LyX-1.0.0 released

["Martin Vermeer" <mv@liisa.pp.fi>]

Dear recipient,

This is to inform you that today Feb. 2, 1999, Version 1.0.0 of LyX
was released. For details see the appended text.

Yours sincerely,

Martin Vermeer
The LyX Team
--------------

Public release of LyX version 1.0.0
===================================

LyX is an advanced open source document processor running on many Unix
platforms. It is called a "document processor", because unlike standard 
word processors, LyX encourages an approach to writing based on the 
structure of your documents, not their appearance. LyX lets you 
concentrate on writing, leaving details of visual layout to the software. 
LyX automates formatting according to predefined rule sets, yielding 
consistency throughout even the most complex documents. LyX produces high 
quality, professional output -- using LaTeX, an open source, industrial 
strength typesetting engine, in the background.

With LyX, short notes or letters are a snap. LyX really shines, though, 
when composing complex documents like technical documentation, doctoral 
theses and conference proceedings.

LyX has undergone a quantum leap in functionality over the past 18 months. 
This release offers extensive control over fonts, margins, headers/footers, 
spacing/indents, justification, bullet types in multilevel lists, a 
sophisticated table editor, a version control interface for collaborative 
projects -- the list goes on and on. LyX 1.0 includes many standard formats 
and templates such as for letters, articles, books, overheads, even 
Hollywood scripts. Work continues on a growing library of "plug-in" formats 
and templates, in the best open-source tradition.

LyX presents the user with the familiar face of a WYSIWYG word processor. 
However, users familiar with Microsoft Word or WordPerfect may be 
perplexed by certain basic LyX behavior. For example, repeatedly hitting 
the space bar has no effect! This is by design: LyX puts in the proper 
spacing for you, intelligently. Welcome to the LyX paradigm! 

You set the "ground rules" and place the elements of your document into
proper categories. Let's say, you tell LyX that a certain line is a 
Section title. LaTeX adds the Section to your table of contents, places 
the Section name into your page header, gives it a special "bold" 
appearance on the page, assigns it a number or label, and tells other 
parts of your document what page it's on, for references and citations. 
Many of the headaches of traditional word processing just vanish. 

LaTeX easily processes hundreds of chapter and section labels, thousands 
of footnotes and inserted graphics, intricate cross-references, complex 
multi-level outlines, formatted tables of contents and lists of 
illustrations, and exhaustive indices or bibliographies, and is rightly 
famous for the superb quality of its output. Users already acquainted 
with "raw" LaTeX will find that LyX offers full LaTeX transparency and 
import/export of LaTeX documents.

LyX contains a fully integrated formula editor which is easily 
best-of-breed, adding WYSIWYG point-and-click convenience to LaTeX's 
legendary math typesetting capabilities. If you're into scientific 
authoring, this is the jewel in the crown. TRY IT!

Think of LyX as the first WYSIWYM word processor: What You See Is What 
You MEAN. All the common formatting intelligence of LaTeX is presented 
to the user through visual controls, like a table-of-contents window 
acting as an outline browser, "live" reference links (to figure and table 
captions, sections, pages and literature citations), automatic multilevel 
section and list numbering, and more. You tell LyX how to treat 
particular words and lines in your document: e.g., this is standard text, 
this is a Section title, this is a footnote, this is a caption beneath an 
inserted graphic. As you click your selections, the WYSIWYM interface 
gives you clean, straightforward "visual cues" (actually, very 
WYSIWYG-like). 

The approach has ergonomic advantages. You can enlarge the screen fonts 
to suit your tastes but still have all the text on the screen -- without 
affecting the margins and other formatting of your final output. Thus, 
you can work comfortably on small displays (or if your eyes are tired or 
your eyesight is not so good) and get the final output right with just a 
couple of page previews using xdvi or ghostview.

