The LYX Tutorial

by Amir Karger and the LYX Team

16th September 2002

2
Contents

1 Introduction 5
1.1 Welcome to LYX! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2 What the Tutorial is and What it isn’t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2.1 Getting the Most out of the Tutorial . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2.2 What You Won’t Find: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

2 Getting Started with LYX 7

2.1 Your First LYX Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1.1 Typing, Viewing, and Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.1.2 Simple Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.1.3 WYSIWYM: Whitespace in LYX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2 Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2.1 Sections and Subsections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2.2 Lists and sublists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2.3 Other Environments: Verses, Quotations, and More . . . 13

3 Writing Documents 15
3.1 Textclasses and Templates: Writing Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.2 Templates: Writing a Letter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.3 Document Titles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.4 Labels and Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.5 Footnotes and Margin Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.6 Bibliographies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.7 Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

4 Using Math 23
4.1 Math Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.2 Navigating an Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.3 Exponents and Indices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.4 The Math Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.4.1 Greek and symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4.4.2 Square roots, accents, and delimiters . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4.4.3 Fractions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4.4.4 TEX mode: Limits, log, sin and others . . . . . . . . . . . 27

3
4 CONTENTS

4.4.5 Matrices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4.4.6 Display mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.5 Multi-Line Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
4.6 More Math Stuff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

5 Miscellaneous 33
5.1 Other Major LYX Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
5.2 LYX for LATEX Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
5.2.1 TEX Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
5.2.2 Importing LATEX Documents— reLyX . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5.2.3 Converting LYX Documents to LATEX . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5.2.4 LATEX Preamble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5.2.5 BibTEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5.2.6 Miscellaneous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5.3 Errors! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
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.
After much frustration, you found you couldn’t. In fact, you’ll find that most of
the little tricks you’re accustomed to using in other word processors just won’t
work in LYX. That’s because most word processors you’ve used before require
you to manually put in 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, bear with us and read on. 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 some-
thing. The Tutorial uses the notation outlined in the Introduction. If you came
to this manual first, go read the Introduction. Yes, we mean now.
Now that you know which fonts mean what, we want to talk a bit about
what this Tutorial is for.

5
6 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

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 silly 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 PostScript r
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. How-
ever, LYX does have idiosyncrasies1 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:

• Spoon-feeding or other dumbing-down.
The trend in computer self-help literature these days2 seems to be: “As-
sume the user has the I. Q. of a potato.” We don’t do that.
On the other hand, we do realize that most users go to a manual, especially
a tutorial, when they’re lost. So, while we’ll assume that you, the user, are
not stupid, we do understand that you might be a tad clueless or confused.
• Instructions how to use a mouse or a keyboard.
If you haven’t figured out by now how to use your computer, we can’t help
you, as such things are beyond the scope of the LYX manuals.3
• Detailed explanations of all of LYX’s features.
What, you want the User’s Guide twice?
Seriously, though, we’re here to get you up and running so that all you
need is the User’s Guide. If we tried to duplicate all of the information
about all of LYX’s features in here, the Tutorial would be redundant, too
long, and forever out of date. All we do here is introduce things; imagine
there is a “see the User’s Guide” at the end of every section.

• Detailed explanations of LATEX.

Unnecessary. If you’re really curious about learning some of the neat tricks
you can do with LATEX, you can always go get a LATEX book. There are
several good ones on the market. No need to reinvent the wheel, after
all. . .

So, brave soul, it’s time to move onward. Time for your first document . . .
1 or,
more optimistically, “features”
2 Notefrom John Weiss: . . . well, at least in America, where we dumb everything down to
the lowest common denominator. . .
3 Besides which, if you’re using L X to begin with, you’ll probably have more than half a
Y
brain in your head.
Chapter 2

Getting Started with LYX

2.1 Your First LYX Document

OK. You’re ready to start writing. Before you do, though, there are a few things
we need to mention, which will hopefully make the Tutorial more instructive,
useful, and fun.
Because there’s lots of information that we won’t be giving you, the first
thing that you need to do is find the other help files. Luckily, 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 on screen already).
This way, you can read them while you’re writing your own file1 . Note that once
you’ve got more than one document open, you can use the Documents menu to
switch between them. The Tutorial will not cover in detail subjects which are
described in the other LYX manuals. This may make life a bit harder for you
at the beginning, but it will keep the Tutorial short. It will also get you in the
habit of using the other manuals, which — in the long run — will save you a
lot of time.
In this Tutorial, we’re going to assume that you have a fully working version
of LYX, as well as LATEX, xdvi or some other dvi viewer, dvips or some other
way of converting dvi documents to PostScript r documents, and a working
printer. This is a lot to assume. If any of this is not true, you (or a friendly
system administrator) will need to set up your system. You can find information
on setup in other manuals.
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 things2 . If you want to cheat (or check what you’ve
done), there’s also a file called example_lyxified.lyx which contains the same
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.

