texstudio VS texlab

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.

Helix defaults to texlab so try that?

This is overly verbose and redundant, therefore I disabled eglot-inlay-hints mode in LaTeX and opened and issue: https://github.com/latex-lsp/texlab/issues/858

I have a very limited understanding of Parsing but I would assume that Latex Language Servers have to implement similar parsing too? So maybe check out TexLab. It’s implemented in Rust so maybe it’s an interesting reference.

Is it possible to get a wordcount for LaTeX documents from an LSP like ltex-ls or texlab?

If you’re still stuck you can try reporting an issue here or look for ones similar to yours: https://github.com/latex-lsp/texlab

If you use emacs, I recommend to get some modern goodness by installing lsp-mode (or eglot) to interact with language servers and then install a latex language servers like texlab. This in my expericence really improved the autocompletion so I don't feel like I loose anything over using vscode, texlab or overleaf .Recently I also switched to lsp-ltex for language-tool integration. All those tools lsp servers can also be used from other editors with lsp support, so use what you prefer. I would only recommend emacs to those who want a fully customized and keyboard driven experience and are not afraid to eventually modify some lisp code. But it has its unique advantages, many editing tools and in addition to the still great auctex also cdlatex for super quick math typesetting.

you can use https://github.com/latex-lsp/texlab

I use overleaf these days mostly because overleaf makes it effortless to work across multiple machines. I still have my neovim + texlab [1] setup just in case though.

[1]: https://github.com/latex-lsp/texlab

Story time: I really love Neovim for programming, but one thing I love it even more for is scientific writing. Tools like texlab make this especially fun! But for a well-rounded experience, I need a few more things: (i) Grammar checking. For that I can recommend ltex, an LSP-server which adds LaTeX support to language tool. (ii) Thesaurus lookup. (Neo)vims integrated thesaurus format is a little bit limited. But thankfully 'thesaurusfunc' exists so I could easily write a small plugin to add support for openoffice.org mythes thesauri. (iii) Machine translation. Now we're finally getting to the topic of this post. I write most of my stuff in English but I'm not a native speaker, so machine translation is valuable for me. It can help me to overcome writers block to an extent, for example. There already exist a few plugins for that problem, like vim-translator or translate.nvim. But none of these support interactive modes, a slick UI, and, as far as I know, useful things like motions and counts. This is where my plugin pantran.nvim comes into place! The demo should speak for itself. In the end it was a lot more effort than I anticipated but I'm very pleased with the result. I hope this can be useful to others as well!