LyX is an open source document processor that encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents, not their appearance. LyX lets you concentrate on writing, leaving details of visual layout to the software. LyX runs on many Unix platforms, OS/2, and under Windows and Mac OS X.

LyX produces its output using LaTeX in the background; LyX is far more than a front-end to LaTeX, however. No knowledge of LaTeX is necessary to use LyX, although it will give a user can gain advantage by knowing LaTeX.

The author is Matthias Ettrich.