Lyx for Conference Papers

LyX is a common tool for writing papers. It uses LaTeX as the main printing engine, but it's GUI and much easier to use.

IEEE Guidelines

Many conferences specify "IEEE guidelines" for papers. There are many packages etc that are supposed to make this easy, but I didn't find any that I like. So I use the plain article document class, with these settings (note: prior to LyX 1.3.4, or maybe it was something about Redhat 9 and earlier, you had to use totally different numbers):
Paper: US Letter. Margins: top 1.0 in, bottom 1.2 in, inner 20mm, outer 22.5mm. Note: on A4 paper, it seems to print with a much larger margin at the top, but gets the margin at the bottom correct.
Two sided document: no (I like to be able to read my margin notes.)
Font and size: Times and 10 (under Layout). Note: not using Times here wastes about half a page per 10 page paper!
Page style: empty.

Use \usepackage{indentfirst} to indent all paragraphs (that's what the guidelines state to do). To suppress the date in the heading, use

\date{}  % Suppress date, no space penalty

rather than a space with Date style (this wastes a line).

Figure captions are supposed to be Sans Serif and Bold, and they are supposed to centre if short, but be justified with 1 pica margins if not. To do all this, I added the following to my preamble:

\usepackage[sf,bf,small]{caption2}    % For caption margins
\setcaptionmargin{1pc}  % new left and rightmargin
% Fix captions to be bold, sans serif
\let\oldcaption\caption
\renewcommand{\caption} {\bfseries \sffamily \small \oldcaption}
% Tweak the spacing a little
\renewcommand{\abovecaptionskip}{8pt}   % Standard is 10pt
\renewcommand{\belowcaptionskip}{-2mm}

To balance the columns on the last page, \usepackage{balance} and insert \balance just before the bibliography. It doesn't seem to matter if that is not on the last page. Search for balance.sty. To install: copy balance.sty to somewhere like /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/misc and run texhash.

To put a period after each section number, insert the following in the preamble:

% Make sections end with a dot then "half an M-width" of horizontal space
\renewcommand{\@seccntformat}[1]
  {\csname the#1\endcsname.\hspace{0.5em}}
% Same for subsections
\renewcommand{\@seccntformat}[2]
  {\csname the#1\endcsname.\hspace{0.5em}}

Note: renewing the thesection command will affect not only the section headings, but also references to them, which is not what you want.

To make sections and subsections the right point size, insert the following into your preamble:

% Fix sections to be 12 point
\newlength{\mySpaceUnder}
\newlength{\mySpaceOver}
\setlength{\mySpaceUnder}{3mm plus .2ex}  % One blank line
\setlength{\mySpaceOver}{3mm plus 1ex minus .2ex}   % 1 blank line
\renewcommand\section{\@startsection {section}{1}{\z@}%
                                   {\mySpaceOver}%
                                   {\mySpaceUnder}%
                                   {\normalfont
                                    \fontsize{12}{15}
                                    \bfseries}}

% Fix subsections to be 11 point
\renewcommand\subsection{\@startsection {subsection}{2}{\z@}%
                                   {\mySpaceOver}%
                                   {\mySpaceUnder}%
                                   {\normalfont
                                    \fontsize{11}{13}
                                    \bfseries}}

The Abstract needs to be bold, Large, and centered using \centering{.

The bibliography should be in 9 point. I took this directly from a class file provided in an author kit for an IEEE paper:

% Change Bibliography environment so that references are listed in 9-pt
%
%%%
\renewenvironment{thebibliography}[1]
     {\section*{\refname}%
      \@mkboth{\MakeUppercase\refname}{\MakeUppercase\refname}%
      \begin{small}%
      \list{\@biblabel{\@arabic\c@enumiv}}%
           {\settowidth\labelwidth{\@biblabel{#1}}%
            \itemindent\z@%
            \leftmargin\labelwidth%
            \advance\leftmargin\labelsep%
            \@openbib@code%
            \usecounter{enumiv}%
            \let\p@enumiv\@empty%
            \renewcommand\theenumiv{\@arabic\c@enumiv}}%
      \sloppy%
      \clubpenalty4000%
      \@clubpenalty \clubpenalty%
      \widowpenalty4000%
      \sfcode`\.\@m}%
     {\def\@noitemerr%
       {\@latex@warning{Empty `thebibliography' environment}}%
      \endlist%
      \end{small}}%

I find it convenient at times to make an extended version of a paper when I find the conference's page limit to be too limiting. In the preamble, I put

\usepackage{ifthen}
\newboolean{fullpaper}
\setboolean{fullpaper}{false}   % Set true for full paper

In the paper, I use \ifthenelse{\boolean{fullpaper}}{ full paper text }{conference paper text, if any }. (The Latex commands go in Evil Red Text boxes, of course. It's convenient to put these in a comment near the top for easy copy and paste.)

I make a lot of use of margin notes. Here is what works for me when printing on A4 paper:

% Decent margin notes for A4 paper:
\let\oldmarginpar\marginpar
\renewcommand\marginpar[1]{\-\oldmarginpar[\raggedleft\scriptsize\sf #1]{\raggedright\scriptsize\sf #1}}
\setlength{\marginparwidth}{11mm}

Finally, some miscellaneous commands I have collected over the years, and I'm not sure how useful they are:

\usepackage{latexsym}
\setlength{\columnsep}{2.0pc}

% allow figures of 90% the size of the page, and 10% text on the page
\renewcommand{\floatpagefraction}{0.9}
\renewcommand{\topfraction}{0.9}
\renewcommand{\bottomfraction}{0.1}
\renewcommand{\textfraction}{0.1}

Last modified 30/Jul/04: Split from other LyX page; more on captions; date suppression; extended versions; 9 point abstract; etc