To use LATEX is one thing, and very good introductions exist for learning. But what do you need for installing a LATEX system on Windows? What do I do with TEX Live, why do I need Ghostscript, what’s TeXmaker, and why many people favor Emacs, and above all, how does everything fit together?
This tutorial shall save the search an show step by step what you need and how to setup the individual components.
I am always happy about suggestions and notes on possible errors. When reporting by mail, please always include the file date: July 2, 2018
Many thanks to a number of readers for suggestions and corrections.
The correct addresses for this document are:
- http://www.latexbuch.de/files/latexsystem-en.pdf for the PDF version and
- http://www.latexbuch.de/install-latex-windows/ for the HTML-page.
The German version is available via http://www.latexbuch.de/latex-windows-installieren/
The old version with the installation of MiKTeX is available at http://www.latexbuch.de/install-miktex-windows-7/.
Contents
2 What do you need at all?
3 Installation and Configuration
3.1 Download and install TEX Live
3.1.1 Install Additional Fonts
3.2 Graphics Preparation and Conversion
3.3 Configure Emacs
3.4 File Types Setup
3.5 Remedy if you have Admin Rights
3.6 Install ImageMagick
4 And now? Begin typing...
5 If something fails
6 Prospect
References
1 Everyone can set up LATEX
LATEX is not just a program but a language and a methodology of describing documents and gets used via a LATEX system. With that not only scientific papers can be prepared, but also excellent letters, presentation and much more.
For all that have not worked with free software so far it may be strange in the beginning to have to integrate different components to a system on their own, and some will not easily have the heart to do so. For this I present my own environment that I use to generate from LATEX PostScript and PDF as well as HTML.
This is not a introduction to LATEX, there are some excellent documents available in the net as well as my German book[15]. For beginners the best will be the “Not so short introduction to LATEX2ε”, delivered with approximately every LATEX distribution in <texmf>/doc/guides/lshort/, or to be downloaded from CTAN.org1. Essential also is the UK TEX FAQ, to be obtained from the UK TeX Archive[2]. Then we should mention l2tabu, which lists obsolete commands and packages and their alternatives.
If you have severe problems with installation although using this tutorial, or have another question related to LATEX, should not write to me personally but search in the Internet and the FAQ. In case of continuous confusion you can post in the newsgroup Most questions can be answered there, and also concerning Windows installation this is preferrable, because answers are for everyone’s benefits and numerous competent users and developers read along.
This guide was testet under Windows 10, but should work as well with Windows 7, 8 and XP. It is not a substitute for the original documentations of the particular programs and building blocks 2. In case of errors or warnings, consult the documentation of the particular program. This tutorial exclusively cares for the mentioned programs. More recent versions of programs usually work well (no guarantee).
2 What do you need at all?
In order to be able to work efficiently, besides the main TEX distribution more components are needed.
LATEX Distribution:TEX Live The LATEX distribution is the core of the system. It contains the most important programs needed for generation of PDF and PostScript, and all additional packages for e. g. standard layouts for different organizations, layout specialties, fonts, and many more.
The distribution is only responsible to transform an input to an output. The input itself is created with the editor of your choice. I use TEX Live. In my opinion this distribution is easy to install, works quite good and is updated regularly.
Editor: TeXworks For keeping the beginning with LATEX as simple as possible, I recommend TeXworks or Texmaker as Editor, differing from my personal setup.
I will skip instructions for the also popular TeXlipse, the Eclipse plugin. Everyone using Eclipse will manage to get that additional package.
For pure mouse oriented users TeXworks is quite comfortable. TeXworks is well updated and convenient to use, because besides graphical menus for most mathematical symbols and all relevant commands it shows so called tool tips during typing of commands. Especially for a newbie in LATEX TeXworks is recommendable. Later you can switch to Emacs.
Nevertheless it has to be stressed that TeXworks misses some features that I like in Emacs, e. g. a numerated table of contents view or a powerful handling of labels and cites. The integrated spell-checker does not yet show the quality as Aspell does for Emacs.
Editor: Emacs + RefTeX + AUCTeX + Aspell Please do skip Emacs installation if you are new to LATEX.
If you already have worked with LATEX under Unix, you might have used Emacs, one of the most powerful GNU programs.
I decided to switch to Emacs due to the add-ons AUCTeX and RefTeX. AUCTeX offers keyboard shortcuts for all important LATEX constructs, speeding up work significantly. AUCTeX additionally shows in-editor preview of graphics, tables and formulas. This merges the best from both worlds WYSIWYG and offline editing[9]. On insertion of cross references, RefTeX lets the user select one out of a list of all existing labels, and does help with generation of these labels. Also insertion of bibliographic cites is efficient and fast with RefTeX. Read the introductions or tutorials for Emacs and AUCTeX and get the Emacs reference card. The initial learning effort pays out, it is overcompensated by fast and efficient working.
Moreover you have a spell checker called Aspell in Emacs. It contains dictionaries for English, German and many others.
Graphics in PostScript with Ghostscript In the Unix world, PostScript is the exchange format for vector graphics. Following this paradigm, it is best to include graphics as (Encapsulated) PostScript (PS/EPS) in LATEX.
From all Windows applications with their file formats, e. g. existing Word- or PowerPoint drawings, Bitmaps or vector files like Visio, PostScript can be generated even if the application does not support this directly. A PostScript printer driver, redirected to file output, makes this possible. For viewing existing PostScript files and to make small changes you need Ghostscript with its graphical front-end GSview.
