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Qt

Frequently asked questions about LyX and Qt

This page contains frequently asked questions about Lyx and Qt

QT documention can be found here: http://doc.trolltech.com/

Fonts in math mode: the best method (BaKoMa fonts)

The latex-xft fonts are equivalent to but "less high quality" than the BaKoMa fonts. You can download them from

 ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/contrib/BaKoMa4LyX-1.1.zip

And all you have to do is to copy the Files from the archive to ~/.fonts in your user directory. This will fix the missing instant preview on Ubuntu Linux.

Paul Johnson has prepared a rpm for Linux users, which can be downloaded from

 ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/contrib/

In case of Fedora Core, BaKoMa fonts are already included in the mathml-fonts package. Tag me

Fonts in math mode: new method (latex-xft-fonts)

Install the latex-xft-fonts package from

	http://movementarian.org/latex-xft-fonts-0.1.tar.gz

in $HOME/.fonts/ (untar it) and run fc-cache -fv

(Debian users can install the package latex-xft-fonts from testing; Mandriva/Mandrake users can also install the package latex-xft-fonts.)

When using Lyx-1.3.x with Qt3.2 currently (2003-09-08) a patch has to be applied, see this mail [1].

With Debian unstable, using Qt 3.2.1 (2003-10-29) no patch is needed. dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig and dpkg-reconfigure tetex-extra solved the problem for me.

It did not work for me, however upgrading to lyx 1.3.3 in the experimental section helped. Add experimental to /etc/apt/sources.list and try

  apt-get latex-xft-fonts lyx-gt/experimental lyx-common/experimental

Fonts in math mode: old method (latex-ttf-fonts)

If you're using Qt, and you want math mode symbols to show up properly (instead of red ERT text), you have to install Qt-compatible fonts. Read the INSTALL file and follow this procedure :

  1. ldd lyx | grep fontconfig
  2. If the above shows nothing, you do not need to do anything
  3. Install latex-ttf-fonts from the RPM (and you're done) or the tarball
     into /usr/share/fonts/latex-ttf-fonts
  4. Run (as root, thought it may work even if not), fc-cache -fv
     Check that the /usr/share/fonts/latex-ttf-fonts dir was spotted.
  5. Restart LyX. Ta-da !

The problem is that fontconfig-based Qt versions cannot see the normal X fonts. Note that the package is for non-commercial use only :(

There's a new latex-xft-fonts package that is freely distributable. This should be available soon (in fact you can get it now).

If you *still* don't get the symbols, it might be because you're using a locale such as LANG=el_GR or ru_RU. This is a Qt bug, and they still haven't fixed it. Nothing we can do about it at all, you'll have to use the xforms frontend, sorry.

Comments about problems with math font display

I think one could do better than the above response, which is no more than the following:

   have you installed (for the QT front end) the latex-ttf-fonts package? 
   In the LyX ftp site it is in the contrib directory.

There are several points that would still be troublesome for someone new to LyX:

1. It's not clear where the "contrib" directory is...there is no mention of such a thing at http://www.lyx.org/download/. (That page only refers to a "stable" and a "bin" directory.) Of course, if users poke around enough, they will eventually find ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/contrib, but why not point them there directly?
2. It's probably not clear to many users how one goes about "installing" this package. Since this is not at all obvious, and is also not the same for every setup, a few examples would go a long way to clarifying things. Many users may not even know which file in the contrib directory to download, and (as far as I can tell) none of them have any instructions.
3. There is no mention of latex-ttf-fonts on the "required and optionalsupport software" page, which otherwise lists the programs required for LyX (i.e. TeX, ImageMagick, Xforms, etc.) Since these fonts are pretty much "required" for the Qt version to be very functional, it would be better to tell users about this up-front.
4. Some explanation of why these fonts are not included in main distribution would certainly be helpful. I've seen references on mailing list that they are "not free", but there are no copyright notices or other restrictions in the latex-ttf-fonts-0.1.tar.gz file, nor is there any indication of where these came from or who the authors are.

/Dave Case

Configure problems with KDE 3.1 & Debian

Try overriding the Qt include directory, something like:

 ./configure --with-frontend=qt --with-qt-includes=/usr/include/qt

Worked for me (using .debs from kde.org), hope it works for you too! :-)

Note, by the way, that while the 'lyx' package in unstable is outdated, there are up-to-date 'lyx-qt' and 'lyx-xforms' packages.

LyX crashes with Qt 3.1.2 when I try to access a submenu via keyboard

It's a bug in Qt 3.1.2. Downgrade to Qt 3.1.1 or upgrade to Qt 3.2

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