Posters in LyX

[Daniel Joshua Stark]

Dear All,

I was wondering if LyX can handle making posters. I've looked around
some, and I don't believe it can. However, I wanted to ask you all
first before giving up on using it to make one.

Thanks!

Daniel Stark
Graduate Student
Rice University, MS-61
Physics and Astronomy
Dell Butcher Hall 100
1900 Rice Blvd., Ent. 20
Houston TX 77005
USA

Ph: [phone]
Fx: [phone]

In physics, you don't have to go around making trouble for yourself -
nature does it for you. - Frank Wilczek
I think physicists are the Peter Pans of the human race. They never
grow up and they keep their curiosity. - Isidor Isaac Rabi

[Phil]

I was wondering if LyX can handle making posters.  r

Yes. I have used it for posters.

Try to search the mail list for sciposter or a0poster... you should find some info to help.

[Steve Litt]

Post by Daniel Joshua Stark
Dear All,
I was wondering if LyX can handle making posters. I've looked around
some, and I don't believe it can. However, I wanted to ask you all
first before giving up on using it to make one.

Personally, posters are the last thing I'd use LyX for. I'd use Inkscape or
Gimp. The prime benefit of LyX and LaTeX is consistency throughout the
document -- just what you don't need in a poster. I personally think that
even if you succeed in making a poster with LyX, you'll be fighting LyX all
the way.

I like LyX. For the jobs it's intended to do. I like drills too, but I
wouldn't use a drill to cut a PVC pipe -- I'd use a PVC pipe cutter. To me,
making a poster in LyX is like cutting a PVC pipe with a drill.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt

[Guenter Milde]

Post by Steve Litt

Post by Daniel Joshua Stark
Dear All,
I was wondering if LyX can handle making posters.

It can.

Post by Steve Litt
Personally, posters are the last thing I'd use LyX for. I'd use Inkscape or
Gimp. The prime benefit of LyX and LaTeX is consistency throughout the
document -- just what you don't need in a poster.

This might be due to a different sort of poster. I wouldn't recommend LyX
for an advertisement poster, but have successfully used it for a poster
presentation at a scientific conference -- there you have far more formal
restrictions and a choice of document classes that produce decent results.

Beeing able to re-use parts of the article in the conference proceedings
is a real plus.

I used a homegrown a0poster-kh.layout together with a custom package
a0poster-kh.sty based on the a0poster.cls extension a0poster-kh.tex by
Karsten Held
http://www.physik.uni-augsburg.de/theo3/Comp/hp750c/computing_hp750c_A0.de.shtml

Nowadays (with 1.6.x) I'd write the layout using insets instead of styles
for the boxes.


Günter

[Les Denham]

Post by Daniel Joshua Stark
Dear All,
I was wondering if LyX can handle making posters. I've looked around
some, and I don't believe it can. However, I wanted to ask you all
first before giving up on using it to make one.

Daniel,

I assume you're talking about a "poster paper". The answer is "Yes, LyX can
be used for posters: I've done it."

I don't recommend it. I've also tried OpenOffice, and I certainly don't
recommend that, either.

What worked best for me is Scribus.

I've also found that it is best to work with a smaller format than the final
poster. My last poster paper required panels 60 inches by 35 inches; I
prepared them as 20 inches by 11.67 inches, and scaled them to 300% when
sending them to the plotter. If you work on them full size, you tend to
stuff in too much detail.

[Liviu Andronic]

Post by Les Denham
What worked best for me is Scribus.

A relevant discussion, and a nice overview by Les on "LyX vs. Scribus" [1].
Liviu

[1] http://www.mail-archive.com/lyx-users-UqbJ+GOpo4+***@public.gmane.org/msg57576.html

[Steve Litt]

Post by Liviu Andronic

Post by Les Denham
What worked best for me is Scribus.

A relevant discussion, and a nice overview by Les on "LyX vs. Scribus" [1].
Liviu

After reading that, it sounds like Scribus is the ideal tool for posters. It
sounds great for 8.5x11 flyers, and for folding brochures. And yes, most
short newsletters are extremely fine tuned, so it sounds great for those too.

