I had downloaded the demonstration/test/time-limited licensed version of 
BaKoMa TeX on a Linux environment and IA-32 environment (EL 5 as I 
recall).  The application produced and stored the data (office material) 
as real LaTeX that Kile (or native LaTeX) could process so long as the 
various "macros" and "packages" that BaKoMa used were available.

To my recollection at that time, pdflatex was not integrated into the 
Linux version, but this was not a problem on a properly provisioned 
Linux environment.

As an aside, I must comment on what you consider not "cost prohibitive". 
(Technical Linux configuration readers of course will skip this item of 
reality in much of the Academy in the USA.)

I do not have the funds to license the application, and my university 
refuses to license anything but proprietary, overpriced, underperforming 
for-profit vendor products, particularly from the MS monopoly (the legal 
finding about Microsoft both in the USA and EU as I recall).  The 
persons in charge of IT at my institution are not from a computer 
science and engineering background, or any other hard science 
background, but are all business IT types -- we are hiring a VP IT and 
the finalist candidates each make statements such as:

Visionary planner and manager with in-depth experience implementing new 
business concepts, delivering innovative technical solutions, 
facilitating operations in transition, and driving progress toward 
organizational goals.

and similar business IT blather.  The persons are all "managers" with no 
research education in the field that they are managing, not even the 
typical BS/MS that works as a superior technician.  (I have not violated 
any confidentiality with the above quote; the list of finalists is 
public and the quote is from a public URL written by the candidate so 
quoted.  All the candidates have the same approach.)

Unfortunately, I also lack the student professional resources to modify 
an open source application such as TeXstudio into an open source 
BaKoMaTeX (not a copy -- different widgets and nominally different user 
interface).

If I had funds, I would need to license TotalView as a concurrent 
debugger (including Nvidia CUDA) that, evidently, has much better 
capabilities than, say, licensed-for-free Eclipse, before funding a 
LaTeX application.

Yasha Karant

On 05/21/2013 08:02 AM, James M. Pulver wrote:
> I haven't spent much time with LyX, but that would have been my
> first
thought. I didn't know that it can export to LaTeX. I will have to look
at that - does the BaKoMa TeX actually generate and save LaTeX? I
believe that the reason we haven't pushed LyX is the actual file you're
working on *isn't* LaTex. The site license of ~ 1500 euros isn't cost
prohibitive *if* it includes the 3 platforms and not just one, though we
might get it for just Linux I suppose. We do need some way to try and
convince people to use LaTeX rather than Word...

> --
> James Pulver
> LEPP Computer Group
> Cornell University
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Yasha Karant
> Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2013 9:24 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: LaTeX in general
>
> As the issue of LaTeX on EL6 has just arisen (albeit from a how to
> install from the distro departure), I have a related question --
> responses off list are fine.
>
> The majority of my students, and most of my colleagues as well as staff,
> are used to some form of WYSIWYG word processor.  I have found three
> alternatives for this approach that are to a greater or lesser extent
> compatible with LaTeX:  LyX, Texmacs, and BaKoMa TeX.  The latter
> essentially is a full LaTeX GUI word processor, but is licensed for a
> heavy fee.  Neither LyX nor Texmacs is fully LaTeX compatible to the
> best of my determination.
>
> Of the near GUIs for LaTeX, the best I have found to date is TeXstudio
> that seems to have better/easier functionality than Kile.
> Unfortunately, what we need is something closer to BaKoMa TeX -- the red
> highlighted error display of the offending line in TeXstudio is very
> useful for a more-or-less experienced LaTeX user, but not of nearly as
> much utility for someone used to MS Word or OpenOffice amongst the
> current stable of word processors.
>
> Discussion of this topic on LaTeX lists seem not yield much -- it is
> expected that all LaTeX users will be fluent, read about the latest
> and/or needed feature packages, etc.  Most of those whom I know do not
> feel that text formatting a document (journal article, conference
> presentation, etc.) should involve as much "technical competency" as
> writing a useful and moderately sophisticated computer program in, say,
> C++ (or for the more difficult situations, Nvidia CUDA or some dialect
> of MPI).
>
> Conversion to MS Word doc or docx format also are needed; entities such
> as ABET require the documents in MS Word format (bijectively accessible
> from OpenOffice et al., but not so with a LaTeX application).  These
> seem to be lacking from the typical LaTeX applications.  Journals and
> conferences still provide some form of LaTeX template or will accept a
> PDF file output from LaTeX.
>
> Suggestions for alternatives and approaches are invited and appreciated.
>
> Yasha Karant
>