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Have you tried TeXnicCenter?

Just started out with Vex http://vex.sourceforge.net/. It looks to be a pretty neat XML editor, based on Eclipse, with the DocBook DTD http://www.docbook.org/ built in.

I have been a longtime user of LaTeX http://www.latex-project.org/ and have found TeXnicCentre http://www.toolscenter.org/ to be a nice front end for LaTeX. I have tried word-processors, but haven't really played with OO.org long enough to understand the sectioning and styles feature. Now, I recently re-stumbled over LyX http://www.lyx.org/
I think I will stick with LyX/LaTeX till I understand DocBook better.

On a side note, I came across NaturalDocs (http://www.naturaldocs.org/) yesterday. It looks to be a neat way to generate documentation without messing up the whole thing with tags.

Now, it would be a nice idea to take all these diverse ideas and combine them together into a single tool that can work as a driver for various formats (somthing like GCC, which can compile multiple languages). So, you need to know 1 tool, which can parse reST, NaturalDocs, Doxygen etc. You know, the great unified theory of text processing ...

LaTex FTW!

Tools you need if you are running WinXp:
http://www.miktex.org/
http://www.toolscenter.org/
And googel for "the not so short guide to latex" and you off!

Use CVS to share the documents.

LaTeX typesetting beautiful documents

There is a Windows port of LyX which runs perfectly well on Windows XP, however most power users would prefer to run something like TeXnicCenter on Windows - or even just notepad and MiKTeX.

If you want to benefit from it without learning it, you can use a number of GUIs. Scientific Workplace on win32 (commercial, but good to push on those using Word) or LyX (F/OSS) for nearly any platform or many others. Even abiword can write LaTeX!

It isn't difficult to learn & becomes much more powerful when you eventually ditch the GUI & either use a quality TeX-focused editor like KILE (KDE), TeXnicCenter (win32), TeXShop (OS X) (all F/OSS) or your favorite multi-purpose editor. I prefer vim with LaTeX-Suite.

The best way to learn is to look at other code. Either get some from peers, from the net, or make some in either the GUIs or the friendlier editors. Then just write.

If you need a reference, you can usually learn to google for how to do something (or post to comp.text.tex). I maintain a list of www links. You might find something useful, but I can't suggest the best starting point from that list. The best introductory book I've used is Guide to LaTeX. The other books in LaTeX Companions are also excellent for reference, particularly The LaTeX Companion.

Go LaTeX!

For Windows:
http://www.miktex.org/
http://www.toolscenter.org/

If you write your LaTeX documents under Windows, TeXnicCenter is the perfect IDE to use...

• LyX for Linux/Unix, or Windows with cygwin
• TeXnic Center for Windows only (GPL), works with MikTeX
• Scientific Workplace for Windows only (commercial)
• Textures for Macintosh, another commercial product

I won't comment on the Word v. Wordperfect since I use Latex everywhere, but you can use Latex with Windows natively. I've not used Lyx since vi takes care of my needs in Linux, but on Windows I use TeXnicCenter and the common backend of MikTex.