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Lyx Tutorial

The document is a tutorial that introduces the basics of using LYX. It discusses starting a first LYX document, including typing, viewing, and exporting. It also covers simple operations and environments like sections, lists, and other structures. The tutorial provides examples for readers to practice formatting their own document according to LYX conventions.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
450 views35 pages

Lyx Tutorial

The document is a tutorial that introduces the basics of using LYX. It discusses starting a first LYX document, including typing, viewing, and exporting. It also covers simple operations and environments like sections, lists, and other structures. The tutorial provides examples for readers to practice formatting their own document according to LYX conventions.

Uploaded by

mussie5
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 35

The LYX Tutorial

by the LYX Team1

August 3, 2010

1 If
you have comments or error corrections, please send them to the LYX Doc-
umentation mailing list, [email protected].
2
Contents

1 Introduction 1
1.1 Welcome to LYX! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 What the Tutorial is and what it isn’t . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2.1 Getting the most out of the Tutorial . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2.2 What you won’t find . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

2 Getting started with LYX 3


2.1 Your first LYX document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1.1 Typing, Viewing, and Exporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1.2 Simple Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1.3 WYSIWYM: Whitespace in LYX . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2 Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2.1 Sections and Subsections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.2.2 Lists and sublists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2.3 Other environments: Verses, Quotations, and more . . 10

3 Writing Documents 11
3.1 Document Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.2 Templates: Writing a Letter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.3 Document Titles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.4 Labels and Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.4.1 Your first label . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.4.2 Your first cross-reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.4.3 More fun with labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.5 Footnotes and Margin Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.6 Bibliographies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.7 Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

i
ii CONTENTS

4 Using Math 19
4.1 Math Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.2 Navigating an Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.3 Exponents and Indices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.4 The Math Toolbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.4.1 Greek and symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.4.2 Square roots, accents, and delimiters . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.4.3 Fractions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.4.4 TEX mode: Limits, log, sin and others . . . . . . . . . 23
4.4.5 Matrices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.4.6 Display mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.5 More Math Stuff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

5 Miscellaneous 27
5.1 Other major LYX Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
5.2 LYX for LATEX Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
5.2.1 TEX Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
5.2.2 Importing LATEX Documents — tex2lyx . . . . . . . . 29
5.2.3 Converting LYX Documents to LATEX . . . . . . . . . . 30
5.2.4 LATEX Preamble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
5.2.5 BibTEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
5.3 Errors! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 Welcome to LYX!


This file is designed for all of you who have never heard of LATEX, or don’t
know it very well. Now, don’t panic - you won’t need to learn LATEX to
use LYX. That is, after all, the whole point of LYX: to provide an almost-
WYSIWYG interface to LATEX. There are some things you will need to learn,
however, in order to use LYX effectively.
Some of you probably found your way to this document because you tried
to put two spaces after a “.” or tried to put 3 blank lines between paragraphs.
You found out you couldn’t and in fact, you’ll find out that most of the
little tricks you’re accustomed to use in other word processors won’t work
in LYX. That’s because most word processors you’ve used before allow you
to manually enter all spacings, font changes, and so on. So you end up not
only writing a document but typesetting it, too. LYX does the typesetting
for you, in a consistent fashion, letting you focus on the important things,
like the content of your writing.
So read on to learn more about LYX. Reading this tutorial is definitely
worth the time.

1.2 What the Tutorial is and what it isn’t


Before we get started with this section, we want to make a quick note of
something. The Tutorial uses the notation outlined in the Introduction man-
ual. If you came to this manual first, please read the Introduction before you

1
2 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

continue with the Tutorial.


Now that you know which fonts mean what, we want to talk a bit about
what this Tutorial is for.

1.2.1 Getting the most out of the Tutorial


This tutorial consists of examples and exercises. To get the most out of this
document, you should read through the document, typing all the little things
we’re telling you to type and trying out all of the exercises to see if you get
them right. For convenience, you might want to print out the PDF version
of this document.
If you are familiar with LATEX, you’ll probably be able to read the Tutorial
somewhat faster, since many LYX ideas are just LATEX ideas in disguise.
However, LYX have features you’ll want to learn about. Even if you don’t
feel like reading the rest of the Tutorial, you should definitely check out
Section 5.2, which is specifically written for experienced LATEX users.

1.2.2 What you won’t find


• Detailed explanations of all of LYX’s features.
Look in the User’s Guide when you need this.

• Detailed explanations of LATEX.


Unnecessary. If you want to learn some of the neat tricks you can
do with LATEX in LYX, you can have a look at the Embedded Objects
manual.

It’s time to move onwards, time for your first document . . .


Chapter 2

Getting started with LYX

2.1 Your first LYX document


OK. You’re ready to start writing. Before you do, there are a few things
we need to mention, which will hopefully make the Tutorial more instructive
and useful.
Because there is information we can’t give you in the Tutorial, the first
thing that you need to do is find the other help files. This is very simple:
Start up LYX, Choose the User’s Guide from the Help menu. You may want
to load the Tutorial as well (if you’re not reading it within LYX already).
This way, you can read them while you’re writing your own file.1 Note that
once you’ve got more than one document open, you can use the View menu
or the document tabs to switch between them.
In this Tutorial, we’re going to assume that you have a fully working
version of LYX, as well as a LATEX-distribution, a DVI-, and a PDF-viewer.
This should be the case on all major Linux- and BSD-distribution, as well as
on Windows, where this is setup by the LYX installer.
Finally, we’ve written a file to let you practice your LYX skills on, it’s
called example_raw.lyx. Imagine that it was typed by someone who didn’t
know about any of LYX’s great features. As you learn new LYX functions,
we’ll suggest that you fix those parts of example_raw.lyx. It also contains
“subtle” hints about how to fix things.2 If you want to cheat, or check what
you’ve done, there’s also a file called example_lyxified.lyx which contains
1
They can also serve as good examples of how to use the many features of LYX.
2
The hints are located in yellow “Notes”. Access the text in a note by clicking on it.

3
4 CHAPTER 2. GETTING STARTED WITH LYX

the same text written and typeset by a LYX master.


