SwiftLaTeX VS texstudio

There is a project for a replacement, called SwiftLaTeX, an online-based WYSIWYG editor for LaTeX documents, but the development is slow.

The screencast look good. For parallel/prior work in this sort of "live update" of the typeset document (and to learn from their experiences), you may also want to look at:

• SwiftLaTeX (https://github.com/SwiftLaTeX/SwiftLaTeX / https://www.swiftlatex.com/ — the cool demo that used to be on their site seems to be gone, but see HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21710105)

• BaKoMa TeX (http://www.bakoma-tex.com/) — its eponymous author Basil K. Malyshev passed away recently, but the product and page still exists for now

• VorTeX (see Pehong Chen's PhD thesis from 1988).

LaTeX itself does not come with GUI. Some distributions add a dedicated editor, which might have an icon. Documents are compiled in a terminal or via editor that uses terminal commands under the hood. You could install an editor of your choice e.g. TeXStudio or TeXWorks.

Installation on a mac is pretty easy using the mactex package. Then for the editor itself I like TexStudio. Overleaf has the advantage of included backup and collaboration tools; if you use a local file don't forget to set up a back up/versioning system.

If you are interested in working locally (not in web interface like e.g. Overleaf) then I will suggest MacTeX + TexStudio.

All I found was this: https://github.com/texstudio-org/texstudio/issues/340

does the compilation with pdfLaTeX work? Do you use an instance of MiKTeX recently updated? A note about the GUI used would complement a problem report. If you use e.g., TeXStudio, then you already have a preview of the compiled document to monitor the advance of your work. You still can setup the program to open an external pdfviewer (e.g., sumatra) for a subsequent detailed inspection, print to paper of the pdf, etc. later.

Depending on the complexity of the project ahead, consider an editor which writes plain .tex files because LyX' own (default) format adds a layer of complexity. Perhaps you are/become comfortable with vim or Emacs (which takes some time get familiar for both) and their extensions for LaTeX, perhaps TeXmaker or TeXStudio (both freely available and cross-platform) is an option for you if you know that there are programs around to import e.g., spreadsheet data easier into a .tex than the manual import. While your mileage may vary, it is not that hard -- have a look at learnlatex.org.

I use TeXstudio [1], which is really good with tables, and supports macros which tremendously help speed up the writing process.

When writing for group projects, we use Overleaf. Its Git feature also makes it possible to write locally in TeXstudio and then push the changes to Overleaf.

[1] https://www.texstudio.org/

[2] https://www.overleaf.com/

For Latex are several GUIs like TexStudio, TeXnicCenter, TeXworks or Overleaf (Webbased). But I understand that Latex looks quite complicate. If you are familiar with coding or even simple HTML you are good to go. Your idea with CSS etc sounds way more complicated than just use Latex with it's powerful features.