But at least for me a big part of the appeal to TeX is that it isn't a (%*#% GUI. It's text. I can edit in an efficient plain text editor, "refactor" styling, etc. I've even at times generated TeX code programmatically (It's often less painful for stuff like receipts than writing a PDF generator by hand, usually looks better too.)

So, I'd like a better input language, but I _don't_ want to fundamentally change the way it works. Just don't make me use a textual-replacement macro language.

... which is probably the real reason I don't use LyX either. Emacs + Latex are second nature to me.