The example files can be found in the examples directory of LYX’s in-
stallation folder. Open the raw document, and use File . Save As to save a
copy in your own directory for you to work on. As you fix parts of the raw
document, check to see how those changes affect the DVI output.
By the way, the examples directory contains lots of other examples files.
They will show you how to do various fancy things with LYX. After you read
the Tutorial, or when you’re confused about how to do something fancy in
LYX, take a look at these files.

2.1.1 Typing, Viewing, and Exporting


• Open a new file with File . New

• Type a sentence like: This is my first LYX document!

• Save your document with File . Save As.

• Run LATEX to create a DVI file, with View . DVI or the toolbar button
. LYX will open a DVI-viewer program displaying your document
looking like when printed.3

• Export the ready to print document with File . Export to a format you
want.

Congratulations! You’ve written your first LYX document. All of the rest is
just details, which is covered in the other manuals.

2.1.2 Simple Operations


LYX can of course do most of the things you’re used to do with a word
processor. It will word-wrap and indent paragraphs automatically. Here’s a
quick description of how to do some simple actions.

Undo LYX has multiple levels of undo, which means you can undo every-
thing you’ve done since your current editing session started, by selecting
3
You can save time by leaving the DVI-viewer running in the background. Then, you
can use View . Update . DVI or the toolbar button and just click on the DVI-viewer
window (or unminimize it) after LATEX finishes running.
2.1. YOUR FIRST LYX DOCUMENT 5

Edit . Undo (toolbar button ) over and over again. If you undo too
much, just select Edit . Redo (toolbar button ) to get it back.
Currently, undo is limited to 100 steps. Undo also doesn’t work for
everything; for instance, not for changes to the document layout what
is really a LYX bug.

Cut/Paste/Copy Use Edit . Cut (toolbar button ), Edit . Copy (toolbar


button ), and Edit . Paste (toolbar button ) to cut, copy, and
paste. Or automatically paste selected text (including selections from
other programs) with the middle mouse button.

Find/Replace Use Edit . Find & Replace (toolbar button ) to search. In


the dialog, search with the Find Next button, and use the Replace button
to replace a word you’ve found.4 If you like, you can specify whether
to make the search case-sensitive, or to search for only complete words;
you can also search backwards through the document.

Character Formatting You can emphasize text (which will by default


print characters in italics), set it in bold face, or in Noun Style
(usually small caps, used for people’s names) from the toggle buttons
in the Edit . Text Style dialog (toolbar button ).

Toolbar There are buttons on the toolbar (just below the menus) which
allow you to do some of the more popular functions, such as Paste and
Print.

Of course, you haven’t yet written enough to make most of these functions
useful. As you write more, though, try undoing, pasting, etc.

2.1.3 WYSIWYM: Whitespace in LYX


One of the hardest things for new users to get used to is the way that LYX
handles whitespace. As many times as you hit Return, you’ll only get one
4
Close the window when you’re done or leave it open if you find it more convenient.
Most dialog boxes in LYX can operate like this. Just be sure you have the right window
focus when you’re trying to type in the main LYX window or a LYX dialog.
6 CHAPTER 2. GETTING STARTED WITH LYX

blank line. As many times as you hit Space, you’ll only get one space. On a
blank line, LYX won’t let you type even one space. The Tab key won’t move
you forward one tab stop; in fact there are no tab stops! There’s no ruler at
the top of the page to let you set tabs or margins, either.
Many word processors are based on the WYSIWYG principle: “What You
See Is What You Get.” LYX, on the other hand, is based on the principle
that “What You See Is What You Mean.” You type what you mean, and
LYX will take care of typesetting it for you, so that the output looks nice.
A Return grammatically separates paragraphs, and a Space grammatically
separates words, so there is no reason to have several of them in a row; a
Tab has no grammatical function at all, so LYX does not support it. Using
LYX, you’ll spend more of your time worrying about the content of your
document, and less time worrying about the format. See the Introduction
for more information on the WYSIWYM concept.
LYX does have (many) ways to fine-tune the formatting of your document.
After all, LYX might not typeset exactly what you mean. The User’s Guide
has information about all that. It includes HFills and vertical space — which
are more powerful and versatile than multiple spaces or blank lines — and
ways to change font sizes, character styles, and paragraph alignments by
hand. The idea, though, is that you can write your whole document, focusing
on content, and just worry about that fine-tuning at the end. With standard
word processors, you’ll be distracted by document formatting throughout the
writing process.

2.2 Environments
Different parts of a document have different purposes; we call these parts
environments. Most of a document is made up of regular text. Section titles
(chapter, subsection, etc.) let the reader know that a new topic or subtopic
will be discussed. Certain types of documents have special environments. A
journal article will have an abstract and a title. A letter will have neither of
these, but will probably have an environment that gives the writer’s address.
Environments are a major part of the “What You See Is What You Mean”
philosophy of LYX. A given environment may require a certain font style, font
size, indenting, line spacing, and more. This problem is aggravated, because
the exact formatting for a given environment may change: one journal may
use boldface, 18 point, centered type for section titles while another uses
2.2. ENVIRONMENTS 7

italicized, 15 point, left justified type; different languages may have different
standards for indenting; and bibliography formats can vary widely. LYX lets
you avoid learning all the different formatting styles.
The Environment choice box is located on the left end of the toolbar and
looks like this: . It indicates which environment you’re
currently writing in. While you were writing your first document, it said
“Standard,” which is the default environment for text. Now you will put a
number of environments in your new document so that you can see how they
work.

2.2.1 Sections and Subsections


Type the word Introduction on the first line of your LYX file, and select
Section in the Environment box.5 Be sure to use Section and not Section*,
which will be covered below. LYX numbers the section “1” and typesets
the section heading (title) in a larger font. Now hit Return. Note that
the Environment box changes from “Section” back to “Standard”. Section
headings, like most environments, are assumed to end when you type Return.
Type the document introduction:

This is an introduction to my first LYX document.

