I like using Ulysses for writing - it also has a decent LaTeX export plugin. The LaTeX processing tools were always a problem though: I could never get everything to work properly on OS X (and the i-Installer process is just hideous). Now I've managed to get a decent process working, compiled from source, thanks mostly to the new beta versions of TeTeX 3: here are the setup notes...
curl 'ftp://dante.ctan.org/pub/tex/systems/unix/teTeX-beta/tetex-texmf.tar.gz'
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/tetex/share/texmf
sudo mv tetex-texmf/* /usr/local/tetex/share/texmf/
cd tetex-src
./configure
make
sudo make install
sudo ln -s powerpc-apple-darwin7.6.0 powerpc-apple-darwin-current
sudo texconfig confall
sudo texconfig font rw
sudo curl 'http://www.polya.uklinux.net/protcode.tex' \
-o '/usr/local/tetex/share/texmf/tex/plain/misc/protcode.tex'
sudo curl 'http://www.polya.uklinux.net/abbr.tex' \
-o '/usr/local/tetex/share/texmf/tex/plain/misc/abbr.tex'
sudo texhash
Everything's installed under /usr/local/tetex, so you can just get rid of everything in that folder for a clean start.
Do the writing in Ulysses, export the LaTeX file, then use whatever editor you like to customise the markup. I'm using SubEthaEdit, and adding '\usepackage{lmodern}' to the LaTeX preamble to get decent looking Latin Modern fonts.
I'm also running latexmk and TeXniscope to automatically update a PDF preview whenever changes are made to the LaTeX file:
-o '/usr/local/bin/latexmk'
sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/latexmk
$pdf_previewer = 'open -a TeXniscope.app';
$pdf_update_method = 0;
$pscmd='ps -ww -u $ENV{USER}';
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If you want easy access to Mac OS X fonts like Hoefler Text and Gill Sans, try xetex.
I'd still like to see a proper wiki-markup-based authoring package, with options to convert to XML and LaTeX.
I've never been able to get xetex to work properly - that's one of the reasons why I went back to a fresh installation of the basic tetex setup. The xetex package installer seems to be designed for specific set-ups, which are all overly complicated, and the source isn't available for modification.
Ulysses is able to use export plugins, so it probably wouldn't be *too* hard to make one that exported DocBook XML.
Have you tried Gerben Wierda's installer?
http://www.rna.nl/ii.html
As for Ulysses, I'll check it out again if I get a chance. Still, I increasingly like the idea of a web-based database-driven authoring environment (perhaps tied into OS X apps via services?).
As I said above, the i-Installer process is awful. I've tried it several times, and never got a properly working set-up.
You'd really do your word processing in a web browser?
Ah, I missed your ii note in the original message. I never had any problem with it; hence the question.
I would like to take notes in a wiki-like environment, and then to be able to assemble them into documents in a local editor (I use emacs generally). I wish Ulysses would use a standard markup language like Markdown or Textile.
The i-Installer rules. I don't understand what went wrong on your side. I've installed with it about seven or eight times, no problem, processed huge projects etc. I always install the packages in the following order (as per instructions from TeXShop's page): FreeType2, libwmf, Ghostscript 8, ImageMagik, FontForge, TeX.
"The i-Installer rules...I always install packages in a precisely determined, highly-fiddly order that I managed to find in the documentation on some entirely different package."
And that's why people don't like it.
I just do 'fink install texshop' and let it handle everything.