TeXmaker - Cross-platform GUI for LaTeX

LaTeX generates beautiful final documents, handles references flawlessly, and allows independent specification of formatting and content.  The last two of these are particularly important when generating long documents (think thesis, no?).  Writing in LaTeX, though requires a text editor, preferably with contextual highlighting, and a simple back-end to run the codes needed to render the final text.  Working in a cross-platform group environment, I've used TeXmaker in my group for a while.

• Runs on PC, Mac, and Linux with the same GUI interface
• Automated document compiling/building
• Relatively easy integration with tranditional TeX distributions (TeXLive, MacTeX, MikTex, most Linux distros)
• BibTex, PDFLaTeX and LaTeX support
• Built in DVI->PS and DVI->PDF

TeXmaker screen shot - Document map at left, .tex file in the center, and integrated PDF viewer at right.

As indicated above, TeXmaker does require a pre-existing working install of a LaTeX distribution...  Watch out for a post on how to do that in Ubuntu and MacOSX soon!

I also use LaTeXIt on the Mac to generate little image snippets of equations to paste into emails or Word documents (when I'm stuck using them).

LaTeXIt screen shot - The LaTeXIt window is in the middle, and you just drag and drop the image at the top of the LaTeXIt window into whatever document/file you want.