7
8 CHAPTER 2. GETTING STARTED WITH LYX

text as written and typeset by a LYX master.

The example files can be found in the examples/ directory, which you can
get to by selecting File . Open and then clicking on the Examples button. 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. They are especially
useful to display things that (due to length or other reasons) won’t fit in the
documentation. 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 Printing

• Open a new file with File . New

• Type a sentence like: This is my first LyX document!3

• Save your document with File . Save As.

• Run LATEX to create a dvi file, with View . DVI. You may see things being
printed in the window you ran the lyx command from. These are messages
from LATEX, which you can ignore for now. LYX will run xdvi (or some
other dvi viewer), which will pop up a new window displaying what your
document will look like when printed.4

• Print by using File . Print and hitting OK.

Congratulations! You’ve written and printed your first LYX document. All of
the rest is just details, which is covered in the rest of the Tutorial, the User’s
Guide, and the Extended Features.

2.1.2 Simple Operations

LYX can of course do most of the things you’re used to doing with a word
processor. It will word-wrap and indent paragraphs automatically. Pull down
a couple menus now5 and you’ll see that most of the simple commands (e.g.,
File . Exit, Edit . Paste, File . Print) have the name you expect them to have, are
in the menu you’d expect them to be in, and work as you expect them to work.
Here’s a quick description of how to do some other simple actions.
3 All right. You could actually type anything you want. It really doesn’t matter. We’ll

apologize here for the inanity of this sentence, as well as anything we ask you to type in the
future.
4 You can save time by leaving xdvi running in the background. Then, you can use View .

Update . DVI and just click on the xdvi window (or unminimize it) after LATEX finishes running.
5 If you’re like many unix users, you did so long before starting to read the Tutorial.
2.1. YOUR FIRST LYX DOCUMENT 9

Undo LYX has capacity for “infinite undo”, which means you can undo every-
thing you’ve done since your current editing session started, by selecting
Edit . Undo over and over again. If you undo too much, just select Edit .
Redo to get it back.
[Currently, undo is limited to 100 steps. Undo also doesn’t work for ev-
erything, not for changes to the document layout for instance.]

Cut/Paste/Copy Use Edit . Cut, Edit . Paste, and Edit . Copy to cut, paste,
and copy. Or automatically paste selected text with the middle button.

Find/Replace Use Edit . Find & Replace for a search. In the resulting dialog
box, search with the Forwards> and <Backwards buttons, and use the
Replace button to replace a word you’ve found.6 If you like, you can
specify whether to make the search case-sensitive, or to search for only
complete words.

Character Formatting You can emphasize text (which will generally put
characters in italics), put it in bold face, or in Noun Style (usually small
caps, used for people’s names) from the toggle buttons in the Layout .
Character menu.

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.
If you hold the mouse above one of the buttons on the toolbar, a little
yellow note will tell you that button’s function.

Minibuffer The gray line at the very bottom of the LYX window is called
the minibuffer. This line will show all sorts of useful information. For
example, when you save, it will tell you the name of the file you just
saved. Some error messages may show up here, too. Note that you can
type in the minibuffer too. This gives you access to all sorts of interesting
functionality, including functionality which could break your document.
In other words, don’t type in the minibuffer unless you know what you’re
doing.

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 blank
6 Close the window when you’re done. Or leave it open if you find it more convenient. Most

dialog boxes in LYX — including the Find & Replace, Table of Contents, and Layout dialogs,
as well as the various math dialogs — are windows that may be lowered, rather than closed.
A few dialogs, like File . Open, won’t let you type anything in the main LYX window until you
actually close the dialog. Just be sure you have the right window focus when you’re trying to
type in the main LYX window or give a command in some other LYX dialog.
10 CHAPTER 2. GETTING STARTED WITH LYX

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 commercial 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 sep-
arates 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.
Another special kind of whitespace is the Protected Blank, which is made by
typing C-Space (or Insert . Special Character . Protected Blank) and shows up as
a small blue “u” on the screen7 . If you put a Protected Blank between two words,
it prints out just like a regular space on paper. However, a Protected Blank tells
LATEX not to put a linebreak in between those two words. A popular usage is
when writing something like, “see Section 1,” where you want to make sure that
“Section” and “1” are on the same line8 .

