Path to extending Lyx to a full featured Jupyter-like IDE

Richard Kimberly Heck rikiheck at lyx.org
Wed Mar 11 02:05:58 UTC 2020


On 3/10/20 9:24 PM, Allen Barker wrote:
> On 6/25/19 12:42 PM, Richard Kimberly Heck wrote:
>> Thanks for these ideas. I'm not an R user myself, though, so it would be
>> helpful to me if you could explain what it is you are trying to achieve.
>> It's best when thinking through issues like this one to separate the
>> problem from the solution. What's below seems to be a mix between those.
>>
>> One reason I ask about this is that LyX 2.3.3 has added the ability to
>> edit the LaTeX preamble or the contents of an ERT inset using some
>> external editor. LyX 2.4.0 will extend that to 'collapsible' insets
>> generally, controlled by a layout tag EditExternal. So by activating
>> this tag for the appropriate kind of inset, you can edit its contents in
>> whatever editor you define for its format. That seems, if I'm reading
>> you right, to give you much of what you want---and to use your editor of
>> choice.
>
> I'm very interested to hear about the new 2.4.0 editable insets.  As I
> mentioned in my other recent posting in a related thread, I ran into this
> same problem a few years back when I implemented my Lyx Notebook project.
> I had to resort to an ugly kludge to get the inset text.
>
> Is this new feature already implemented in the 2.4.0 code in the git
> repo?  Does it work for Flex insets, too?  If so, how do you enable it
> for a Flex inset?

Yes. Just do:

    EditExternal 1

in the inset layout to enable it. The inset should then have a context
menu item allowing it to be edited, as ERT insets do.


> I assume this uses the inset-edit LFUN, which opens an editor on the
> text.  I'm not sure how to set the particular editor to use, though.

This uses the editor defined in Preferences for the document's output
format.


> It would be nice to have an option to have the LFUN just return the
> filename rather than running an editor process on the file.
> Sometimes users might want to edit the inset text and sometimes you
> might want to process the text with your already-running program
> (Lyx Notebook uses Lyx server pipes).

There must be some reasonable way to do that. Can't be too hard.


> I also had a few other wish-list LFUNs from back when I implemented
> that program (such as "goto the next inset of a given type").  Perhaps
> I'll post them for discussion in a new thread at some point.  There
> might already be ways to do some of them.

OK!

Riki




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