Word Processing Software

[FreeTheBee]

I know TeXshop is popular and supposed to be easy to use. I don't have a mac so cannot really judge, but friends of mine used it. TeXworks is another simple editor that runs in windows, linux and osx. I like a little more options personally, but perhaps it is a nice one to start with. It seems TeXmaker also runs in osx, out of the three I would probably pick that one.

A quick google search for texshop spell check, showed that this feature can easily be added.
http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop/links.html

Besides an editor you need a LaTeX distribution of course, for osx this would be MacTeX. There is some info on installing LaTeX in the first appendix of the lshort guide.

Another good source of information is the tex faq,
http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html

[SuperMiguel]

I know TeXshop is popular and supposed to be easy to use. I don't have a mac so cannot really judge, but friends of mine used it. TeXworks is another simple editor that runs in windows, linux and osx. I like a little more options personally, but perhaps it is a nice one to start with. It seems TeXmaker also runs in osx, out of the three I would probably pick that one.

A quick google search for texshop spell check, showed that this feature can easily be added.
http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop/links.html

Besides an editor you need a LaTeX distribution of course, for osx this would be MacTeX. There is some info on installing LaTeX in the first appendix of the lshort guide.

Another good source of information is the tex faq,
http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html

Texmaker looks pretty good

[SuperMiguel]

Do you still use commands in texmaker?

[gunksta]

LaTeX, Word, OpenOffice.org, Lyx

So many tools and so little time. There are some obvious benefits to a tool like LaTeX in terms of the ability to easily add mathematical equations, pictures, bibliographies, etc. Whatever else - latex makes your document look good.

But, for most college length documents a word processor can make a document look good enough and will probably remain a necessity for group projects. After-all, what are the odds that you'll be able to do that under-grad group project in a core humanities class in latex? When I was in school - not much.

The other thing that latex and emacs org-mode bring to the table that is worth mentioning is literate programming. The neat thing about literate programming is being able to write my program the way my head works and then let the computer re-arrange things before sending my code out to python, R, etc. It's fantastic. Again - not so great with group projects since nobody else in the company I work for uses it - but when it's just me I LOVE me some literate programming.

Could be useful to explore.