2.2 Environments
Different parts of a document have different purposes; we call these parts en-
vironments. Most of a document is made up of regular text. Section (chapter,
subsection, etc.) titles 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
7 If you’ve been reading this online, you probably noticed and wondered about these.
8 In the Tutorial, we also use them when describing menu names, or special characters
like. . . Protected Blanks!
2.2. ENVIRONMENTS 11

boldface, 18 point, centered type for section titles while another uses 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 box is located on the left end of the toolbar (just under the
File menu). 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. You’ll do so with the Environment
menu, which you open by clicking on the “down arrow” icon just to the right of
the Environment box.

2.2.1 Sections and Subsections

Type the word Introduction on the first line of your LYX file, and select Section
from the Environment menu9 . LYX numbers the section “1” and typesets the
section heading (title) in a larger font. (Of course, the section heading will also
be typeset correctly in the dvi or printed document.) 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.10
Type the document introduction:

This is an introduction to my first LyX document.

Hit Return again, and select Section from the Environment menu 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 doc-
ument”) and hit Return again, and select Section from the Environment menu
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:

Sections and subsections are described below.

Section Description
Sections are bigger than subsections.
9 You don’t have to select the line. If nothing is selected, L X changes the paragraph you
Y
are currently in to the selected environment. Alternatively, you can change several paragraphs
to a different environment by selecting them before picking an environment.
10 See the User’s Guide for ways to write titles with two or more lines. The Standard

environment can of course continue for several paragraphs. The various list environments (see
below) also don’t end when you hit Return. You can always tell what environment you’re
currently in by looking at the Environment box.
12 CHAPTER 2. GETTING STARTED WITH LYX

Subsection description
Subsections are smaller than sections.

Click on the second line and select Subsection from the Environment menu. LYX
numbers the subsection “2.1”, and typesets it in a font which is bigger than
regular text but smaller than the section title. Change the fourth line Subsection
environment as well. As you probably expected, LYX automatically 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 Subpara-
graph. 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 subpara-
graphs are indented; see the User’s Guide 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 (textclasses) 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 menu 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 Subsubsection.
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, and lets you concentrate on the list content.11 Different types of
documents logically require different list environments:

• 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 Description

environment, where each item in the list begins with a boldfaced word.

• The List environment — not found in LATEX — is a slightly different form

of Description.
11 Yes, we’re overemphasizing this point throughout the Tutorial. But it is the main philos-

ophy of LYX, so please forgive us.

2.2. ENVIRONMENTS 13

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 menu. LYX writes
a “bullet” (actually, an asterisk, which will be converted to a round circle on
output) 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. Instead,
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 Return, which you get by
typing C-Return. In order to get out of the list, you need to reselect the Standard
environment (or just use the keybinding, M-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 list12 and choose Enumerate from the Environment
menu. 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 envi-
ronments, Description and List, in order to see what they look like. For 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”13 (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, as well as examples which use a
lot of nesting.

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, also used in the Tutorial for the long typing examples) is
written in a typewriter font; this environment is the only place in LYX where
12 L X won’t let you select the first bullet unless you also select the paragraph before the
Y
list, which you probably don’t want to do. Similarly, you can’t select the actual number in a
numbered section title. Don’t worry about it.
13 But a typesetter’s tab, which will change to fit the size of the largest term, not a pathetic,

rigid, unchangeable typewriter Tab.

14 CHAPTER 2. GETTING STARTED WITH LYX

you’re allowed to use multiple spaces to allow code indenting. You can even
write poetry14 using the Verse style, using Return to separate stanzas, and C-
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

14 . . . assuming you’re creative enough to come up with poetry in the first place.
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 textclasses, 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, bibli-
ographies, and tables of contents.

3.1 Textclasses and Templates: Writing Letters

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 environ-
ments — such as the sender’s address and the signature — which do not make
sense in a book or article. The LYX textclass 1 takes care of these large scale
differences between different sorts of documents. This Tutorial, for example,
was written in the Book textclass. Textclasses 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 textclass2 . Try chang-
ing to other textclasses (using the Document tab in the Layout . Document dialog
box) to see how they are typeset differently. If you change your document to
the Book textclass and look at the Environment menu, you’ll see that most of
the allowed environments are the same. However, you can now use the Chapter
environment. If you’re ever unsure about which environments you can use in a
given textclass, just consult the Environment menu.
1L
AT
EX users: this is equivalent to the LATEX documentclass
2 That’s
usually the default textclass, although you can set it in your lyxrc file.

15
16 CHAPTER 3. WRITING DOCUMENTS

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 submissions,
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) textclass.
Here’s a very quick reference to some of the textclasses. See the Special Doc-
ument Classes section of the Extended 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
slides transparencies (also including FoilTEX)
letter lots of extra environments for address, signature. . .

