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Where Can I find Sources for Learning LaTex?
the_2nd_coming asks: "I am currently in college and I am majoring in math and computer science. Writing papers in Word and OpenOffice, while not a pain, is slow work due to formating. I have learned that LaTex is used for writing Math and Science papers a lot and once learned makes writing papers quick. I have found few good comprehensive resources on the web, and few books in the book stores. I was amazed that O'Reilly did not even have a book on it. What good sources are there that can teach me LaTex for Mathematics and BibTex?"
It (more or less) works if you want to add one or two equetions on a text.
Now go write a math text, or any other math/tech-related text with lots of expressions, and have a glimpse of how hell can be.
Lyx is rather good. However, since almost all comments at this moment seem to point in Lyx' direction I want to give a bit of counterargument.
Lyx is not very easy to use in conjunction with plain source editting. It uses its own tags and seems to handle some things slightly different than you would do yourself. In this sense you can compare it to Dreamweaver for HTML. When only using dreamweaver it is sort of OK, but if you want hybrid editing and use more advanced things (only style sheet layout for example), the WYSIWYG becomes more and more frustating as it edits your carefully crafted source.
Espacially if you use a lot of custom commands and advanced positioning system, lyx is NOT the way to go. I use rather advanced and hacked sty files for letters, advanced reports and PDF-presentations and lyx cannot deal with these files properly.
So stuck with lyx only if your needs are not to advanced and you have no interest in editting the source by yourself.
On a side note, the best way to learn latex is read the sty and cls files, which often come bundled with your tex distribution. I learned a lot from them (also how NOT to do it..). For example the Seminar files and examples contain a lot of interesting material.
This, again, is beyond the basics, but they are to easy... (\begin{bla} \end{bla} is al you need, where bla is section, enumerate etc. (all logical keywords, only the manual is needed)).