Some comments on LaTeX. To begin, one small correction to tomahawk's post - LaTex predates Linux. It has been around since 1985 whereas Linux was conceived in 1991 and dates from 1994. (TeX itself goes back to the '70s.)
LaTeX is not exactly for casual use. It is an entire typesetting language. It is overkill for anybody whose primary business is not writing technical documents that require specialized typography. LaTeX source has the important advantage of being plain text but it is quite unpleasant to read. Its purpose is to produce camera-ready hard-copy, not to produce a file that is easily read on a monitor. LaTeX does this through the creation of device-independent binary DVI files. DVI readers are available but not nearly as widespread as PDF readers.
Another drawback of LaTeX is that it is still evolving. Changes between versions are not great but they are enough to prevent some old documents from compiling. (Yes, LaTeX documents must be compiled and "debugged" like a computer program.) LaTeX3 seems to be underway and I still have papers written with early versions of LaTeX that don't even compile under the current LaTex2e.
Having thrown away hundreds of pounds of IBM punch cards, having seen a subsequent decade of work migrated to tape that is readable only by a decommissioned IBM 370 mainframe, having hundreds of binary files stored on 5.25 floppies and intelligible only to primordial word processors that became extinct ages ago, I now would not consider embarking on a major project unless the whole thing was done in plain text (and archived on as many different media as I could afford). Proprietary file formats should be adopted with caution.
I'm not sure what Collater has in mind but I suspect that I would consider HTML (easier than LaTeX) or possibly an established database language.
BTW, I use GhostScript and GSView for ps files. They generally work well but some documents do give problems for reasons not known to me.