• View
• Edit
• Upload
• History
• Print

FrequentlyUsedShortcuts

Tips about frequently used shortcuts in LyX to edit math and text

Feel free to add your own tips of nice shortcuts.

1.  Changing the paragraph environment

Steering the mouse pointer to the paragraph environment drop-down menu in order to get out of an enumerate or itemize environment was starting to annoy me, especially on the road without a mouse. Fortunately, there is a solution (which apparently is undocumented, at least I couldn't find it):

Quoting Paul from the mailing list: "M-p (alt-p) followed by a space opens the environment list. From there, repeatedly typing the same letter cycles through all environment names starting with that letter."

Works great for me; once your in the menu list, arrow keys also work, of course.

--Sven

Note: With version 1.6 typing letters work as a filter. So you have to write the starting letters of the desired environment until it gets unambiguous.

To change the nesting level (for instance, in Itemize or Enumerate environments), one can use Alt-Shift-Right or Tab to increase the depth and Alt-Shift-Left or Shift-Tab to decrease the depth.

2.  Math shortcuts

2.1  Christian often writes lots of expressions with vector algebra. Here are some of his most frequently used math shortcuts:

2.2  Example of rewriting a/(b+c) into a fraction

Someone wrote: Within math mode transformations are opaque. Several times already I have found myself starting an expression

  a/(b+c)   

then decided afterward to rewrite it as

     a
  -------
   b + c 

I don't know of a way to automatically rewrite it, but this key seqence is pretty quick:

       Ctrl-m
       a /
       M-m (
       b+c    

and you've created your expression: a/(b+c) and the cursor is ust to the right of the c. Now, the following sequence of keys can change this into what you want:

       Shift-Right
       Shift-Del  
       Backspace
       Shift-Left   
       M-m f    
       Down  
       Shift-Ins   

What you have now is:

         a
       -----
       (b+c)  =] 

with the cursor to the right of the brace. To get rid of the braces, do:

       Home
       Right
       Backspace =] 

and voila:

         a
       -----
        b+c   

3.  Text editing shortcuts

Under Tools / preferences / Editing / Shortcuts, the following text editing functions can be mapped to shortcuts. Enter the function name in the search box "show key-binding containing". Click on the function name and click on modify. Then press the shortcut keys to map the new shortcut to that function.

Tips Keyboard shortcut