LyX Notebook is a program which allows the word processor LyX to be used as a code-evaluating notebook (similar to Mathematica notebooks, the Sage notebook, or Jupyter notebooks).
Only Linux is currently supported.
The code has been under further development. Some changes other than general code cleanup and are listed below. The install method is still the same as in the March update.
- A code cell will automatically write into a math inset if that inset immediately follows the code inset. It will not create such an inset, though; the user needs to do that. This allows, for example, having SymPy code print out Latex math equations which will then be rendered as a LyX preview and will appear in the final document.
- The module running external interpreters now uses the Pexpect package by default, replacing the earlier hand-rolled version. (This might make a Windows port possible, if wexpect works and process control issues are dealt with.)
Many improvements to the code have recently been made.
- The GUI looks nicer now, using PySimpleGUI.
- A config file
lyxnotebook.cfgwith user-modifiable settings is now written to the LyX user dir. - LyX 2.4.0 may provide a mechanism to improve the program and eliminate the currently-necessary inserting of magic-cookie strings to get cell text. The current development is targeted at that, but LyX 2.0.3 also still works.
LyX Notebook has recently been updated to install with setup.py and
pip. This creates the entry point script lyxnotebook (and another
one which works when called from a LyX lfun bound to F12 by default). The
older installation methods no longer work. To install for development,
goto the root directory of the project and run:
pip3 install -e . --user
For non-development use the -e option is not needed. Inside a
virtualenv the --user option is not needed. The tkinter module is
also required. If it is not already installed, you can install it
on Ubuntu with:
sudo apt install python3-tk
Now for LyX 2.3 run this command and follow the instructions it gives:
lyxnotebook --install --no-editable-insets
For LyX 2.4 you can leave out the --no-editable-insets part. To use
a LyX user directory other than the default, use the --user-dir option
to set the path.
Follow the LyX setup instructions that appear in the popup and in the terminal.
To uninstall the program, use pip uninstall lyxnotebook. Reset the bind
file to its previous value. Delete the LyX Notebook .module files
and .bind files in the .lyx directory.
Many of the details are still only documented in the older PDF manual at https://github.com/abarker/lyxNotebook/blob/master/doc/lyxNotebookDocs.pdf
After installing, open a document and insert the modules for the kinds of cells
that you want to use (e.g., Python or Python2) via Document -> Settings ->
Modules -> Miscellaneous. Insert a code cell of that type into the document
(via Insert -> Custom Inset) and write some code into it.
Pressing F12 should start up LyX Notebook, and F1 will show a menu of options. The menu also shows the available key bindings.
If something gets messed up, use undo to revert it. Use caution with batch cell update commands since ordinary undo cannot undo those operations and they are no longer be working correctly for now (there is a save file and an option to revert to it, though).
LyX Notebook only works with interactive, interpreted languages. The currently-supported languages are Python 2, Python 3, Sage, Scala, R, and Bash. There are custom insets for code cells and output cells. When a cell is evaluated the output is sent to the output cell. The program keeps interpreter processes running, maintaining their state. The Listings package is used to highlight the code in the code cells in the Latex-formatted printable output.
See the file doc/lyxNotebookDocs.pdf for an overview, details of the install
procedure, descriptions of all the available commands, and customization
options. There are example LyX files in the examples directory.
This program only works on Linux systems, and has only been tested recently on Ubuntu distributions. Most of the testing has been with Python 2 code cells.
Licensed under the MIT license.