I lost my response to the thread on using lyx to take notes so I'm sending this instead.
+1 on LyX being promoted as a GUI front end to LaTeX. There's no need to be concerned about getting a wider audience. Those who want typeset documents will be aware of LyX. Those who don't couldn't care less. For taking notes there are literally dozens of text editors, including emacs, joe, vim, and nano. If you want a GUI interface and the ability to add more than characters take a look at KeepNote <http://keepnote.org/>. I've found it to be a handy tool. And, of course, one can set up a local wiki for notes. Rich