Hit Return again, and select Section from the Environment box again. LYX
writes a “2” and waits for you to type a title. Type “More Stuff”, and you’ll
see that LYX again sets it as a section title.
It gets better. Go to the end of Section 1 again (after “my first LYX
document”) and hit Return again, and select Section from the Environment box
again. Again, LYX writes “2” and waits for you to type a title. Type About
This Document. Section “More Stuff”, which used to be Section 2, has been
automatically renumbered to Section 3! In true WYSIWYM fashion, you
just need to identify the text that makes up the section titles, and LYX takes
care of numbering the sections and typesetting them.
Hit Return to get back to the Standard environment, and type the following
five lines:
5
You don’t have to select the line. If nothing is selected, LYX changes the paragraph
you are currently in to the selected environment. Alternatively, you can change several
paragraphs to a different environment by selecting them before picking an environment.
8 CHAPTER 2. GETTING STARTED WITH LYX

Sections and subsections are described below.


Section Description
Sections are bigger than subsections.
Subsection description
Subsections are smaller than sections.

Click on the second line and select Subsection from the Environment box.
LYX numbers the subsection “2.1”, and typesets it in a font which is big-
ger than regular text but smaller than the section title. Change the fourth
line Subsection environment as well. As you probably expected, LYX auto-
matically numbered the section “2.2”. If you put yet another section before
Section 2, Section 2 will be renumbered as Section 3, and the subsections
will be renumbered to “3.1” and “3.2”.
Further levels of sectioning include Subsubsection, Paragraph, and Sub-
paragraph. We’ll let you play with these on your own. You may notice that
paragraph and subparagraph headings are not numbered by default, and that
subparagraphs are indented; see the User’s Guide for an explanation and how
to change this. Chapter headings are actually the highest level of sectioning,
above Sections, but you’re only allowed to use them in certain types (text
classes) of LYX documents (see Section 3.1).
Finally, you may want to have sections or subsections that are not num-
bered. There are environments for this as well. If you change one of your
section headings to the Section* environment (you may have to scroll down in
the Environment box to find it), LYX will use the same font size for the head-
ing as it uses for a regular section, but it won’t number that section. There
are corresponding “starred” heading environments for Subsection and Sub-
subsection. Try changing some of your sections or subsections to the starred
environments, and note how the other sections’ numbers are updated.
Exercise: Fix the section and subsection headings in example_raw.lyx.

2.2.2 Lists and sublists


LYX has several different environments for typesetting lists. The various
list environments free you from hitting Tab a million times when writing an
outline, or from renumbering a whole list when you want to add a point in
the middle of the list. Different types of documents logically require different
list environments:
2.2. ENVIRONMENTS 9

• A slide presentation might use the Itemize environment’s bulleted lists


to describe different points.
• An outline would use the Enumerate environment’s numbered lists (and
lettered sublists).
• A document describing several software packages could use the Descrip-
tion environment, where each item in the list begins with a bold-faced
word.
• The List environment is a slightly different form of the Description en-
vironment.
Let’s write a list of reasons why LYX is better than other word processors.
Somewhere in your document, type:
LYX is better than other word processors because:
and hit Return. Now select Itemize from the Environment box. LYX writes
a “bullet” on the line. Type in your reasons:

Typesetting is done for you.


Math is WYSIWYG
Lists are very easy to create!

List environments, unlike headings, do not end when you type Return. In-
stead, LYX assumes you’re going on to the next item in the list. The above
will therefore result in a three-item list. If you want more than one paragraph
within one list item, one way is to use the Protected Break, which you get by
typing Ctrl+Return. In order to get out of the list, you need to reselect the
Standard environment (or just use the keybinding, Alt+P S).
You’ve got a beautiful itemized list. You might want to run LATEX to
see how the list looks when printed out. But what if you wanted to number
the reasons? Well, just select the whole list6 and choose Enumerate from the
Environment box. Pow! As we mentioned, if you add or delete a list item,
LYX will fix the numbering.
While the list is still selected, you can change to the other two list en-
vironments, Description and List, in order to see what they look like. For
6
LYX won’t let you select the first bullet unless you also select the paragraph before the
list, which you probably don’t want to do. Similarly, you can’t select the actual number
in a numbered section title. This is on purpose because the bullet or number depends on
the document settings or text position, respectively.
10 CHAPTER 2. GETTING STARTED WITH LYX

those two environments, each list item is made up of a term, which is the
item’s first word, followed by a definition, which is the rest of the paragraph
(until you hit Return.) The term is either typeset in boldface (Description)
or separated by a “Tab”7 (List) from the rest of the paragraph. If you want
to have more than one word in the definition, then separate the words with
Protected Blanks.
Exercise: Typeset the list in example_raw.lyx
You can nest lists within each other in all sorts of interesting ways. An
obvious example would be writing outlines. Numbered and bulleted lists will
have different numbering and bulleting schemes for sublists. See the User’s
Guide for details on the different sorts of lists and for examples of nestings.

2.2.3 Other environments: Verses, Quotations, and


more
There are two environments for setting quotations apart from surrounding
text: Quote for short quotes and Quotation for longer ones. Computer code
(the LYX-Code environment 8 ) is written in a typewriter font; this environ-
ment is the only place in LYX where you’re allowed to use multiple spaces
to allow code indenting. You can even write poetry using the Verse style,
using Return to separate stanzas, and Ctrl+Return to separate lines within
a stanza. See the User’s Guide for more complete descriptions of all of the
available LYX environments.
Exercise: Correctly typeset the Quote, LYX-Code, and Verse in
example_raw.lyx

7
But a typesetter’s tab, which will change to fit the size of the largest term, not a
pathetic, rigid, unchangeable typewriter Tab.
8
used in this Tutorial for the long typing examples
Chapter 3

Writing Documents

The previous chapter hopefully allowed you to get used to writing in LYX. It
introduced you to the basic editing operations in LYX, as well as the powerful
method of writing with environments. Most people who use LYX, though,
will want to write documents: papers, articles, books, manuals, or letters.
This chapter is meant to take you from simply writing text with LYX to
writing a complete document. It will introduce you to text classes, which
allow you to write different sorts of documents. It will then describe many of
the additions that turn text into a document, such as titles, footnotes, cross
references, bibliographies, and tables of contents.

