[Nottingham] symbols in lyx

[David Luff]

On 20/06/2005 at 13:31 David Wolfson wrote:

>I'm trying to write this D&^&*d thesis in lyx, and have hit a stumbling 
>block. How do I insert symbols? I can get some standard ones through the 
>math mode (eg '\alpha'), but not things like degrees C. Having googled 
>it, I got textcomp.sty from:
>http://www.texnik.de/symbols/textcomp.phtml
>

I used the following for degrees in my thesis:

% degrees symbol - from googling
\def\degrees{%
    \relax
    \ifmmode  ^\circ
    \else  $^\circ$%
    \fi
}

>but have no idea what to do with it. What's an .sty file anyway? Any 
>pointers please?
>

A style file - generally it will give you a large number of commands or
options to use.  Most come with very extensive documentation, though which
you should wade to find the one command you want, generally right at the
end ;-)  My memory is getting hazy, but in general I think they come with a
small readme which tells you how to build the main documention using latex.
 You'll then need to put the file in your latex path somewhere (I never
properly figured this out using miktex on windows, and just put all my
style files in same directory as my thesis), and include them, probably
from your mainfile.  I haven't used lyx, but I'm guessing the back-end
should be similar.  Good luck!

Cheers - Dave