LyX is, quite simply, the single finest piece of document-editing software to be found anywhere, at any price.

Not only is it free, Open-Source software, it produces the highest-quality PDF output available anywhere, and includes excellent support for mathematics, indices, and bibliographies, not to mention the support for tables, floats, and high-quality images in a number of popular formats. LyX is a “document authoring system”, meaning that, rather than forcing the user to concentrate on laying out his or her document, it enables the user to concentrate on what really matters: the content. Using LyX, people have written their thesis, authored entire textbooks, and created documents that would choke lesser programs to death. LyX is a front-end to LaTeX, a powerful and flexible computer typesetting system used for decades in several industries, including academia, research, and technical documentation. The down-side, unfortunately, is the fact that the usage methods that must be used within LyX are completely and utterly unfamiliar to most long-time users of so-called word processors. The learning curve for LyX is practically vertical; however, if you have a week or two to learn its idiosyncrasies, you’ll find it’s well worth it. If you’re in the market for an all-in-one text document authoring system, and are willing to learn a new way of processing documents, LyX just might be for you.