For a gentle start, it's worth looking at LyX -- http://www.lyx.org/ http://www.lyx.org/ -- a structured document processor that generates LaTeX output. Availab

For a gentle start, it's worth looking at LyX -- http://www.lyx.org/ http://www.lyx.org/ -- a structured document processor that generates LaTeX output. Available for *IX/Mac/Windows, with more features than you can shake a stick at -- and it's open source, so you can try it for free.