3.2 Templates: Writing a Letter

One of the most popular textclasses is Letter. One way to write a letter would
be to open a New file, and choose Letter from the Class menu in the Layout .
Document 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. After choosing a new filename,
select letter.lyx from the Choose Template dialog. Save and print the file to
see how the various environments are typeset.
When you look at the Environment menu, you’ll see several environments, like
the My Address environment, which don’t even exist in most other textclasses.
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 try printing 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.
3.3. DOCUMENT TITLES 17

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 probably
don’t have to suggest an actual “exercise” here; just write a letter to someone3 !
Templates can be a huge time-saver, and we urge you to use them whenever
possible. In addition, they can help a person learn how to use some of the
fancier textclasses. 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 newfile.lyx document and make sure it’s using the Ar-
ticle textclass.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
environment. On the next line, write the date in the Date environment. Type a
paragraph or two summarizing your document using the Abstract environment.
Now see how it looks when printed.
Exercise: Fix the title, date, and author in example_raw.lyx

3.4 Labels and Cross-References

You can label a section (or subsubsection, or, more rarely, just a random piece
of text) 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 sections
and footnotes, LYX worries about the cross-references for you. Automatic labels
and cross-references are one of the best advantages of LYX (and LATEX) over
conventional word processors.

Your first label

Let’s mark our second section, whose title is “About This Document”. Click
at the end of the section title line, and select Insert . Label. A dialog box asks
you for a label name. We’ll use sec:aboutdocument, which seems like a good
3 One warning, if you’re writing from a template. If you erase all of the text in an environ-

ment — 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 menu to get it back.
4 You should not be using the letter any more, since the Letter textclass doesn’t allow titles.
18 CHAPTER 3. WRITING DOCUMENTS

descriptive label that won’t get confused with other labels we might add.5 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 file will look exactly the same,
since labels don’t show up in the printed document. However, now that you’ve
added a label, you can refer to that label with cross-references. We’ll do that
next.

Your first cross-references

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 — with the cursor after the word“section” — choose Insert . Cross Reference.
The Reference dialog pops up. It shows a list of the possible labels you can
reference. At the moment, there should be only one, “sec:aboutdocument”.
Select it (it may be selected by default), then set the Reference type to Standard
(the default), and click Apply. Now put the cursor after the word “page”, and
change the Reference type to 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.)
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 Insert Reference dialog). Con-
veniently, a cross-reference acts a hyperlink when you’re editing a document in
LYX; clicking on it will pop up the Reference dialog, clicking Goto reference will
move the cursor to the referenced label, and C-< will then move the cursor back
to the reference. Use View . Update . 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).

More fun with labels

We told you that LYX worries about numbering cross-references; now you can
test that. Add a new section before Section 2. Now rerun LATEX, and — voilà!
— the section cross reference changed to “3”! Change “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.
5 We write “sec:“ because you can also label equations, tables, figures, and lists items. And

in fact LYX now automatically fills in a suggestion for you.

3.5. FOOTNOTES AND MARGIN NOTES 19

If you want some more practice with labels, then try putting a new label,
“sec:myfirstlabel”, where your first cross-reference was, and refer to that label
from elsewhere in the document. If you’ll be inserting cross-references often (if,
for example, you’re writing a journal article), it may be convenient to leave the
Insert Reference window 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 document6 .
Exercise: Fix the references in example_raw.lyx

3.5 Footnotes and Margin Notes

Footnotes can be added using the Insert Footnote button in the toolbar7 or
Insert . Footnote. Click at the end of the word “LYX” somewhere in your docu-
ment and hit the Insert Footnote button. A footnote line opens underneath the
line you are currently typing on. At the left end of the line, you’ll see the word
“foot” written in red on a gray background. The rest of the line is outlined in
red; that’s where you write your footnote. LYX should place the cursor at the
beginning of the line. Type

LyX is a typesetting word processor.

Now click on the word “foot.” The footnote line disappears, leaving the word
“foot”, superscripted in red, 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, if you want — by clicking on the red “foot”
marker.
You may wonder why the footnote marker is a word instead of a number.
The answer is that LYX worries 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 marker8 and Cut and Paste it. In addition, you
can change regular text to a footnote, by selecting it and hitting the Insert Foot-
note button; change a footnote to regular text by clicking the Insert Footnote
button when the cursor is in a footnote.
6 By the way, copying a chapter title may cause an error, because chapters aren’t allowed

in the article class. If this happens, just delete the chapter title. If you want to know why
this happens, see Section 3.1.
7 The button shows an arrow pointing to red text, which is just below some black text.
8 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.

