Enayetur Raheem

There are probably millions of pages of instructions available on the Internet about how to install LaTeX on an Windows machine. Still, I am writing another one because I always find people around me who needs help in installing the packages.

LaTeX as defined in Wikipedia, is a document preparation system. LaTeX is most widely used by mathematicians, scientists, engineers, philosophers, economists and other scholars in academia and the commercial world, and other professionals. 

WHAT THIS ARTICLE IS ABOUT

This article does not show step-by-step insturction to install latex on a PC. It is about a collection of softwares that are needed to  install a complete LaTeX system. I assume that the reader have privelege to install software on his/her PC and know how to install softwares in a Windows machine.

INSTALLATION

There are three parts of installing latex

(1) Download and install MikTeX,
(2) Download and Install Ghostscript and GSView (recommended), and
(3) Download and install WinEdt (R).

I will provide a brief description and their download links below. It is probably a good idea to follow the above installation sequence. That is, installa MikTex first, then Ghostscript & GSView, and finally, install WinEdt or any other LaTeX text editor. I prefer WinEdt.

1. INSTALLING MikTeX

As of December 15, 2009, the latest version of MikTeX is 2.8. The following Windows platforms are supported:
    * Windows 7 (recommended)
    * Windows Server 2008
    * Windows Vista
    * Windows Server 2003
    * Windows XP
    * Windows 2000

For detailed information, please visit MikTeX's official page at http://miktex.org/2.8/setup

Net Installation (install online, a small file to download initially): (Those who do not prefer net installation can skip to the next step). To install a basic MiKTeX system, download [from http://miktex.org/2.8/setup] and run the "Basic MiKTeX" installer. MiKTeX has the ability to install missing packages automatically, i.e., this installer is suitable for computers connected to the Internet.

Install from your PC: (You only need to follow this step, if you do not prefer net-installation). To do this, you have to download the full installation exe file [from http://miktex.org/2.8/setup ] and save it in your PC. It is a large file, over 100MB of size, and will take some time to download. Once downloading is finished, install it as usual.

2. INSTALLING GHOSTSCRIPT and GSView

Ghostscript is needed to process postscript (.ps) and encapsulated postscript (.eps) files. Download and install them after you install MikTeX.

Ghostscript 8.64 as of December 16, 2009
Download link for GPL Ghostscript 8.64 [32bit, regular version]
Download link for GPL Ghostscript 8.64 [64bit version]

GSView version 4.9 as of December 16, 2009
Download link for GSView Win32 bit
Download link for GSView Win64 bit

3. INSTALLING WinEdt

WinEdt version 5.6 as of December 16, 2009
Download link WinEdt 5.6: [Build: 20080429] (winedt56.exe 8.61 MB)

About the Author

Enayetur Raheem