## Wednesday, November 24

Yesterday I decided to install LateX and start to use it.

Then I found, no one wants to make it clear how to download/use it. Most websites give a link to http://www.ctan.org, the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network, then you can click some link to see some files, some ftp directory, some mirrors of those files, and some links will lead you back to the CTAN again.

In blog world, people keep talking about blog/RSS/Blogroll/WIKI/flickr, but actually no one knows what they're talking, and they don't want you to know either.

Then I went back to http://www.latex-project.org/, the official LaTeX project website, and followed the links to http://www.fptex.org/fptexli2.html, because I'm using Windows system. Gees, the method to download the program is toooo Unix:
run getfptex.bat in DOS console. It took me 3 hours to download 460M bytes files.
Then you downloaded it, then you run a "TeXSetup.exe" . Is that all? No!

After installation, you can see this in your Start Menu:

But it is still not clear how to use it.

Follow those links in Google, I was induced to install WinEdt before I found it was ONLY an editor, so I uninstalled it, went back to my favorite editor: EditPlus.

To make the long story short, I only tell you how to make a "Hello Word" in LaTeX:

In any editor, create a txt file with this:

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}
\begin{document}

Hello World!
$$\sum_{p\rm\;prime}f(p) = \int_{t>1}f(t)d\pi(t).$$

\end{document}

then go to DOS Commend Console, go to the folder where you saved your file and type in

latex filename.txt

LaTeX.exe is supposed to be in your path after you install those 460M files. So in the same folder it will create a filename.DVI, which can be read by the "DVI Viewer" from the Start Menu:

(The LaTeX source of beautiful equation is copied from http://learn.tsinghua.edu.cn/homepage/2001315450/tex_frame.html, a pretty good LaTeX tutorial in Chinese Language)

But I'm waiting to see the PDF, not DVI... What a mess!

At November 26, 2004 5:35 AM,  vieplivee said...

It might be easier to use Winedt (a software) to edit .tex files. You need to download MiTex before installing Winedt. If interested to learn what they are, google will give you answers.. Good luck!

At November 28, 2004 8:52 AM,  Ben said...

Thank you, vv. I installed WinEdt before TeX, so I don't see anything new from this editor. After I read your comment, I installed it again, and I found it's useful. It's a hybrid software between Unix and Windows... It's not WYSIWYG software like Windows, but it's not commend line software either.

Thanks for your recommendation.