20 CHAPTER 3. WRITING DOCUMENTS

Margin notes can be added using the Insert Marginal Note button9 or Insert .
Marginal Note. Margin notes are like footnotes, except that:

• the on-screen markers 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 references10 .
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 items’ numbers change.
Go to the end of the document and switch to the Bibliography environment.
Now, each paragraph you type will be a reference. Type The Lyx Tutorial,
by the LyX DocTeam as your first reference. Note that LYX automatically puts
a number in a box before each reference. Click on the boxed reference number,
and a Bibliography item dialog box appears. You use the first field, the Key, to
refer to this reference within the LYX document. By default, it is a number.
Change the Key field to “lyxtutorial” to make it easy to remember.
Now pick somewhere in your document that you would like to insert a ref-
erence. Do so with Insert . Citation Reference. 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 cite11 . Select “lyxtutorial”
(right now, that’s the only item in the bibliography), then use the left arrow in
the center to insert it in the Inset keys box. (You can have multiple citations
in the same place by transferring a number of keys this way.) Now run LATEX,
and you’ll see that the citation appears in brackets in the text, referring to the
bibliography at the end of the document.
How are the other fields used? The 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
9 The button shows an arrow pointing to red text next to (i.e., in the margin of) black text,

and should be next to the Insert Footnote button in the toolbar.

10 To get humanities style bibliographies, combine the techniques in this section with foot-

notes in creative ways.

11 This is why it’s a good idea to give the keys unique and logical names, instead of leaving

the default numbers in the Key field.

3.7. TABLE OF CONTENTS 21

field in the Bibliography item dialog. As usual, you can 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 title12 and choose Insert . Lists & TOC . Table of Contents. The
words “Table of Contents” will appear in a box (otherwise known as an inset)
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 document,
because you can’t edit it anyway. However, you can display the table of contents
in a separate window by clicking on the table of contents inset, or by using View .
Table of Contents13 . This is a very useful tool. You can use the Table of Contents
window to move around your document. Clicking on a (sub)section title in the
Table of Contents window will highlight that line and move the cursor (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
marker just like any other character.
Exercise: Fix the table of contents in example_raw.lyx

12 Don’t frustrate yourself trying to click or backspace before the section number. It won’t
work. You’re not allowed to edit the section number anyway, since LYX takes care of section
numbering.
13 The menu command will work even if you don’t have a table of contents inset in your
document.
22 CHAPTER 3. WRITING DOCUMENTS
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 edi-
tors. 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
easily1 .

4.1 Math Mode

Somewhere in your LYX document, type:

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

ple.

Now, that equation doesn’t look very good, even in the dvi file; 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.
Math is written in Mathed, otherwise known as math mode. In order to
enter math mode, just click the toolbar button with a+b c written on it in blue.
LYX will open a little blue square, with a purple rectangle around it. The blue
square is an insertion point, telling you that Mathed is waiting for you to insert
something, and the rectangle indicates that you are in Mathed. LYX has placed
the cursor in the blue square, so just type E=mc^2 again. The expression is
typed in blue, and the blue square disappears as soon as the insertion point is
1L
YX can’t check if the math you’re writing is actually correct. Sorry.

23
24 CHAPTER 4. USING MATH

not empty. Now type Esc to leave Mathed (Note: clicking on the math button
again will not get you out of Mathed). The purple rectangle disappears, 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 dvi file. 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.
Mathed is another example of the WYSIWYM philosophy. In LATEX, you
write a mathematical expression using text and commands like \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 missing brackets or other
“bugs”. On the other hand, 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.
99% of the time, you won’t have to make any changes to the font sizes or spacing
that LATEX outputs. This way (sorry to be so repetitive) you can focus on the
content of your mathematical expressions, not their format.

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
rectangle appears to let you know you’re back in Mathed. 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 exit the expression, at which point the
purple rectangle will disappear again. Many people find the arrows convenient,
but you can also just click somewhere on the expression to put the cursor there
and start Mathed.
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 does cutting and pasting. One thing to be careful of: if you’re right outside a
Mathed expression and you type Delete (or Backspace), it will delete the whole
expression. 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 typing Up will
move the cursor 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. In fact, if you
hit Down from anywhere within the superscript, the cursor will be placed just
after the superscript (so that you can then type the “+1”).
You can also use Space in navigating an expression. If you are currently
within a Mathed structure (a subscript, superscript, fraction, square root, de-
limiters, or matrix, all of which are described in following sections), pressing
4.3. EXPONENTS AND INDICES 25

Space will move the cursor past that structure, but will stay within Mathed.
So, if the cursor is anywhere in the superscript, typing Space will move the
cursor down to the regular level and just after the superscript. This means you
can type E = mc1+x − 2 without using the mouse or the arrow keys, a method
you’ll probably prefer once you’re more experienced. Just be careful not to type
Space between the one and the plus sign, or you will exit the superscript. In
places where these actions don’t make sense (say, between the “m” and the “c”),
Space will do nothing2 .
Note that if you type your expression and exit with Esc, there will be no
space after the expression. This is fine if you’re typing a period or comma, but
if you want to type a word after the formula, you need to explicitly type Space
after you exit Mathed. As a shortcut, though, if you are at the very end of
a Mathed expression, then pressing Space will exit Mathed and print a space
after the expression. That way you can write “f = ma is my favorite equation”
instead of “f = mais my favorite equation.”

