----- Original Message ----- From: "David Wilson" <davidwwilson@comcast.net>
I am not exactly sure what TeX is all about. I used to think it was pretty much a markup language, a format as it were. But now it appears that there are associated fonts and other baggage. I'll have to educate myself better on TeX. I'll check out MikTeX when I can. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Choice of editor
With regards to wysiwyg equation editor versus text editor, I think it is a moot issue. The best of all possible worlds includes both. The equation editor makes the big projects and messy equations tractable and gives you a view of the final product, while the text editor helps you do the fine tuning. Most enviroments have at least a text editor, so the issue boils down to whether the word processor includes an TeX-capable equation editor.
From my experience, the best choice of (La)TeX environment for Windows (XP or not XP) is MiKTeX (complete), http://www.miktex.org/setup.html and the best TeX editor for it (configured for working with MiKTeX by default) is TeXnicCenter, http://www.toolscenter.org/front_content.php?idcat=50 . It is not wysiwyg, but the output can be produced and seen just by clicking 2 buttons - build and view, so it is as close to wysiwyg as a TeX editor can be.
Alec Mihailovs http://math.tntech.edu/alec/