- smart figure/caption/table handling (no orphaned captions, no figures hanging out in the middle of the page) - easy, label-based cross referencing (not selecting each from a popup interface) - text-based equation input
All that being said, I still have an elaborate Word template I use for proposal writing. Because often I have to pass it off to others (who may not know TeX) to contribute, and sometimes I need to quickly bastardize my nice formatting to squeeze into hard page limits.
ShareLatex / Overleaf is very good, but I'd love to see slightly more ease of use as OP suggests. I'd like to see a switchable WYSIWYG / code editor, so laypeople can make simple formatting changes visually without needing to know the right commands, and it propagates correctly into the underlying LaTeX.
But none of the things you described, I think latex does particularly well either. Better than Google docs and the likes, sure, but I think it's possible to do better.
I truly think Google Docs could be so much more than it currently is.
They for example built a brilliant speech-to-text feature that is only available on desktop. Mobile is the one place I could imagine using such a feature. Imagine writing your documents with speech while hiking deep in the woods. Feeling the fresh air with a view of a beautiful brook as Google transcribes your thoughts. That's how I want to write!
Why on earth put so much effort into such a brilliant feature, and then have it only be available to users already sitting in front of a keyboard!?
Apologies for the tangent, it was where my mind wanted me to go!
Besides, the macro language of TeX is not the best programming language IMHO, but it just works, especially for the flexible control of long document.
\includegraphics{img1} \includegraphics{img2}
Or is that not what you meant?
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Latex_example_subfig...
You can reference either the whole figure by using the label inside the figure environment, or you can reference the subfigures using labels inside the subfigure environments.
Already in the 80's Jeff Bezos refused to use latex due to its absurd difficulty to use. I can't believe it's been 40 years and there still isn't a better tool to write papers with.
It took me less than an hour to create a Google Docs template that looks roughly as good as a standard Latex document. The reason Latex looks beautiful is due to a set of wisely chosen defaults, nothing more.
Yet the focus of Google Docs clearly isn't scientific papers. I don't imagine it would take more than a few passionate employees at Google to expand Docs to a powerhouse of scientific writing.
Pictures of my template can be found below:
https://imgur.com/a/cC0e0gG
(and a blogpost about my Latex induced misery) http://mathiasbonde.com/?p=72