4.3 Exponents and Indices

An exponent can be entered from the Math Panel (see below), but it’s actually
simpler just to type the caret key, “ˆ”. LYX will place an insertion point (the
blue square, remember?) 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 Mathed entirely) will be in the superscript.
Writing a subscript (index) is just as easy — start one by typing the un-
derscore key, “ “. You can subscript and superscript both subscripts and super-
2
scripts like this: Aa0 +b2 + C a0 +b .
Exercise: Put equation 1 of example_raw.lyx into math mode.

4.4 The Math Panel

The Math Panel is a convenient way to enter symbols or to perform many com-
plicated Mathed functions. Many of these functions can be accomplished from
the keyboard or the Edit . Math or Insert . Math menus. However, we’re going
to concentrate on using the Math Panel, just to let you know what’s out there;
you can learn keyboard shortcuts later, from other manuals (hint, hint). So
open it using Insert . Math . Math Panel now and leave it open while reading this
section.

2 Space and Tab are not used for making extra space between parts of an equation. That

spacing is a typesetting issue, which means that you should let LYX (LATEX) take care of it
(see Sec. 2.1.3). If you’re not entirely satisfied, there are ways to fine-tune spacing, for which
you can see the User’s Guide — but don’t bother with fine-tuning until you’re done putting
all the content into your document.
26 CHAPTER 4. USING MATH

4.4.1 Greek and symbols

If you click on the button marked “Γρεεκ”, you’ll get a menu from which you
can choose a Greek letter, which will show up at the cursor. Note that there are
a couple variants of epsilon, pi, phi, theta, and sigma. As a shortcut, if you are
typing text, you can choose something from the Math Panel, and Mathed will
automatically be opened.
There is a total of twelve buttons at the bottom of the Math Panel which
allow you to choose from a large array of symbols used in math: various ar-
rows, relations, operators, and sums and integrals3 . Note that subscripting and
superscripting allow you to put lower and upper limits on sums and integrals.
The last button of every color is the dreaded miscellaneous. “Nothing you can
do that can’t be done. . . All you need is ♥.”

4.4.2 Square roots, accents, and delimiters

To type a square root, just click on the button with a square root sign on it.
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. Hit the Decoration button , which has a blue square with a black tilde (˜)
over it, to open the Decoration window. Click on a decoration, and LYX will
print that decoration with an insertion point under (or over) it. Just type what
you want in the insertion point, and type Space to “exit” the decoration. There
are two sets of decorations: the upper (and with larger buttons) resize with the
text you type. The lower 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, which features a blue square
surrounded by brackets, to pop up the Delimiter window. Click on a left delimiter
with the left mouse button and a right delimiter with the right mouse button.
(Alternatively, use the radio buttons labeled Left, Right and Both and then click
on delimiters with the left mouse button.) Your current selection of delimiters
is displayed in a box at the top of the window. It’s a pair of parentheses by
default, but with this general selection method you can choose a pair of braces,
a brace and a parenthesis, or even choose the empty square to have something
like “a = h7 ” (the empty delimiter is displayed as a broken black line in LYX,
but won’t show up in the output).
Once you’ve chosen your delimiters, click on OK to put them into your
expression (or hit Apply if you want to leave the window open for next time). If
you’re lazy, you can type actual parentheses in math mode, rather than using
3 The black buttons are for regular L
AT X symbols, while the blue buttons are for more
E
specialized symbols provided by the nice people in the American Mathematical Society. But
I’m getting ahead of myself.
4.4. THE MATH PANEL 27

the Delimiter window. 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. Using the Delimiter window will guarantee that the delimiters are
sized based on what’s inside them.
You can also put delimiters or a square root sign or a decoration on already
existing text. Select the portion of the formula that you want to adjust, and
then click on the button you want from the Math Panel. 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
Fractions are very simple in Mathed. Just click on the fraction button in the
Math Panel, which shows a fraction with blue squares in the numerator and
the denominator. 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! 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’re 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” (typing Space will just exit math mode). So how do
you get “sin x” instead of “sinx”?
Click on “sin” in the Functions listbox in the Math Panel. The word “sin”
is written in black, 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 Mathed. In the dvi file,
the expression will be correctly typeset. Try it.
Other commands you need to type in TEX mode using the Functions listbox
include other trigonometric functions and their inverses, hyperbolic functions,
logarithms, limits, and quite a few others. These functions 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 Panel. The Matrix dialog box has two
sliding bars which allow you to choose how many rows and columns you want
in your matrix. Choose 2 rows and 3 columns and hit Apply or OK. LYX prints
28 CHAPTER 4. USING MATH

