LyX ⇒ Some General Concerns before starting

[insipidtoast]

Before I get too involved with typesetting my book, I want to gather some input.

Is the best way to typeset the book to start at the very beginning and go page by page? Or to do pieces, and then somehow conjoin them all together?

What happens at the end after you're done with the whole book and then decide you want to remove a few pictures towards the beginning of the book? Does it mess up the rest of the book?

It seems like it takes me 20 minutes sometimes to put all my tables and pictures in exactly the right places, and it would be a major pain to have to redo everything simply because of an edit towards the beginning of the book, which had the side-effect of adding or removing more space throughout the rest of the book and having to throw everything out of alignment and pushing images onto the following pages and leaving big spaces on the pages preceding the images...etc, etc.

[scottkosty]

Is the best way to typeset the book to start at the very beginning and go page by page? Or to do pieces, and then somehow conjoin them all together?

What happens at the end after you're done with the whole book and then decide you want to remove a few pictures towards the beginning of the book? Does it mess up the rest of the book?

It seems like it takes me 20 minutes sometimes to put all my tables and pictures in exactly the right places, and it would be a major pain to have to redo everything simply because of an edit towards the beginning of the book, which had the side-effect of adding or removing more space throughout the rest of the book and having to throw everything out of alignment and pushing images onto the following pages and leaving big spaces on the pages preceding the images...etc, etc.

LaTeX handles this extremely well (LyX does not deserve any credit here). My advice would be to use whatever workflow you think is comfortable for you, whether that's linear or non-linear. Maybe give mindmapping software a try and then when you have your ideas figured out go to LyX. The only important thing for you, since you say that you are very picky, is that if you are going to make manual adjustments (like throwing in \vspace and \hspace commands and like getting the figures positioned right where you want them on the page), *do them at the end*. Normally LaTeX will do a good job without these manual adjustments. Resist the urge to tweak them (maybe make a LyX note to remind you to come back to it later) and do your tweaks, if you must, at the end.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

It seems like it takes me 20 minutes sometimes to put all my tables and pictures in exactly the right places

That's what LaTeX is able to handle for you. If you would have a look at scientific books with figures, figures have a caption with a number, and within the text they are referenced by this number. They don't need to be exact at the place where they are mentioned (otherwise you would not need the reference), they just should be near to the place, i.e. in the same chapter or even section, possibly at one of the following pages. A preferred place is at the top of pages, it lines up well with the text top in general then. You know, sometimes a picture or a big table just doesn't fit to the page, so it has to go to the next one, and following text should be used to fill up the page.

In LyX and LaTeX, figures and tables are also called floats, because they can float to a good place from the typesetting view point. They float a bit through the text to an optimal position. One has to get used to it first, if one just knows the "word-like" workflow putting pictures at fixed positions in the source text, thus having to reposition a lot if there were changes. LyX and LaTeX can do it automatically.

Even better: you can tell LyX/LaTeX which kind of positioning you prefer: top, bottom, on separate pages, right here if possible, or exactly here. Have a look, open in the menu Documents / Settings:

floats.png (17.68 KiB) Viewed 7457 times

Check the option you would like to use. Check "Ignore LaTeX rules" for very relaxed and "near" placement. But you could leave it unchecked. In that case, you still could fine tune the rules, such as telling how many floats are allowed to be at a page top, at the bottom, the total number of floats allowed on a page, the relation of amount of text and floats, the spacing between floats and texts, and many more. Perhaps come back here and ask in a new topic, if you have questions regarding fine tuning later on.

To get an impression of the sophisticated LaTeX mechanisms, have a quick look at the epslatex document, in Part IV The Figure Environment, 17.2 Figure Placement and 18 Customizing Float Placement. Just to have a brief look, so you can see you would be able to fine-tune if you desire. Howeverm, default settings are usually already good. But nice to know that they can be changed. Overriding for specific figures or tables is still possible.

Don't worry much about the layout during writing. I recommend to focus on the content, the layout can always be changed. And I agree with scottkosty: if tweaks are desired, do it at the very end, to not loose time doing it again and again.

Stefan

[insipidtoast]

OK. Thanks for the good responses. I have all the sections of the book written and proofread in separate word documents. I have all my images in a folder. All the pieces are in place, now I just need to put everything into lyx properly.

It sounds like the consensus is just to throw everything into LyX quickly, and apply some general format to it, and then go back later and fine tune little annoying things.

My question is this:
When going back to fine tune things, should I start at the beginning or is it OK to randomly fix things here and there.

[insipidtoast]

Actually one concern just revealed itself. The introduction left its last two, very small lines of text on a new page.

So now there's a page with nothing on it except,

"And they...
lived happily ever after."

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Also this I would tweak at the end - it's possible that you later change page dimension again, or the font, and the problem might disappear, an earlier madex fix could be bad then.

You can adjust the text height of a specific page by 2 lines by inserting LaTeX code (ERT) at this page:

Code: Select all

\enlargethispage{2\baselineskip}

Stefan

[insipidtoast]

OK - sounds like it's best to just jump right in!

[insipidtoast]

...But before I do, How do you define "fine tuning?"

For example, would creating a section with multicolumns be "fine tuning?"

[Stefan Kottwitz]

It depends on the context - above, I mentioned it regarding figures.

I guess you mean the recommendation to make tweaks at the very end: well, you can do layout fine tuning in the preamble all the time, just postpone fine tuning in the document body to the final stage. Tuning, which could become obsolete because of other changes.

Creating a section with multicolumns is a normal layout work. When you know you need it, do it.

Stefan

[insipidtoast]

Also this I would tweak at the end - it's possible that you later change page dimension again, or the font, and the problem might disappear, an earlier madex fix could be bad then.

You can adjust the text height of a specific page by 2 lines by inserting LaTeX code (ERT) at this page:

Code: Select all

\enlargethispage{2\baselineskip}

Stefan

This may sound like a dumb question based on the name of the command you mentioned, but do I need to enter anything else to make sure the command doesn't affect other pages?