LyX ⇒ Page header overlapped with page text

[drmCA]

After output to DVI from a document of class 'book' the text on the pages overlaps the lower half of the page header (both chapter and page number). What am I doing wrong?

The page layout section in preamble looks like this with the recommended change as per below:

% Page layout (geometry)
\setlength{\voffset}{-1in}
\setlength{\hoffset}{-1in}
\setlength{\topmargin}{0.7874in}
\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{0.7874in}
\setlength{\textheight}{8.985in}
\setlength{\textwidth}{6.9251995in}
\setlength{\footskip}{0.4402in}
\setlength{\headheight}{20pt}
\setlength{\headsep}{0cm}

Are those appropriate values for a book?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi,

welcome to the board!

I guess the head height is too small. You can change it this way, in your document preamble:

Code: Select all

\setlength{\headheight}{20pt}% adjust the value

Stefan

[drmCA]

Am I supposed to have access to that document setting in LyX?
I tried changing page margins to no avail.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

You already use that setting \headheight. Just change the value. Add such a \setlength command to your LyX document preamble. I don't recommend to use 20 pt. I just recommended to use the command, the value depends on your document, i.e. on the content of the header.

For values appropriate for a book, I would use the typearea package, which calculates a good layout.

Stefan

[drmCA]

That kind of defeats the purpose of using LyX.
I am just an author who has to quickly publish a book. That does not mean that I am looking to master the tex language in its entirety. On the contrary, LyX advertises itself as a WYSIWYG tool and I am inquiring on how to use it just because I have no desire to write tex.

As LyX provides document settings and there is a tab for page margins, I am wondering whether that works and how? Changing the margins in document settings does not seem to do anything to the heading height.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Sure, LyX gives easy access. On top of that, using TeX sometimes gives you more control and finer customization.

If you would like to have pure LyX style answers (click here, choose that, enter the menu, click, enter value, press ok, ...) then I recommend that you ask at the LyX mailing list. This place here, the forum, is especially good in giving you LaTeX code which you could directly copy into your preamble (LyX menu: Document, Settings, preamble) and it works. Not much words and clicking around, which is often hard to describe.

Regarding page layout: I would use a class with best layout support. This could be memoir or scrbook. The latter would be my choice, which would mean for LyX, I choose "book (KOMA-Script)" as the class. Furthermore, I let this class calculate the layout, by adding the class option DIV=10 in the LyX dialog for class options. To get narrover margins, I use a value higher than 10. The layout is well calculated then, by page division. It's described in the link I gave above, there's a whole chapter about page design.

Stefan

[drmCA]

I thought I was posting in LyX forum.

For some reason LyX does not allow me to change class from book.
Once I tried, the preamble is gone, but the class is still book.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

I thought I was posting in LyX forum.

That'a correct, it's the LyX subforum of a general LaTeX site. Sometimes experienced LyX users write here, sometimes you will find mostly LaTeX users here. Who can give great help, but with LaTeX code for LyX.

For some reason LyX does not allow me to change class from book.
Once I tried, the preamble is gone, but the class is still book.

Perhaps the koma-script bundle is not installed on your PC, you could check it with the TeX package manager.

Stefan

[drmCA]

What is the program name of tex package manager?

I am in Fedora 14 if that matters. There is no KOMA package in Yum.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

If you installed TeX with yum, you need to use yum. Perhaps it's called texlive-koma-script, a search could tell you that. Unfortunately I don't use Fedora. I use Ubuntu and Debian, besides Windows.

As Linux native TeX versions are often pretty old, I prefer installation from tug.org/texlive, over the internet, which gives me the most current TeX version. Then, the package manager is called tlmgr (TeX Live Manager).

Stefan