Please direct questions to consult@math.uic.edu
If you have Acrobat Reader, Gsview & Ghostscript or MiKTeX already installed on your computer, you do not need to reinstall them or you can install the newer versions (at this time, March 2001) by following these instructions.
Acrobat Reader will enable you to view and print Acrobat Reader (.pdf) files.
You can either download Acrobat Reader from http://www.adobe.com/supportservice/custsupport/ OR you can get it from ftp.math.uic.edu/pub/windows/TEX .
If you download AR from the web page:
Choose Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Choose Get Acrobat Reader (free!).
In Step 1 select language, platform, choose USA as a location nearest you, include option for searching PDF files.
In Step 2 provide your name & e-mail address, choose whether you want to be notified about Adobe software & others and whether you want to get special offers.
In Step 3
click on Download.
After you get security-warning, click on OK.
In the resulting Downloading window, choose Save to disk.
Save the file in the C:\Downloads\Acrobat directory.
If you download AR from ftp.math.uic.edu/pub/windows/TEX :
Save the file ar405eng.exe in the C:\Downloads\Acrobat directory.
2. Install Acrobat Reader.
Open Windows Explorer.
Double-click the newly downloaded file.
In Acrobat Reader
4.05 Setup window click Next.
Leave
C:\ProgramFiles\Adobe\Acrobat4.0 as
your Destination Folder, click Next.
Click OK.
Important Note:.
The instructions after this note for installing GSView, Ghostscript, MiKTeX and WinEdt will install outdated versions of the software. A modern alternative is to use protext as described in http://tug.org/protext/ and in particular to follow http://tug.org/protext/Install/protext-install-en.pdf
GSView is a convenient graphical user-interface for Ghostscript, which enables you to easily view and print postscript files on your PC. You can configure Netscape so that GSview will automatically open PostScript and compressed PostScript files.
The instructions below will install Ghostscript 6.50 and GSview 3.60 on your system, or you might be able to use the program N:\WinStall\WinStall.exe to install it. If you leave GSview open while the postscript file you are viewing changes (for example because you have rerun TeX and dvips modifying the postscript), GSview will automatically update the file on your screen. It is no longer needed to close and reopen GSview.
Get the files gs650w32.exe and gsv36w32.exe from ftp.math.uic.edu/pub/windows/TEX .
Download them into the folders C:\Downloads\GS and C:\Downloads\GSview, respectively.
2. Install GSview and Ghostscript.
Remark: If you have previously installed GSview, for example GSview 2.5, this will replace it with the current version 2.6.
Open Windows Explorer.
Double-click the newly downloaded file gs650w32.exe.
Choose Setup>Install.
In Windows Explorer, double-click the newly downloaded file gsv36w32.exe.
Choose Setup and follow instructions, accepting all defaults.
Open Gsview using its icon that was added to your desktop.
In Gsview>Media>Display>Settings set Text Alpha & Graphics Alpha to 4 bits. This will sharpen the images on your screen.
Within Gsview, open C:\gs\gs6.50\examples\tiger.gs to see a nice picture.
MiKTeX is a complete and excellent TeX, LaTeX etc. system for Windows.
Get the file 2.1.zip from ftp.math.uic.edu/pub/windows/TEX into C:\Downloads\MiKTeX.
Remark: If your computer has no program to handle .zip files, download and install the free WIZ program from http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/WiZ.html .
Open Windows Explorer and double-click on 2.1.zip, and verify that the resulting files and folder go into C:\Downloads\MiKTeX.
Double-click the newly generated file C:\Downloads\MiKTeX\2.1\setupwiz.exe.
Follow the instructions and accept all defaults.
Go to ftp.math.uic.edu/pub/windows/TEX and save the file miktex.ini
in C:\Local TeXMF\miktex\config . This is a local configuration file overriding some of MiKTeX’s defaults. In particular, when there is a TeX error, pressing e will open the source file in WinEdt rather than in the default Windows Notepad.
Open an MSDOS window and type the following command
initexmf –personal=”C:\Local TeXMF\miktex\config\miktex.ini”
[note that there are two (2) hyphens before the word personal]. This tells MiKTeX to use your personal configuration file that you downloaded above.
Close the MSDOS window.
Do Start>Programs>MiKTeX2>MiKTeX Options>File name database>Refresh Now
WinEdt is an excellent editor capable of launching programs such as TeX under a graphical user interface. It comes pre-configured for using MiKTeX, but it can be configured to run any other program. It is extremely configurable by the user.
Download file winedt5.exe from ftp.math.uic.edu/pub/windows/TEX into C:\Downloads\WinEdt.
Double-click the file C:\Downloads\WinEdt and then double-click the resulting file C:\Downloads\WinEdt\SETUP.EXE.
Follow the instructions, accepting all defaults.
Open WinEdt by double-clicking its icon on your desktop.
You will have the WinEdt Configuration Wizard open for you (in the future, you can get it from WinEdt’s Help).
If your operating system is Windows 9x, select the TeX tab on top, then Fixing the BATCH Files on the right, then Update… at the bottom left. This will update a number if batch files used by WinEdt for running programs such as TeX and LaTeX (the batch files are supposed to inherit some environment variables from WinEdt, but this does not work in Windows 9x, so WinEdt comes with this ready fix).
In WinEdt, open the file C:\MiKTeX\dvips\config\config.ps and move the lines about letter and letterSize before the lines about a4, then save the file. This ensures that dvips will generate postscript files in “letter” format rather than the default a4 used in Europe (dvips converts the dvi file produced by TeX into a postscript file).
Spend a couple of hours familiarizing yourself with the very nice features and user customization of WinEdt, using its extensive Help. In particular, look at the file WinEdt.txt, which is open by default the first time you run WinEdt.
Go to WinEdt>Help>Configuration Wizard>TeX>Quick Test and follow the instructions how to test your system by running some example files.
You may wish to follow the instructions in WinEdt.txt (lines 967--975). This will enable you to double-click any spot in the dvi viewer Yap and be transferred to the corresponding place in the source tex file.
Site-license for WinEdt: WinEdt is Shareware, and UIC has a site license for it in the form of an id number. Please ask for it by e-mailing consult@math.uic.edu.