6 insertion points in a 2 × 3 matrix. As usual, you can put any sort of Mathed
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.
If you suddenly need more rows or columns, use Edit . Math . Add Row and
Add Column. They add a row or column just after the current position. Overdid
it? Use Delete Row and Delete Column from the same menu.
See the User’s Guide for information on how to change the horizontal align-
ment 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’ 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 (see Sec. 4.5)
must be in display mode.
Click on the display button in the Math Panel, which represents a couple lines
of text before and after a centered blue box. LYX opens up an insertion point,
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 regular Mathed:
P R
• The default font is larger for a few symbols, like 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 expres-
sions are very similar.
One final note about the way displayed equations are typeset: be careful
about whether you’re putting your equation into a new paragraph or not. If your
equation is in the middle of a sentence or paragraph, then don’t press Return.
Doing so will cause the text after the equation to start a new paragraph. That
text will therefore be indented, 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.
4.5. MULTI-LINE EQUATIONS 29

Exercise: Using various tools you’ve learned in this section, you should be
able to write an equation like4 :


 log8 x x>0
f (x) = 0 q x=0
 P5 αi + − 1

x<0
i=1 x

4.5 Multi-Line Equations

Try writing the following equations and looking at the resulting dvi file. You
will need to enter two separate equations in display mode.

x=y+y+y+y+y

= 5y

This doesn’t look good at all! If you write two or more equations in succes-
sion, they look much better if their equals signs are aligned; this is especially
true if the second equation has no left side. LYX allows you to write multi-line
equations with some control over the alignment.

x = y+y+y+y+y
= 5y

This looks much better! The equals signs are aligned, and there is less
vertical space between the equations.
In order to start a multi-line equation, open a displayed Mathed expression
and type C-Return, or choose Insert . Math . Eqnarray environment. LYX will print
a line with three empty insertion points. This is a multi-line equation with just
one line. Disappointed? Use Edit . Math . Add Row or type C-Return again to
get two such lines. Try to reproduce the above multi-line equation. Note that
it’s legal to leave one or more insertion points empty in a multi-line equation.
This can be useful either for examples like the one above, or for splitting very
long equations, like5 :

x = a+b+c+d
+e + f + g

LYX will line up the second (central) field of each line, so usually you’ll put
equals signs or other relational operators in that field; in fact, though, you can
4 After you’ve done it the hard way, why don’t you give Insert . Math . Cases environment a
try?
5 Note that the spacing after the first plus in the second row is too short. This is one of

the rare cases where LATEX fails and you have to tweak the spacing yourself. Read more in
the User’s Guide.
30 CHAPTER 4. USING MATH

put whatever you want in there. But don’t use a multi-line equation to print
an array; use a matrix for that (see Sec. 4.4.5).
If you want an even longer set of equations, use C-Return to get a new line
with three empty insertion points. If you aren’t at the end of the line when you
do it, the remaining stuff on the current line will be carried to the new line. If
you hit C-Return when you’ve already written a (one-line) equation, the whole
equation will be in the first field. Place the cursor before the equals sign and hit
C-Tab to move it to the second field. Then move past the equals sign, and C-Tab
again to move the right side of the equation to the third field. Try changing
your E = mc2 equation to

E = mc2
= mc × c

If you’ve written too many lines, use Edit . Math . Delete Row. Alternatively,
put the cursor at the end of a line and use C-k to delete the following line.
It will delete the linefeed and concatenate (all three insertion points of) the
next line onto the end of the current one. If the following line is empty, it will
effectively just delete it. Using C-k when you’re not at the end of the line will
erase everything until the end of the line. In effect C-k is not Mathed specific,
it simply erases until the end of the line in any mode and in any situation.
A final note: there is much more to multi-line equations. In particular we
failed to explain all these mysterious entries in the Insert . Math menu that start
with AMS! The American Mathematical Society, being displeased with certain
issues about regular multi-line equations have created their own family of LATEX
constructs for doing the same thing. Why would you want to use them? Read
about all this in the User’s Guide.

4.6 More Math Stuff

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

• Labeling and numbering expressions

• Change typefaces, e.g., to write boldface text in an expression. We’ll note
here that clicking on the math button in the toolbar while you’re already
in Mathed will write Roman text until you hit it again.
• 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. If you change the macro definition, the references to the
macro will be changed throughout the document. Macros can even take
arguments.
4.6. MORE MATH STUFF 31

• Do lots of other things we didn’t have time to mention in this Tutorial.

