I feel your problem brother! I've had the same idea a while ago, but dropped it because I had to dive deeper into the dark internals of LaTeX which gave me a much better insight of ``how things should be done''.

I don't think you shouldn't create yet another layer around LaTeX (which itself is a layer around the even more cryptic TeX) nor try to create a complete new typesetting language. LaTeX is around for so long and most people who know it have used it. Either they loved it -and are still using it-, or they hated it -and now are using Word or something similar-.

What I do would like to see is a wrapper which filters the -indeed- cryptic errors of LaTeX and translate them into plain English. Nothing fancy, just something like:

  line 24: unexpected tag '{'.
[download]

Well, these are my $0.02...

-- JaWi

"A chicken is an egg's way of producing more eggs."