3.1 Document Classes


Different sorts of documents should be typeset differently. For example,
books are generally printed double-sided, while articles are single-sided. In
addition, many documents contain special environments: letters contain
some environments — such as the sender’s address and the signature —
which do not make sense in a book or article. The LYX document class 1
takes care of these large scale differences between different sorts of docu-
ments. This Tutorial, for example, was written in the Book document class.
Document classes are another major part of the WYSIWYM philosophy;
they tell LYX how to typeset the document, so you don’t need to know how.
Your document is probably being written in the Article document class.2
1
for LATEX users: this is equivalent to the LATEX document class
2
That’s usually the default document class

11
12 CHAPTER 3. WRITING DOCUMENTS

Try changing to other document classes (using the Document . Settings dia-
log) to see how they are typeset differently. If you change your document
to the Book document class and look at the Environment box, you’ll see that
most of the allowed environments are the same. However, you can now use
the Chapter environment. If you are ever unsure about which environments
you can use in a given document class, just consult the Environment box.
Font sizes, one- or two-column printing, and page headings are just some
of the ways journals’ typesettings differ from one another. As the Computer
Age continues to mature, journals have begun accepting electronic submis-
sions, creating LATEX “style files” so that authors can submit correctly typeset
articles. LYX is set up to support this as well. For example, LYX supports
typesetting (and extra environments) for the American Mathematics Society
journals using the Article (AMS) document class.
Here is a very quick reference to some of the document classes. See the
Special Document Classes section of the Additional Features manual for many
more details.

Name Notes
article one-sided, no chapters
article (AMS) layout & environments for American Math Society
report longer than article, two-sided
book report + front and back matter
presentation transparencies
letter lots of extra environments for address, signature. . .

3.2 Templates: Writing a Letter


One way to write a letter would be to open a new file, and choose a Letter
class in the Document . Settings dialog. While this is the most obvious way
to write a letter, it seems like extra work. Every time you write a business
letter, you want to have your address, the address you’re sending to, a body,
a signature, etc. LYX therefore has a template for letters, which contains a
sample letter; once you have a template, you can just replace a couple parts
of the letter with your text each time you write a letter.
Open a new file with File . New from Template. Select letter.lyx as the
template. Save and print the file to see how the various environments are
typeset.
3.3. DOCUMENT TITLES 13

When you look at the Environment box, you’ll see several environments,
like the My Address environment, which don’t even exist in most other docu-
ment classes. Others, like Quote and Description, are familiar. You can play
around for a while to figure out how the various environments work. You’ll
notice for example that the Signature environment has the word “Signature:“
in red before the actual text of the signature. This word doesn’t show up in
the actual letter, as you’ll see if you view/export the file. It’s just there to let
you know where the signature goes. Also, note that it doesn’t matter where
in the file the Signature line is placed. Remember, LYX is WYSIWYM; you
can put the Signature environment anywhere you want, but LYX knows that
in the printout, the signature should be at the end.
A template is just a regular LYX file. This means you can fill in your
address and signature and save the file as a new template. From now on,
any time you want to write a letter, you can use the new template to save
time. We don’t have to suggest an actual “exercise” here; just write a letter
to someone!3
Templates can be a huge time-saver, and we urge you to use them when-
ever possible. In addition, they can help a person learn how to use some of
the fancier document classes. Finally, they may be useful for a person who is
configuring LYX for a bunch of less computer-aware users. When they’re first
learning LYX, it will be much less intimidating if they have a letter template
customized for their company, for example.

3.3 Document Titles


LYX (like LATEX) considers the title — which may contain the actual title,
the author, the date, and even an abstract of a paper — to be a separate
part of the document.
Go back to your LYX document and make sure it’s using the Article doc-
ument class.4 Type a title on the first line, and change the line to the Title
environment. On the next line, type your name and change it to the Author
3
One warning, if you’re writing from a template. If you erase all of the text in an
environment — for example, if you erase the whole My Address field so that you can
replace it with your own — and then you move the cursor without writing any text, the
environment may disappear. This is because most environments cannot exist without any
text in them. Just reselect the environment from the Environment box to get it back.
4
You should not be using the letter any more, since the Letter document class doesn’t
allow titles.
14 CHAPTER 3. WRITING DOCUMENTS

environment. On the next line, write the date in the Date environment. Type
a paragraph or two summarizing your document using the Abstract environ-
ment. Notice how the title is presented when it’s printed out. If you changed
the document format to Book, you’ll get a separate title page, like the first
page of this tutorial.
Exercise: Fix the title, date, and author in example_raw.lyx

3.4 Labels and Cross-References


You can label section headings, list items, formulas, footnotes, and floats5
in your document. Once you do so, you can refer to this section in other
parts of the document, using cross-references. You can refer either to the
section’s number, or to the page that the section appears on. As with section
numbering, LYX also takes care about cross-reference numbering for you.
Automatic labels and cross-references are one of the best advantages of LYX
(and LATEX) over conventional word processors.

3.4.1 Your first label


Go to our second section, whose title is “About This Document”. Click at
the end of the section title line, and select Insert . Label or the toolbar button
. A dialog asks you for a label name, and gives you a suggestion. When
you click on OK, the label name will be placed in a box next to the section
title.
By the way, you could have put the label right anywhere within the section
as well; section references will refer to the last section or subsection whose
heading comes before the label. However, putting it on the same line as the
section title (or, perhaps, on the first line of the section’s text) ensures that
page references will reference the beginning of the section.
So far you haven’t done anything — the DVI output will look exactly
the same, since labels don’t show up in the printed document. However, now
that you have added a label, you can refer to that label with cross-references.
We’ll do that next.
5
Floats are explained in the User’s Guide and the Embedded Objects manual.
3.4. LABELS AND CROSS-REFERENCES 15

3.4.2 Your first cross-reference


Place the cursor somewhere in section 2 of your document. Type

If you want to know more about this document, then see


section, which can be found on page.

