Using lyx for IEEE transactions

brad — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 11:28:25 +0200

I use LyX write documents for submission etc. It is great because it imposes semantics onto your content, and worries about making the document display appropriately (i.e. divorcing content from display). It also utilizes bibtex to manage references. This is nice because as I build up my list of references for various papers I can access all the references by simply adding my common bibtex resource file. Also, lyx-1.4.1 is a significant improvement on previous versions, and is worthwhile installing (Unfortunately unavailable in ubuntu repositories, so i had to compile debs for the package myself -> get hold of me if you are interested). So besides the benefits of lyx, I have a few gripes (and solutions):

Out the box lyx does not include support for IEEE transactions. As a computer scientist this is a bit annoying, but easily remedied:
Download the LaTeX class from http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/IEEEtran/ (there is a zip file available).

(as root)
Unzip it to the directory /usr/share/texmf-tetex/tex/latex/IEEEtran 
run 'texhash'
(as you)
*Update* 
edit /home/yourusername/.lyx/textclass.lst:
  change make sure you have this line:
    "IEEEtran" "IEEEtran" "article (IEEEtran)" "true"
  (it may be entered with "false" as default")

open lyx and click 'tools -> Reconfigure' and restart lyx when done.

Next gripe: Once you have the IEEEtran layout available you may, or may not notice, that when you compile the document, with your Biography environment completed it features an annoying "Place Photo Here" in your document. I haven't found an easy way to include a photo automatically, and usually I don't believe people should have to see my mug just for reading my document. I hack /usr/share/lyx/layouts/IEEEtran.layout by adding the following (after "Style Biography"):
```
Style BiographyNoPhoto
        LaTeXType             Environment
        LaTeXName             biographynophoto
        Align                 Block
        AlignPossible         Block
        TextFont
          Size                Small
        EndFont
End
```
This makes "BiographyNoPhoto" appear in your choice of environments in lyx, with the same functionality as Biography.