[wenc]

I've used LyX and had high hopes for it, but never really fit my workflow.

LyX is really good if you need to produce simple documents and don't need to invoke a lot of special LaTeX packages. I think LyX hits a sweet spot between Microsoft Word and full-blown LaTeX.

If you need to do anything out of the ordinary (like use TikZ), LyX will still let you do it but it's going to feel a bit unwieldy. LyX is also quite slow on very large documents like dissertations. I recall the WYSIWYM rendering of math symbols and the old-school fonts looking a little unpolished compared to the PDFs generated by LaTeX, which bothered me a little. Many advanced LaTeX heads are sticklers for correct aesthetics. I know LyX can generate PDFs too, but if I wanted that, I'd rather write LaTeX code directly (more control, much more lightweight and responsive).

I eventually wrote my dissertation on TeXworks.

p.s. as mentioned in another comment, TeXmacs has a higher fidelity WYSIWYG than LyX.

[bovine3dom]

> LyX is also quite slow on very large documents like dissertations.

Have you tried it again in the last year or two? I've found that scrolling, for example, has become a lot faster since I first started using it.

[adrianmsmith]

Right, I wrote a 100 page document in LyX on a 2011 Mac Mini and it was fine. (Not sure what version of LyX.)

[wenc]

I have not, so this information may be outdated.