Actually, there are a variety of LaTex editors which I think must meet most people's standards. When I decided to write a book last year, I couldn't face doing it in Word (or anything which would not allow me to view the formatting codes). I was spoiled for choice when it came to LaTex editors. I settled for TexMaker, and within 6 months I had produced a 500 page book, complete with tables, charts and several thousand footnotes.

I'd never used LaTex before in my life. But I wanted the book output as PDF and it was important that the book looked professionally produced. I was really quite happy with the results. Before biting the bullet and using LaTex itself, I had looked at pandoc and other technologies which could output to PDF (e.g. python's ReST). But after some initial tests, I realised they were quite limited in their ability to output a complex PDF document.

TexMaker allows one to have the LaTex source and the PDF end result open in adjacent windows. MikTex/TexWorks was another editor which functioned in a similar fashion. With TexMaker I could jump from a line in the PDF to the originating line in the LaTex file (and vice versa). One can go to images.google.com and search for screenshots of LaTex editors to see the variety available.

The only major enhancement I would like, is if the LaTex editor would allow one to hide all the LaTex codes (perhaps colour-coding the text in the editor to indicate that a paragraph section contains hidden formatting codes). I do find the Latex markup distracting as I try to read the text. However, being able to read the PDF output and then jump to the LaTex source does mitigate this to some extent (I have a large monitor which permits me to have 2 A4 document windows open side by side).