Now set the cursor after the word “section” and choose Insert . Cross Reference
or the toolbar button . The Cross-reference dialog pops up. It shows a list
of the possible labels you can reference. At the moment, there should be only
one, “sec:About-This-Document”. Select it (it may be selected by default),
and click Apply. Now put the cursor after the word “page”, and change the
reference format to use the page number then click Apply. (To be really
correct, you should put a Protected Blank in between the word “Section” and
the reference. Same for the page reference.)
Alternatively to that method, you can right-click on a label and use in
the appearing context menu Copy as Reference. The cross-reference to this
label is now in the clipboard and can be copied to the actual cursor position
via the menu Edit . Paste (shortcut Ctrl+V).
LYX puts the references in a box right where the cursor was. In the
printed document, this reference marker will be replaced with either the page
or section number (depending on what you selected in the Cross-reference
dialog). View your document as DVI, and you’ll see that on the last page we
refer to “Section 2” and “Page 1” (or whatever page Section 2’s title is on).
Conveniently, a cross-reference acts as a hyperlink when you are editing
a document in LYX; clicking on it will pop up the Cross-Reference dialog,
clicking Go to Label will move the cursor to the referenced label.

3.4.3 More fun with labels


We told you that LYX takes care about numbering cross-references; now you
can test that. Add a new section before Section 2. Update the DVI view, and
— voilà! — the section cross reference changed to “3”! Change the section
“About this Document” to a subsection, and the cross-reference will reference
Subsection 2.1 instead of Section 3. The page reference won’t change unless
you add a whole page of text before the label, of course.
If you want some more practice with labels, then try putting a new label
where your first cross-reference was, and refer to that label from elsewhere
16 CHAPTER 3. WRITING DOCUMENTS

in the document. If you’ll be inserting cross-references often, it may be


convenient to leave the Cross-reference dialog open.
If you want to make sure that the cross-referencing gets the pages right
even for larger documents, Copy a couple pages of text from the User’s Guide
to the clipboard, and Paste the stolen text into your document.6
Exercise: Fix the references in example_raw.lyx

3.5 Footnotes and Margin Notes


Footnotes can be added using the toolbar button or the menu Insert .
Footnote. Click at the end of the word “LYX” somewhere in your document
and click the button. A footnote box appears where you can enter the
text of the footnote. LYX should place the cursor at the beginning of the
footnote box. Type

LYX is a typesetting word processor.

Now click on the button labelled “foot”. The footnote box is closed, leaving
the button showing where the footnote marker will be in the printed text;
this is called “folding” the footnote. You can unfold the footnote at any time
and re-edit its text by clicking again on the “foot” button.
You may wonder why the footnote button is a word instead of a number.
The answer is that LYX takes care about the footnote numbering for you
in the printed text. You can see this yourself by looking at the DVI file (or
printout). If you add other footnotes, LYX will renumber the footnotes. Since
LYX (well, LATEX, actually) takes care of the footnote numbering, there’s
really no need to put the numbers in the LYX file.
A footnote can be cut and pasted like normal text. Go ahead; try it!
All you need to do is select the footnote button7 and Cut and Paste it. In
addition, you can change regular text to a footnote, by selecting it and hitting
the button; change a footnote to regular text by hitting the Backspace key
when the cursor is in the first position of a footnote, or by hitting the Delete
key when the cursor is in the very last position of the footnote, respectively.
6
By the way, copying a chapter title may cause an error, because chapters aren’t allowed
in the article class, see section 3.1. If this happens, just delete the chapter title.
7
It may be easier to select it using the keyboard. You might accidentally open the
footnote if you’re trying to select the marker itself with the mouse.
3.6. BIBLIOGRAPHIES 17

Margin notes can be added using the menu Insert . Marginal Note or the
toolbar button . Margin notes are like footnotes, except that:

• the on-screen boxes say “margin” instead of “foot”

• the notes will be placed in the margin, instead of below the text

• margin notes are not numbered

Change your LYX footnote back to text, then select and change it to a margin
note. Run LATEX again to see what the margin note looks like.
Exercise: Fix the footnote in example_raw.lyx

3.6 Bibliographies
Bibliographies (at least in the exact sciences) are similar to cross references.
The bibliography contains a list of references at the end of the document, and
they can be referenced from within the document. Like section titles, LYX
and LATEX make your job easier by automatically numbering the bibliography
items and changing citations when the item numbers change.
Go to the end of the document and switch to the Bibliography environ-
ment. Now, each paragraph you type will be a reference. Type “The Lyx
Tutorial, by the LYX Documentation Team” as your first reference. Note
that LYX automatically puts a number in a box before each reference. Click
on the boxed reference number, and the Bibliography item dialog box appears.
The Key is to refer to this reference within the LYX document, the Label ap-
pears in output. When no Label is set (default), you will see the number of
the bibliography in the output. Change now the Key field to “lyxtutorial” to
make it easy to remember.
Now pick somewhere in your document that you would like to insert a
reference. Do so with Insert . Citation or the toolbar button . A Citation
dialog appears. The right panel in this dialog lists all the bibliography entries,
and this field allows you to choose which bibliography item you want to cite.
Select “lyxtutorial” (right now, that’s the only item in the bibliography),
then use the Add button in the center to insert it. (You can have multiple
citations in the same place by transferring a number of keys this way.) Now
view your file as DVI, and you’ll see that the citation appears in brackets in
the text, referring to the bibliography at the end of the document.
18 CHAPTER 3. WRITING DOCUMENTS

The Text after field in the Citation dialog will put a remark (such as a
reference to a page or chapter within the referenced book or article) in the
brackets after the reference. If you want the references to have labels instead
of numbers in the printed output (for example, some journals would use
“[Smi95]” to refer to a paper written by Smith in 1995), use the Label field
in the Bibliography item dialog. As usual, see the User’s Guide for details.
Exercise: Fix the bibliography and citation in example_raw.lyx

3.7 Table of Contents


You may want to put a table of contents at the beginning of your document.
LYX makes this very easy to do. Just hit Return after your document title and
before your first section title and choose Insert . List / TOC . Table of Contents.
The words “Table of Contents” will appear in a button on the first line of
the document.
This may not appear to be very useful. However, if you look at your
DVI file, you will see that a table of contents has been generated, listing the
various sections and subsections in your document. As usual, if you reorder
sections or create new ones, you will see those changes in the DVI file when
you update it.
The table of contents is not printed in the on-screen version of the doc-
ument to keep the overview in your file. But you can display the table of
contents in a separate window by clicking on the table of contents button, or
by using Document . Outline or the toolbar button . This menu will work
even if you don’t have a table of contents inset in your document. This is a
very useful tool where you can move around your document parts. Clicking
on a (sub)section title in the Outline window will highlight that line and move
the display (in the LYX editing window) to that place in the document. You
can also use the arrow keys to move up and down in the table of contents.
You may therefore find it convenient to leave this window open throughout
editing sessions. You can get similar functionality from the Navigate menu,
though, where the table of contents appears automatically.
To get rid of the Table of Contents, you can delete the table of contents
button just like any other text.
Exercise: Fix the table of contents in example_raw.lyx
Chapter 4

