LaTeX workflow

LaTeX is a batch system, which means that the typical workflow looks like this:

1. prepare an input (plain ASCII or UTF-8) file, containing the text to be typeset interspersed with so-called LaTeX commands,
2. run LaTeX on it (“compile”),
3. view and/or print the resulting pdf file.

Of course, there are quite a few specialized LaTeX editors (IDEs) which enable automation of steps 2 and 3; also, the One True Editor has a rich LaTeX mode (I hear that also that a certain famous, but barely usable editor has support for editing LaTeX files). Also, there exist WYSIWYG-like systems based on LaTeX.