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Spotlight

Spotlight is the new search engine for Mac OS X 10.4 and higher. For Spotlight to work properly, it must be told how to index files for each type of file it encounters. This page explains how to install a Spotlight importer for .lyx files.

Please note that these instructions are useful only for users of Mac OS X 10.4 and higher who are using LyX/Mac 1.3.6 and lower. Newer versions of LyX/Mac (which are not available as of the time of this writing) will already include the Spotlight importer, so that following these instructions will not be necessary.

1. Download the LyX-Metadata.mdimporter.zip file.
2. Doubleclick this file to decompress.
3. Quit LyX if it's running.
4. In the Finder, locate your LyX.app application bundle. Control-click its icon, and select "Show Package Contents".
5. In the Finder window that pops up, go into the Contents folder. Inside that folder, create a new folder titled Library. Inside the Library folder, create a new folder titled Spotlight.
6. Drag the decompressed file, LyX_Metadata.mdimporter to the Spotlight folder you've just created. (You can now close the Finder window.)

At this point, everything is set up for your Mac to index .lyx files in Spotlight; however, it doesn't know this yet. To get it actually to index all your .lyx files, open Terminal.app and enter

(substituting the path to your LyX.app for /Applications/). At this point, you can quit Terminal.app, though it will take a little while for Spotlight to complete its indexing. (In some cases, logging out of your user account and logging back in may be required to make sure that newly created files get indexed.)

That's it! Please send e-mail to the LyX-User's list if you have any problems.

If you're interested you can download the source. Comments and suggestions welcome.

Mac