You know what else it sounds great for -- laying out the cover of an eBook.
I've been using Inkscape for that, but I might try Scribus just for fun.

Thanks

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt

[o***@public.gmane.org]

I have to disagree in this debate. I have found lyx a *superb* tool for making scientific posters! It gives a uniform look, as well as dealing with the proper formatting of legends and cross-references. Plus, it properly formats my bibtex references and places everything evenly distributed on an A0 layout. If information overflows, it means I have to reorganise my poster, not finger-paint layouts to shoe-horn items into the poster (that probably shouldn't be there anyway for the requirements of a poster).

It also means that I can re-use text and graphics from talks and papers that I've written in lyx.

I use sciposter.cls, sectionbox.sty, multicol.sty and wallpaper.sty to generate posters with multiple columns, sectioned boxes and a background. I generate my plots with R and graphics with inkscape.

On the other hand, I end up spending much more time fiddling about finger-painting with tools like scribus.

Mateo.

Post by Steve Litt

Post by Liviu Andronic

Post by Les Denham
What worked best for me is Scribus.

A relevant discussion, and a nice overview by Les on "LyX vs. Scribus" [1].
Liviu

After reading that, it sounds like Scribus is the ideal tool for posters. It
sounds great for 8.5x11 flyers, and for folding brochures. And yes, most
short newsletters are extremely fine tuned, so it sounds great for those too.
You know what else it sounds great for -- laying out the cover of an eBook.
I've been using Inkscape for that, but I might try Scribus just for fun.
Thanks
SteveT
Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt

[Micha Feigin]

On Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:58:38 -0500

Post by Daniel Joshua Stark
Dear All,
I was wondering if LyX can handle making posters. I've looked around
some, and I don't believe it can. However, I wanted to ask you all
first before giving up on using it to make one.
Thanks!

It can be done, not necessarily the best and or easiest way though.
For the poster I use a0poster from here
http://andreas.welcomes-you.com/projects/a0poster/
which I think may be newer than this
http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~marchini/a0poster.html

Looks like there is some kind of layout file here
http://www.mail-archive.com/lyx-users-UqbJ+GOpo4+***@public.gmane.org/msg63740.html
don't know how good it is or if it still alive.

I find it best to combine multicols and for boxes either minipage and for a
fancier look pdfpages with beamer

For more complicated stuff I use scribus

[Pavel Sanda]

Post by Daniel Joshua Stark
Dear All,
I was wondering if LyX can handle making posters. I've looked around some,
and I don't believe it can. However, I wanted to ask you all first before
giving up on using it to make one.

i'm just fighting the same problem. friend pointed me to baposter class. it
took half day to configure lyx so it recognize this class and setup bit ugly
preamble and opening erts, but once it is setup it is sweet sweet sweet!

if one has interest to do nifty graphical things i would rather use eg corel,
but if you dont have much time and need reasonble good output this is a really
nice package.

next poster could be done very quickly from now on...

the new boxes are defined by trivial erts which states column,row and relative
position (above, below) to already defined boxes and possible spanning, eg.
\headerbox{Box title}{name=box2,column=1,below=box1,span=2}{

everything after this ert is just normal lyxing, so basically copy&paste
from your paper...

the site is here:
http://www.brian-amberg.de/uni/poster/

i even though we can add this layout plus some example poster to manuals in
lyx. then i would need some help from experienced TeXers though, since my
layout/preamble/erts work but are one big mess :)

one drawback is is that you need to switch to texlive from tetex if you are
still on it. i have tried to make this switch on one of my boxes and now studying
the damages on the docs i'm currently working. except that ToC got insane for
longer section names i havent find much other problems so far. (btw any
hints from others for what should i check or how to turn back ToC entries to
be again multiline for a longer titles?)

another issue is small glitch with updating output pdf/postcript. i suspect
lyx wrongly parses latex log output and doesn't run latex enough times,
which results in losing poster background. i havent time to track this down
yet, but there is easy workaround if you want complete rebuild of course :)

pavel