I strongly recommend using LaTeX. Here are some documents to help you get the most from LaTeX, including details (figures, makefiles, and bibliographies) which most LaTeX guides don't help you with.
This directory contains two files.
LaTeX example Created November 1996 using latex209
LaTeX2e example Created November 2005 using latex2e
NB Nowadays (2005), everyone uses latex2e,
so the first example is a little out of date.
Almost all features of this file still work fine in latex2e.