdent, symbol without indent or linebreak (in addition to the ones already available).

  • Scott Steele
• Gallery interface icons and instant preview. I'd like to immediately see a rough approximation of whatever option I'm hovering my mouse over. As it is now, I'm often clicking/undoing. This is somewhat frustrating as I found it faster to change options in plain LaTeX and recompile than to test features through LyX.

  • Scott Steele
• Website
  • Add an RSS feed to the News page and the Developer News sections. → done!
  • A Lyx blog where developers occasionally sum up what is being developed and what users can expect from the next version vould be even nicer (just pasting the updates on NewInLyX20 would be fine).

Please Note, no preference is indicated by the order of the categories.

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