LyX Preview

A VS Code companion extension for lq—the standalone CLI for querying, inspecting, and mutating LyX documents.

LyX Preview renders a read-only live preview of saved .lyx files directly inside a VS Code webview, combining visual feedback, outline navigation, and AI-assisted workflows.

Features

• LyX-Familiar Appearance: Renders layouts, sections, formatting, tables, images, and math with styling faithful to the LyX editor.
• Instant Live Refresh: Automatically updates whenever the .lyx file is saved or modified on disk (when the editor buffer is clean).
• LyX Outline View: Dedicated panel under the Explorer sidebar to navigate the Table of Contents, figures, tables, equations, tracked changes, footnotes, and labels/references across both the raw .lyx buffer and the preview.
• Tracked-Change Views: Toggle between Tracked (markups shown), Original (pre-change), and Clean (post-change/accepted) views from the title bar.
• Agent Context Sharing:
  • Selecting text or constructs in the preview generates a temporary live-selection.json sidecar next to the previewed .lyx file for AI agents using lq.
  • Integrates with VS Code Language Model Tools via #lyxSelection.
• Status Bar Inspection: Displays active CST selectors, tracked-change author/timestamp metadata, and selection details in the VS Code status bar.
• Built-in Webview Search: Full support for standard search (Ctrl+F / Cmd+F) inside the preview panel.

Getting Started

1. Prerequisites

Install lq and the use-lq skill for your AI agent.

The extension resolves the lq executable in the following order:

1. Local development build: ~/Github/lq_dev/lq/bin/lq*
2. Custom setting: lyx-preview.lqPath
3. System PATH

2. Open Preview

1. Open any .lyx file in VS Code.
2. Click the LyX Preview icon (blue L) in the editor title bar, or run LyX Preview: Open LyX Preview from the Command Palette.

3. Tracked Changes View

When reviewing documents with revision marks, click the Tracked-change view icon (yellow L) in the preview title bar to switch views:

• Tracked (default): Displays insertions with blue underline and deletions with red strikethrough.
• Original: Displays the document text prior to tracked modifications.
• Clean: Displays the document with all pending tracked changes accepted.

4. Share Selection with an AI Agent

• Select text or constructs inside the preview.
• Share the context with your agent by referencing @live-selection.json or mentioning #lyxSelection in VS Code chat.

Relationship with LyXHTML

LyX Preview is inspired by and verified against LyX's native LyXHTML export, but it does not execute headless LyX processes to render HTML:

1. Fast & Independent: lq parses .lyx directly into a Concrete Syntax Tree (CST) and renders semantic HTML in milliseconds without requiring LyX to be installed or running.
2. Editor-Focused Semantics: While native LyXHTML targets a PDF-like reading layout, LyX Preview is tailored for reviewing. This introduces intentional differences:

Configuration