32 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 for more information. The exact
function of every menu command is described in the Reference Manual. We’ll
just mention a couple more major things LYX can do. . .

• LYX has WYSIWYM support for tables. Use the Insert . Tabular Material
to get a table. (We chose to use the LATEX naming convention—tabular vs
table—to distinguish between the tabular material itself from a floating
table, which include the tabular material, a caption, etc.) Click on the
table with the right button to get a Tabular Layout dialog box which allows
extensive table editing.

• LYX also supports including pictures in a number of formats (including

JPEG and other bitmap formats, PostScript r and raw LATEX) within
documents. (You guessed it: Insert . Graphics. Then click on the figure to
choose the file to include, rotate or scale it, etc.) Tables and figures can
have captions, and LYX will automatically generate lists of figures and/or
tables.

• Version control is supported, using RCS (man rcsintro for more info).

• 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 Edit . 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
processors. Even some right-to-left languages like Hebrew or Arabic are

33
34 CHAPTER 5. MISCELLANEOUS

supported. You can write documents in other languages, but 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 typing M-F followed by O or by using the binding which is shown
next to it in the menu (C-O by default). Keybindings are also configurable.
For information on this, check out Help . Customization.

• LYX can read in LATEX documents. See Section 5.2.2.

• Spellcheck your document with Edit . Spellchecker.1

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, many people 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. Currently, there may be some annoyance in converting old
LATEX documents and in a couple other areas, but later releases of LYX will get
rid of these problems.
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 keeping
the Tutorial short, we will give only minimal information here. The Extended
Features manual, specifically the Secrets of the LATEX Masters chapter, has 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. This creates a text box, and everything within it is passed
straight to LATEX.
In Mathed, TEX mode is handled a bit differently. Enter TEX mode 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, underscore, 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, in Mathed, you type \gamma, then when you
type 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 Panel, and will be especially convenient for experienced LATEX users.
1 Note that the spellchecker only checks from the cursor to the end of the document.
5.2. LYX FOR LATEX USERS 35

As a special case, if you type a brace in Mathed’s TEX mode, then Mathed
will type the beginning and ending braces 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 Mathed doesn’t know which take an argument.
LYX can’t do absolutely everything that LATEX can do (yet?). Some fancy
functions 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 con-
venient features of LYX, like WYSIWYM math, tables, and editing. 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— reLyX

You can import a LATEX file into LYX by using the File . Import . LaTEX com-
mand in LYX. This will call a Perl script called reLyX—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 reLyX from the command line2 , possibly using
fancier options.
reLyX 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 reLyX, you
can look for red text and hand-edit it to look right.
reLyX has its own manpage. Read it to find out about which LATEX com-
mands and environments aren’t supported, bugs (and how to get around them),
and how to use the various options.

5.2.3 Converting LYX Documents to LATEX

You might wish to convert a LYX Document to a LATEX file. For example,
a co-worker or co-author who doesn’t have LYX might want to read it. This
is very easy to do with LYX. 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, so it is very good
at generating LATEX.

5.2.4 LATEX Preamble

5.2.4.1 Document Class
The Layout . Document 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.
2 When L X is installed, a separate executable called reLyX will be placed in the same
Y
folder as the lyx executable (e.g., /usr/local/bin/reLyX). reLyX requires Perl (version 5.002
as of this writing).
36 CHAPTER 5. MISCELLANEOUS

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 Layout . Preamble. . . and type in the
dialog window. 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 bibliograph-
ical references to be used in multiple documents. Select Insert . Lists & TOC .
BibTEX Reference to include a bib file. Click on the resulting “BibTEX Gener-
ated References” button, and you will get a BibTEX dialog. In the Database field,
type what you would type inside the braces of a \bibliography{} command3 .
Similarly, in the Style field, type what you would type inside the braces of a
\bibliographystyle{} command.
After you’ve done this, you can use citations from any bibliographies you’re
including with Insert . Citation Reference (see Section 3.6). LYX will take care of
running BibTEX. The combobox in the Citation dialog will show a list of all the
references in your bib file.

5.2.6 Miscellaneous
See the Insert . Special Character menu for other special characters, including
ellipsis, forced linebreak, and hyphenation point.

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 create an error box
(a box with the word “error” in it). Clicking on this box will pop up a window
showing what the error was. If it was something you did wrong with LYX, it
will be a LYX error. These should be very rare. If LATEX had a problem (most
often, this happens with things you typed in TEX mode) then LYX will just
quote LATEX’s error message.

3 Like in regular L
AT X, multiple bibliographies should be separated by commas, with no
E
whitespace.