LyX includes excellent and copious on-line help: a beginner's tutorial, 
user's guide, and additional manuals describing advanced features.  LyX's 
menu system exists in a dozen different (Latin character set) languages, 
selectable at run time.

LyX conspicuously lacks a filter for importing MS Word documents. The 
LyX Team considers this not worth the effort, as word processors in 
general are moving away from proprietary formats to the open XML 
standard. So, as long as you need continued access to legacy documents, 
you should retain a traditional word processor, e.g., Corel's WordPerfect 
for Linux.

LyX runs on standard Unix platforms, including Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, 
Solaris, IRIX, HP-UX, AIX, ... even OS/2 and Cygnus/Win32 (somewhat 
experimentally), and provides native support for PostScript(tm) fonts 
and figures. 

More about LyX, including screen shots and the LyX Graphic Tour, at:

      http://www.lyx.org/

What's new compared to LyX version 0.12.0?
------------------------------------------

Most importantly, import of existing LaTeX documents using the new 
reLyX perl script. Better support for SGML/LinuxDoc, tables, and 
indexing/bibliographies, etc. Summing up, it's better looking, better 
working, better documented, and lots of bugs have been fixed.

How stable is LyX?
------------------

This release is considered stable, but as with any software, you should 
take appropriate back-up steps in a production environment.

What about KLyX?
----------------

KLyX is a port of LyX version 0.12.0 to KDE, done primarily by Matthias 
Ettrich and Kalle Dalheimer. It was made as a proof-of-principle, to 
demo how good looking LyX could be made on this desktop environment, 
and implement some advanced features which KDE, and its Qt toolkit, 
facilitate. There is an intention to re-integrate KLyX into the LyX 
code base; by version 1.2, LyX should be GUI toolkit/desktop agnostic.

Availability
------------

LyX is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), which 
means specifically that you can use it for free. See http://www.gnu.org/.
      
The main LyX site is

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

with mirrors at

      ftp://alpha.tat.physik.uni-tuebingen.de/pub/lyx
      ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/lyx/
      ftp://ftp.sdsc.edu/pub/other/lyx/
      ftp://ftp.fciencias.unam.mx/pub/Lyx/
      ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/LyX/
              
The source code package is available at:

      ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/stable/lyx-1.0.0.tar.gz
      ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/lyx/lyx-1.0.0.tar.gz

and at the mirrors listed above.

You need XForms version 0.81, 0.86 or 0.88 to compile your own version. 
Version 0.88 is highly recommended. Of course you also need LaTeX; the
teTeX distribution is recommended.

Precompiled binaries for various platforms are available at:

      ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/bin/1.0.0/

Binaries for i386-Linux are also available at your local metalab 
(previously known as sunsite) mirror:

      ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/editors/lyx-1.0.0-bin.tar.gz

Undoubtedly binaries packaged for various distributions (rpm, deb) will 
appear soon on metalab.

Information and binaries for Cygnus/WinNT can be found at:

      http://www.cs.uu.nl/~steven/lyx.html

The LyX Graphic Tour can be found at:

      http://www.lyx.org/lgt-1.0/lgt.html 

It is possible to run LyX in a temporary directory before you install it.

About the LyX Team
------------------

The LyX Team is a world wide consortium of volunteer contributors. Many, 
many people have helped make the 1.0 release possible, including:

      Lars Gullik Bjoennes, Alejandro Aguilar Sierra, Asger Alstrup,
      Jean-Marc Lasgouttes, Juergen Vigna, John P. Weiss, Bernhard 
      Iselborn, Andre Spiegel, Allan Rae, Henner Zeller, Robert van
      der Kamp, David L. Johnson, Amir Karger, Joacim Persson, Peter 
      Suetterlin, SMiyata, Alkis Polyzotis, ...

Special thanks should go to Matthias Ettrich who started it all.

Feedback
--------

Please direct any comments or questions to the appropriate mailing list as
described on the LyX homepage (http://www.lyx.org/).

Enjoy!

The LyX Team