Using Math

LATEX is used by many scientists because it outputs great looking equations,


avoiding the control characters used by word processors and their equation
editors. Many of these scientists are frustrated, however, because writing
equations in LATEX is more like programming than writing. Happily, LYX
has WYSIWYM support for equations. If you are used to LATEX, you’ll
find that all of the usual LATEX math commands can be typed in normally,
but they will show up in a WYSIWYM fashion. If, on the other hand,
you’ve never written in LATEX, then the Math Panel will allow you to write
professional-looking math quickly and easily.

4.1 Math Mode


Somewhere in your LYX document, type:

I like what Einstein said, E=mc^2, because it’s so simple.

Now, that equation doesn’t look very good in LYX and in the output; there’s
no space between the letters and the equals sign, and you’d like to write an
actual superscript for the “2”. That bad typesetting happened because we
didn’t tell LYX that we were writing a mathematical expression, so it typeset
the equation like regular old text.
Instead, we create a formula that will get typeset properly. In order to
create a formula, just click the toolbar button or use the menu Insert .
Math . Inline Formula. LYX will insert a little blue square, which is an empty

19
20 CHAPTER 4. USING MATH

math formula. Now just type E=mc^2 again. The expression is typed in blue,
and the blue square disappears as soon as the formula is not empty. Now
type Esc to leave the equation The purple markers disappear, leaving the
cursor to the right of the expression, and now if you type something, it will
be regular text.
Run LATEX and look at the output. Notice that the expression was typeset
nicely, with spaces between the letters and the equals sign, and a superscript
“2”. Letters in math mode are assumed to be variables, and come out in
italics. Numbers are just numbers.
This math editor is another example of the WYSIWYM philosophy. In
L TEX, you write a mathematical expression using text and commands like
A

\sqrt; this can be frustrating, because you can’t see what an expression
looks like until you LATEX the file, and may have to spend time to find e. g.
missing brackets. LYX doesn’t attempt to get the expression to look perfect
(WYSIWYG), but it gives you an extremely good idea of what the expression
will look like. LATEX then takes care of the professional typesetting.

4.2 Navigating an Equation


Now let’s change E = mc2 to E = 1 + mc2 . Use the arrow keys to move
the cursor into the expression. Note that when you enter the expression, the
purple markers appear to let you know you’re editing math. Now you can
use Left and Right to move the cursor past the equals sign, and just type
“1+”. Again, you can use the arrow keys or Esc to leave the formula.
Other than the special keys described below, typing in math mode is like
editing regular text. Use Delete (or Backspace) to delete things. Select text
either with the arrow keys or with the mouse. Edit . Undo works in math
mode as well as cut and paste. One thing to be careful of: If you are left or
right outside a formula and you press Delete or Backspace, respectively, you
delete the whole formula. Luckily, you can just use Undo to get it back.
What if you want to change E = mc2 to E = mc2.5 + 1? Again, you
can use the mouse to click in the right place. However, you can also use the
arrow keys. If the cursor is just after the “c” but before the “2”, then press
Up and the cursor is moved to the level of the superscript, just before the “2”.
Add the “.5”. Now, hitting Down will move the cursor back to the regular
level. When you hit Space instead of Down, the cursor will be placed after
the superscript (so that you can then type the “+1”).
4.3. EXPONENTS AND INDICES 21

4.3 Exponents and Indices


An exponent can be entered from the Math Toolbar (see below), but it’s
actually simpler just to type the caret key, “^”. LYX will place another
blue rectangle in the superscript, so that whatever you write next will be
superscripted, and in a smaller font size. Everything you type until you hit
a Space (or Esc to exit the formula entirely) will be in the superscript.
Writing a subscript (index) is just as easy — start one by typing the
underscore key, “_“. You can subscript and superscript both subscripts and
2
superscripts like this: Aa0 +b2 + C a0 +b .
Exercise: Put equation 1 of example_raw.lyx into math mode.

4.4 The Math Toolbar


The Math Toolbar is a convenient way to enter symbols or to perform com-
plicated formula operations. Many of these operations can be accomplished
from the keyboard or the Edit . Math or Insert . Math menus. However, we’re
going to concentrate on using the Math Toolbars, just to let you know what’s
out there; you can learn keyboard shortcuts later, from other manuals.
The math toolbar is shown when the cursor is in a formula and can also
be turned on manually in the menu View . Toolbars. When you click there
on “Math” the toolbar will be shown permanently at the bottom; this state
is visualized in the Toolbars menu with a checkmark. When you click in this
state again on “Math” in the Toolbars menu, the math toolbar is only shown
when the cursor is within a formula; this state is visualized by the renaming
of the menu entry from “Math” to “Math (auto)”.

4.4.1 Greek and symbols


The Math Toolbar which allow you to choose from a large array of symbols
used in math: various arrows, relations, operators, and sums and integrals.
Note that subscripting and superscripting allow you to put lower and upper
limits on sums and integrals.
“Nothing you can do that can’t be done. . . All you need is ♥.”
22 CHAPTER 4. USING MATH

4.4.2 Square roots, accents, and delimiters


To type a square root, just click on the button . The square root appears,
and the cursor is in a new insertion point inside the square root. You can
type variables, numbers, other square roots, fractions, whatever you want.
LYX will automatically resize the square root to fit what’s inside.
−−−→
Accenting a character (→−v ) or group of characters (a + b) is done the same
way. Decorations are available from the toolbar via the button . Click
on a decoration, and LYX will insert that decoration with an insertion point
under (or over) it. Just type what you want in the insertion point. There are
two sets of decorations: those that resize with the text you type, and those
that have fixed size, and are most appropriate for a single letter.
Delimiters such as parentheses, brackets, and braces work similarly, but
are a bit more complicated. Hit the delimiter button to pop up the
Delimiter dialog. Your current selection of delimiters is displayed in a box.
It’s a pair of parentheses by default, but you can choose a pair of braces, a
brace and a parenthesis, or choose the empty square to have something like
“a = h7 ” (the empty delimiter is displayed as a broken line in LYX, but won’t
show up in the output).
If you’re lazy, you can type actual parentheses in math mode, rather than
using the Delimiter dialog. However, those parentheses will be the same size
as regular text, which will look bad if you have a big fraction or matrix inside
the parentheses. So better use in this case one of the three delimiter buttons
that insert directly e. g. a ( ) pair.
You can also put delimiters or a square root sign or a decoration on
already existing formula parts. Select the portion of the formula that you
want to adjust, and then click on the button you want from the Math Toolbar.
Try using this to change Newton’s second law from scalar to vector form


(f = ma to f = m→ −a ). Once you’ve learned about matrices, this is how
you’ll put parentheses or brackets around them.

