LyX Upgrade Hiccup

In recent months, I've upgraded LyX from version 2.3.6 to 2.4.0 RC3 (from the Canonical repos) to 2.4.1 (by compiling from source, as documented here). Along the way I discovered a glitch that apparently occurred during the upgrade from 2.3.6 to 2.4.0.

When you create a new document in LyX, it is initially created using a default template that you can customize. My default template, which I created in a previous millennium, starts all paragraphs flush left and uses what LaTeX calls a "small skip" to provide vertical separation between paragraphs. Yesterday, when I created a new document, I noticed that the first paragraph after a section heading would begin flush left but subsequent paragraphs were indented ... in the LyX GUI. When I compiled to a PDF document, however, every paragraph was flush left. The disconnect between what the GUI showed and what the compiled document contained was, shall we say, a trifle confusing.

Looking at the LaTeX output code (which you can do by selecting View > Code Preview Pane to open a preview of the code to be compiled), I noticed the following LaTeX commands being added to the document.

\setlength{\parskip}{\smallskipamount}

\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}

 

That reminded me to look at the template's document preamble (Document > Settings... > LaTeX Preamble), and sure enough those commands appeared there. Apparently I added them to the preamble of the default template back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, and they've been there ever since. In resolving bug #4796, the developers changed how vertical spacing between paragraphs was handled. They now use the parskip LaTeX package. Since, for whatever reason, the template had Document > Settings... > Text Layout > Paragraph Separation set to Indentation: Default, the GUI in the current version indented paragraphs other than those immediately after section breaks. Meanwhile, those two lines in the preamble overrode that when creating the PDF output.

 

The fix was to create a new default template, which is extremely easy in LyX. You create a new document, customize document settings to your liking, go to Document > Settings... and click the Save as Document Defaults button. In my case, this meant changing Document > Settings... > Text Layout > Paragraph Separation to Vertical Space: Small Skip and deleting the aforementioned lines from the preamble. Now I just need to remember to check and, if necessary, replace the default template after future upgrades.

Installing LyX from Source

I've been using LyX as my go-to document editor since its early days, and I really love it. Until recently, installation and upgrades (on Linux Mint) were a no-brainer. I could either install/update the package from the Canonical repositories (which tend to lag behind the current release) or get the latest version from a PPA (which, sadly, is no longer maintained). Yesterday I was running LyX 2.4.0 RC3, the version in the Canonical repo for Ubuntu 22.04 (the basis for the current version, 22, of Linux Mint), and ran into an issue. To see if it had already been resolved, I decided to upgrade to the current LyX version, 2.4.1. That entailed compiling it from source for the first time ever.

The process, while slow, was almost smooth. I did run into one speed bump, an error message (from the APT package manager, not from LyX) that was a trifle cryptic. Some serious googling turned up the solution. I thought I'd document the compilation process below in case other Mint (or Ubuntu) users want to try installing from source for the first time.

1. Open the Software Sources system app and make sure that Official Repositories > Optional Sources > Source code repositories is turned on. (On my first go-around it was turned off, which produced the cryptic error message I mentioned.)
2. Download the source tarball and signature file from the LyX download site. Verify the tarball as described here.
3. Unzip the tarball into a directory located wherever you want to keep the source code (if in fact you choose to keep it). I'm pretty sure you can delete the source folder after compiling and installing, but I'm hanging onto it for now.
4. In a terminal in that directory, run sudo apt-get build-dep lyx to install all necessary prerequisites. I found this useful tip in the LyX wiki. This was the step that generated the error message on the first attempt, due to my having skipped step 1 above.
5. Open the INSTALL.autoconf text file in the source folder and follow the directions (summarized here).
1. Run configure (which takes a while).
2. Run make (which takes an eternity).
3. Optional: run make check and verify all tests were passed.
4. Run make install to install the program.

Regarding the last step, I normally install LyX for all users on the system (which is just me, since this is my home PC). So I ran make install as root. If you just want it for the account under which you are logged in, you can run it without escalating privileges.

That's all there is to it.

Pipewire Sound Server

I recently upgraded my PC and laptop to Linux Mint 22 (Wilma). It was somewhat harrowing experience -- the laptop (which is my canary in coal mine) updated fine, but the PC was bricked due to an issue with BIOS secure boot stuff. At power up there was a message involving some cryptic acronym I no longer remember. It had something to do with secure boot keys, and it prevented the PC from booting (even from a bootable USB drive). I spent an hour or two futzing with BIOS settings but eventually got secure boot and TPM turned off, which let the PC boot. I haven't had any problems since then.

One of the changes in Mint 22 is that the developers moved from ALSA to a newer sound (and video?) server called PipeWire. The changeover was initially invisible to me -- sound and video so far have worked flawlessly -- but necessitated changes to a couple of shell scripts I use. One of them is a convenience script that resets the speaker volume to my preferred level. It's handy when I have to crank volume up for some reason. The other is a script that launches Zoom. It turns up the volume before Zoom starts and then resets the volume when I exit from Zoom.

Fortunately, it wasn't hard to find the new commands (thank you Uncle Google). There's probably more than one way to control volume from the command line or a script, but I ended up using the WirePlumber library. I can't recall if it was installed automatically during the upgrade or if I had to add it. The key command is wpctl, which somewhat curiously does not seem to have a man page. Fortunately, wpctl --help will get you the information you need. My old scripts used 

pacmd set-sink-volume 0 27500
pacmd set-sink-volume 1 27500
sudo alsactl store

to reset the speaker volume. (I had to try both sink 0 and sink 1 because, for some reason, the speakers would sometimes be assigned to 0 and sometimes to 1 during boot.) With PipeWire I use

wpctl set-volume @DEFAULT_AUDIO_SINK@ 0.42

to do the same thing. 

There are a few improvements with the new approach. I apparently do not have to play "guess the sink" anymore. I do not need to escalate privileges (sudo) just to change the volume. Also, the volume setting is easier to interpret (0.42 is 42% of maximum -- I'm not sure how I settled on 27500 in the old approach, but it is not obvious to me that it equates to 42%).