Hi all, Someone else may have pointed this out, but there are already several prominent LaTeX "writing environments." I often use Kile (a KDE application) precisely the way you describe and think that it is fantastic.
But while Kile is invaluable for fine-tuning or tinkering, I find it too complex for more than the fine-tuning role. It requires me to closely monitor syntax and visualize the structure of the document I am constructing. When I'm worried about which brackets should be used to enclose a given command, it can disrupt the flow of words. LyX's approach, as a midway point between the extremes of MS Word and emacs is just about right. I can focus on the structure of my document without worrying about the syntax; but I'm not completely bogged down in setting bold, italics and font size. Moreover, LyX comes with a tremendously good array of classes available and presets out of the box. Over the past few years, I've been on a mission to get people people to adopt LaTeX and Linux. In that introduction, LyX is the first thing they see. If I tried to get people to take on Kile as a first step ... well ... that would be a disaster. Too much complexity, too fast. As people become comfortable with LyX, they then feel brave enough to explore and experiment and eventually discover Kile on their own. Which isn't to say that LyX can't be improved, but I would hate to see it evolve toward Kile light. If anything, I'd like to see it become more like Scrivener and other creative writing tools. Cheers, Rob Oakes