4.4.3 Fractions

To create a fraction, click on the fraction button in the Math Toolbar.


LYX writes two insertion points in a fraction. As you would expect, you can
use arrow keys or the mouse to move around a fraction. Click on the top
square and type “1”. Now hit Down and type “2”. You’ve made a fraction!
4.4. THE MATH TOOLBAR 23

Of course you can type anything within each of the two boxes: variables with
exponents, square roots, other fractions, whatever.
Exercise: Put equation 2 of example_raw.lyx into math mode.

4.4.4 TEX mode: Limits, log, sin and others


Because letters in math mode are considered to be variables, if you type “sin”
in math mode, LYX thinks you are typing the product of the three variables
s, i, and n. The three letters will be typeset in italics, when what you really
wanted was the word “sin” typeset in Roman. In addition, LYX won’t put
a space between the word “sin” and the “x” (pressing Space will exit the
formula). So how do you get “sin(x)” instead of “sin(x)”?
Click on the Math Toolbar button and then on “sin” in the appear-
ing function list. The word “sin” is displayed in LYX in black, and set in
upright roman type. The whole word is treated as one symbol, so if you
type Backspace, it will delete the whole word. Now type “(x)”, which will
be written in blue italics, like you expect in a formula. In the output, the
expression will be correctly typeset. Try it out.
The function list include other trigonometric functions and their inverses,
hyperbolic functions, logarithms, limits, and quite a few others. These func-
tions can take subscripts and superscripts, important for typing “cos2 θ” or
“limn→∞ ”.
Exercise: Put equation 3 of example_raw.lyx into math mode.

4.4.5 Matrices
Click on the matrix button in the Math Toolbar. The appearing dialog
allows you to choose how many rows and columns you want in your matrix.
Choose 2 rows and 3 columns and hit OK. LYX prints 6 insertion points in a
2 × 3 matrix. As usual, you can put any sort of formula expression (a square
root, another matrix, etc.) in each insertion point. You can also leave some
of the insertion points empty if you want.
Tab can be used to move horizontally between the columns of a matrix.
Alternatively, you can use the arrow keys to move around - hitting Right at
the end of one box will move to the next box, Down will move to the next
row, etc.
24 CHAPTER 4. USING MATH

If you need to change the number of rows and columns, use the menu
Edit . Rows & Columns or the math toolbar buttons , , , .
See the User’s Guide for information on how to change the horizontal
alignment of each column, and how to change the vertical position of the
whole matrix. Note that if you want to write a table containing text, you
should use LYX’s wonderful table support, rather than trying to write text
in a matrix.

4.4.6 Display mode


All of the expressions we have written so far have been on the same line as the
text that came before and after them, otherwise known as inline expressions.
This is fine for short, simple expressions, but if you want to write larger ones,
or if you want your expressions to stand out from the text, you need to write
them in display mode. In addition, only displayed expressions can be labeled
and numbered (see the User’s Guide), and multi-line equations must be in
display mode.
Click on the display button in the Math Toolbar, which represents
a couple lines of text before and after a centered blue box. LYX inserts a
formula, but the insertion point is on a new line, and it’s centered within
that line. Now type an expression and run LATEX to see how it looks. The
display button is actually a toggle; use it now to change a couple of your
expressions to display mode and back.
Display mode has a couple differences from inline mode:

• The default font is larger for a few symbols, like


P R
and

• Subscripts and superscripts for limits and sums (but not integrals) are
written under rather than next to the symbols

• Text is centered

Other than these differences, though, displayed expressions and inline ex-
pressions are very similar.
One final note about the way displayed formulas are typeset: Be careful
about whether you’re putting your equation into a new paragraph or not. If
your formula is in the middle of a sentence or paragraph, then don’t press
4.5. MORE MATH STUFF 25

Return. Doing so will cause the text after the formula to start a new para-
graph. That text will therefore eventually be indented, depending on your
document paragraph settings, which is probably not what you want.
Exercise: Put the various equations in example_raw.lyx into display
mode, and see how they’re typeset differently.
Exercise: Using various tools you’ve learned in this section, you should
be able to write an equation like1 :



 log8 x x>0
f (x) =  0 q x=0
5 1
−x x < 0
P
i=1 αi +

4.5 More Math Stuff


LYX’s math editor can do plenty more. By now, you’re familiar with the
basics, so we refer to the User’s Guide for tips on how to:

• Labeling and numbering expressions

• Multi-line equations

• Change typefaces, e. g. to write bold-face text in an expression.

• Fine-tune font sizes and spacing within an expression. (Don’t worry


about this until your final draft!)

• Write macros. These are very powerful, because you just define them
once at the top of the document, and then you can use them throughout
the document.

• Do lots of other things that can’t be mentioned in this Tutorial.

1
After you’ve done it the hard way, give Insert . Math . Cases Environment a try.
26 CHAPTER 4. USING MATH
Chapter 5

Miscellaneous

5.1 Other major LYX Features


We haven’t gone through all the possible commands in LYX, and we aren’t
planning on it. As usual, see the User’s Guide and the Embedded Objects
manual for more information. We’ll just mention a couple more major things
LYX can do:

• LYX has WYSIWYM support for tables. Use the Insert . Table (toolbar
button ) to get a table. Click on the table with the right button to
get a Table Settings dialog box which allows extensive table editing.

