I don't think the learning curve is that long, Check out the not so short guide to LaTeX
http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/lshort/lshort.pdf
Also be sure to get the documentation from the American Mathematical Society for their extensions to LaTeX.
ftp://ftp.ams.org/pub/tex/doc/amsmath/amsldoc.pdf
http://www.ams.org/tex/amslatex.html