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I got tired of OpenOffice's IMHO clunky formula editor, so I thought: "Ah ha! Pros use TeX! So should I!" Then I saw how much fingertyping is necessary to repro

I got tired of OpenOffice's IMHO clunky formula editor, so I thought: "Ah ha! Pros use TeX! So should I!" Then I saw how much fingertyping is necessary to reproduce what I was doing in OO, and I went back. Of course, I was trying to kill a field mouse with a nuke, so I should have expected to be disappointed. Any recommendations for a math-friendly TeX-lite for those of us who don't need all that power?

zem 16y ago
if you want a gui equation editor, check out lyx [http://www.lyx.org/ http://www.lyx.org/], which uses tex as its backend. texmacs [http://www.texmacs.org/ http://www.texmacs.org/] is another option worth exploring.
- chalst 16y ago
  Texmacs often get recommended, but I haven't seen any arguments for it that are compelling. I guess there must be a case for it, else no one would work on it. What do you like about it?
  - zem 16y ago
    it's a decent middle ground between the clunkiness of wysiwyg word processors and the typing-to-reward ratio of pure markup. personally i prefer just writing markup in ascii, but if you want some of the control of tex, but dislike doing that much typing, texmacs or lyx might be just what you are looking for.
    - chalst 16y ago
      I guess I should look at it. It sounds like Kile is its natural competitor.
      - zem 16y ago
        kile is more of a lyx competitor (latex frontend versus latex ide). texmacs has its own rendering engine; despite the name it does not in any way depend upon tex.
  - amichail 16y ago
    TeXmacs is a true WYSIWYG scientific word processor. It's not a TeX/LaTeX GUI front-end. Rather, it has its own typesetter that produces quality comparable to TeX in real-time as you type.
- wladimir 16y ago
  I can recommend LyX as well, it makes authoring LaTeX documents much easier. The formula editor is nice, and it makes editing tables a lot more convenient.
jacobolus 16y ago
Once you're used to it it’s actually quite efficient (at least if you’re just writing mathematics; doing any kind of complex document layout gets a bit more annoying). I know people who can TeX math (including commutative diagrams even) substantially faster than I can write it down on paper full speed. Names for things are mostly pretty intuitive/memorable, quick reference cheatsheets abound, and if you find yourself doing the same thing repeatedly it’s trivial to make your own shorter names for things or encapsulate patterns.
- chalst 16y ago
  I know plenty of people who use Tex-based markup to take notes in talks and say it saves them time.
derleth 16y ago
If you're creating a lot of lists and (especially) nested lists, Emacs' Org Mode (now part of the standard GNU Emacs package) is worth learning. You can export it to LaTeX and HTML directly.

zem 16y ago

if you want a gui equation editor, check out lyx [http://www.lyx.org/ http://www.lyx.org/], which uses tex as its backend. texmacs [http://www.texmacs.org/ http://www.texmacs.org/] is another option worth exploring.

chalst 16y ago
Texmacs often get recommended, but I haven't seen any arguments for it that are compelling. I guess there must be a case for it, else no one would work on it. What do you like about it?
- zem 16y ago
  it's a decent middle ground between the clunkiness of wysiwyg word processors and the typing-to-reward ratio of pure markup. personally i prefer just writing markup in ascii, but if you want some of the control of tex, but dislike doing that much typing, texmacs or lyx might be just what you are looking for.
  - chalst 16y ago
    I guess I should look at it. It sounds like Kile is its natural competitor.
    - zem 16y ago
      kile is more of a lyx competitor (latex frontend versus latex ide). texmacs has its own rendering engine; despite the name it does not in any way depend upon tex.
- amichail 16y ago
  TeXmacs is a true WYSIWYG scientific word processor. It's not a TeX/LaTeX GUI front-end. Rather, it has its own typesetter that produces quality comparable to TeX in real-time as you type.
wladimir 16y ago
I can recommend LyX as well, it makes authoring LaTeX documents much easier. The formula editor is nice, and it makes editing tables a lot more convenient.

jacobolus 16y ago

Once you're used to it it’s actually quite efficient (at least if you’re just writing mathematics; doing any kind of complex document layout gets a bit more annoying). I know people who can TeX math (including commutative diagrams even) substantially faster than I can write it down on paper full speed. Names for things are mostly pretty intuitive/memorable, quick reference cheatsheets abound, and if you find yourself doing the same thing repeatedly it’s trivial to make your own shorter names for things or encapsulate patterns.

chalst 16y ago
I know plenty of people who use Tex-based markup to take notes in talks and say it saves them time.

derleth 16y ago

If you're creating a lot of lists and (especially) nested lists, Emacs' Org Mode (now part of the standard GNU Emacs package) is worth learning. You can export it to LaTeX and HTML directly.