• LYX also supports including pictures in any format within documents.


(You guessed it: Insert . Graphics (toolbar button ). Then browse
for the figure file, rotate or scale it, etc.) Tables and figures can have
captions, and LYX will automatically generate lists of figures and/or
tables.

• LYX is heavily configurable. Everything from how the LYX window


looks to how the output comes out can be configured in a number of
ways. Much configuration is done through Tools . Preferences. For more
information on this, check out Help . Customization.

• LYX is being developed by a team of programmers on five continents.


Therefore, LYX has better support for non-English languages (such as
Dutch, German, French, Greek, Czech, Turkish, . . . ) than many word

27
28 CHAPTER 5. MISCELLANEOUS

processors. Even the right-to-left languages Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew


and the Asian languages Chinese Japanese, and Korean are supported.
You can write documents in other languages and you can also configure
LYX to show its menus and error messages in other languages.

• The LYX menus feature keybindings. This means that you can do File .
Open by pressing Alt+F followed by O or by using the binding which is
shown next to it in the menu (Ctrl+O by default). Keybindings are also
configurable. For information on this, check out Help . Customization.

• LYX can read LATEX documents. See section 5.2.2.

• Spellchecking, thesaurus, and word count facilities are available.

• Generation of indexes and nomenclatures/glossaries is supported.

5.2 LYX for LATEX Users


If you don’t know anything about LATEX, you don’t have to read this section.
Actually, you might want to learn about LATEX, and then read this chapter.
However, some who begin to use LYX will be familiar with LATEX. If you
are such a person, you may be wondering if LYX can really do everything
LATEX can do. The short answer is that LYX can do pretty much everything
LATEX can do in one form or another, and it definitely simplifies most parts
of writing a LATEX document.
Because this is just a tutorial, we are only going to mention things that
new LYX users will most likely be interested in. In the interests of keep-
ing the Tutorial short, we will give only minimal information here. The
Additional Features and the Embedded Objects manual have a great deal of
information on differences between LYX and LATEX, and how to do various
LATEX tricks in LYX.

5.2.1 TEX Mode


Anything that you enter in TEX mode will be passed straight to LATEX, and
will be displayed in red on the screen. You can use TEX commands in LYX
by choosing Insert . TEX Code (toolbar button ). This creates a box where
everything within it is passed straight to L TEX.
A
5.2. LYX FOR LATEX USERS 29

In a math formula, TEX mode is handled a bit differently. TEX mode


is there entered by typing a backslash. The backslash is not written out,
but anything you type afterwards will be in red. You exit TEX mode by
typing Space or some other non-alphabetic character, like a number, under-
score, caret, or parenthesis. Once you exit TEX mode, if LYX knows the
TEX command you’ve typed in, it will convert it to WYSIWYM. So if you
type “\gamma” in a formula and then press Space, LYX will change the red
“gamma” to a blue “γ”. This will work for almost all, non-complicated math
macros. This may be faster than using the Math Toolbar, and will be espe-
cially convenient for experienced LATEX users.
As a special case, if you type a brace in TEX mode, then the beginning
and ending braces will be inserted in red, then take you out of TEX mode
and place the cursor between the braces. This makes it more convenient to
type commands that LYX doesn’t know which take an argument.
LYX can’t do absolutely everything that LATEX can do. Some fancy func-
tions are not supported at all, while some work but aren’t WYSIWYM.
TEX mode allows users to get the full flexibility of LATEX, while having all
the convenient features of LYX, like WYSIWYM math, tables, and edit-
ing. LYX could never support every LATEX package. However, by typing
\usepackage{foo} in the preamble (see section 5.2.4.2), you can use any
package you want — although you won’t have WYSIWYM support for that
package’s features.

5.2.2 Importing LATEX Documents — tex2lyx


You can import a LATEX file into LYX by using the File . Import . LATEX (plain)
menu in LYX. This will call the program tex2lyx which will create a file
foo.lyx from the file foo.tex and then open that file. If the translation
doesn’t work, you can try calling tex2lyx from the command line, possibly
using fancier options.
tex2lyx will translate most legal LATEX, but not everything. It will leave
things it doesn’t understand in TEX mode, so after translating a file with
tex2lyx, you can look for red text and hand-edit it to look right.
tex2lyx has its own manpage. Read it to find out about which LATEX
commands and environments aren’t supported, bugs (and how to get around
them), and how to use the various options.
30 CHAPTER 5. MISCELLANEOUS

5.2.3 Converting LYX Documents to LATEX


You might wish to convert a LYX Document to a LATEX file. For exam-
ple, a co-worker or co-author who doesn’t have LYX might want to read it.
Select File . Export . LATEX. This will create a file whatever.tex from the
whatever.lyx file you are editing. LYX always creates temporary LATEX files
when viewing or printing files.

5.2.4 LATEX Preamble


5.2.4.1 Document Class

The Document . Settings dialog takes care of many of the options that you
would input in a \documentclass command. Change the class, default font
size and paper size here. Put any extra options to the \documentclass
command in the Extra Options area.

5.2.4.2 Other Preamble Matter

If you have special commands to put in the preamble of a LATEX file, you
can use them in a LYX document as well. Select Document . Settings .
LATEX Preamble and type in the dialog window (or from the document settings
dialog, depending on the frontend). Anything you type will (like with TEX
mode) be sent directly to LATEX.

5.2.5 BibTEX
LYX has support for BibTEX, which allows you to build databases of bib-
liographical references to be used in multiple documents. Select Insert .
List / TOC . BibTEX Bibliography to include a BibTEX file. In the Database
field you load BibTEX files, in the Style field you can load BibTEX style files.
After you’ve done this, you can use citations from any bibliographies
you’re including with Insert . Citation (see section 3.6). LYX will take care of
running BibTEX. The box in the Citation dialog will show a list of all the
references in your BibTEX file.
5.3. ERRORS! 31

5.3 Errors!
Sometimes when you LATEX a document, there will be errors, things that LYX
or LATEX can’t understand. When this happens, LYX will open a LATEX Errors
dialog. Clicking on individual errors in this dialog will take you to the place
in the LYX document where the error occurs and also display the detailed
LATEX error message.

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