HTML translation: TeX4ht TeX4ht has the advantage that it is contained as package in the TEX Live distribution. For usage see documentation in <texmf>/doc/generic/tex4ht. TeX4ht, requires the program ImageMagick for graphics conversion.
Summary and licensing The included package sizes mean the download sizes, not the space needed for installation.
Program | Size MB |
TEX Live | 3000 MB |
Ghostscript for Windows (64-bit Download) | 10 MB |
GSview | 3 MB |
Texmaker | 6 MB |
GNU Emacs for Windows (Download) | 45 MB |
auctex-w32 | 2 MB |
GNU Aspell (Win32 version) | 8 MB |
LibPNG | 1 MB |
Emacs Config File | |
Emacs TEX Registry File | |
TeX4ht | 1,5 MB |
ImageMagick Windows Binaries | 10 MB |
Σ | ca. 2 ⋅ 103 MB |
All of the programs mentioned in this tutorial are at least free of charge, in most cases even free software3. All licenses state that the distribution is allowed. Most of them allow furthermore to change the source code, whereas some of them prohibit commercial sale. You are invited to reward the individual projects financially. Each projects’ web page tells you how.
3 Installation and Configuration
My system runs on Windows 10. Some access paths to certain configurations may deviate on your system from the described. Access paths denominate entries in the start menu, buttons and menu entries with their particular captions.
The step sequence is to be followed tightly due to program dependencies. If you use another directory for a program, please to take care about this in subsequent steps.
3.1 Download and install TEX Live
Start by downloading the TEX Live installer from http://www.tug.org/texlive/ for Windows. If you only have a thin internet connection, use the same page to order the TEX Collection DVD.
Unpack the Zip file and from the created folder call the program install-tl.bat. Accept all defaults and leave your computer alone for the next couple of hours – depending on your internet connection.
After finishing the installation, all programs can then be started directly from command line.
3.1.1 Install Additional Fonts
The TEX Live installer contains only fonts whose license allow distribution on DVD. So some are missing where this is not allowed, but which may be used free of cost. Now we install these.
Therefore we download the script getnonfreefonts from tug.org/fonts/getnonfreefonts/install-getnonfreefonts. Open a command line and change to your download folder. Enter the following two commands:
This first installs getnonfreefonts, then downloads and installs all available free fonts for all local TEX users. If you do not have administrator privileges on your computer, substitute the second line with this one:
3.2 Graphics Preparation and Conversion
Configure the PostScript printer driver bySTART| DEVICES AND PRINTERS| ADD PRINTER . First you select local printer and as adapter the FILE port, the right printer driver is the MS Publisher Color Printer (from Windows 7 on, “Generic” in the vendor list), resp. Apple Color LaserWriter 12/600 (up to Windows Vista). The printer name is best set to “PostScript File”.
After installation do the following settings underSTART| DEVICES AND PRINTERS | POSTSCRIPT FILE| PRINTER| PRINTING PREFERENCES| ADVANCED| DOCUMENT OPTIONS | POSTSCRIPT OPTIONS : Set PostScript-Output to “Optimize Portability” and TrueType Download to “Contour”. The ICM Color Matching should be deactivated for avoidance of color adulterations.
From now on every Windows application can produce PostScript files by using the new printer. The generated file—which should be given the file extension .ps instead of the default .prn—can be viewed in GSview and converted to EPS. It exceedingly useful to add Ghostscript to the search path. So again, inSTART| CONTROL PANEL| SYSTEM AND SECURITY| SYSTEM| ADVANCED| ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES add to the variable PATH the respective folder C:\texlive\2013\tlpkg\tlgs\bin\, separated by a semicolon. Attention: No spaces before or after entries of the PATH variable!
In order to simplify work in the long run I recommend to setup an “EPS Printer”, for this I have a short tutorial, too: [14]. Only in German, sorry, but Google Translate will do a fair job.
3.3 Configure Emacs
One defect of Windows has to be fixed first: the absence of the environment variable HOME. Environment variables allow to set paths or generally strings independent of particular applications, and use them with all applications. For this create a new entry inSTART | SETTINGS| CONTROL PANEL| SYSTEM| ADVANCED| ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES 4, named HOME and assign some path in which you like to have saved all individual settings. The directory name should not contain spaces. Then create exactly that folder. For all environment variables it is to be reckoned that if you want to set an environment variable just for the current user, you create it in User Variables. If they should apply to all users, create them in System Variables.
You need GNU Emacs for Windows (Download), and auctex-w32 as package. Unpack the Emacs archive emacs-2x.x-bin-i386.zip into the programs directory, resulting in a directory like e. g. C:\Programme\emacs.
For easier starting Emacs, in directory C:\Programme\emacs\bin run the installer addpm.exe and accept the settings. This creates a shortcut in the Windows start menu.
You install AUCTEX from within Emacs. So start Emacs using the recently created start menu entry. With the integrated Emacs package manager we get what we want:
Press Alt-X, then type list-packages and confirm with Return. Choose the package auctex with key i and press x to start the installation.
With this, Emacs is ready to run. To have easier access to the following configurations, you may download my Emacs configuration file with right click and “Save link as”. Rename this file to .emacs and move it to your HOME directory.
(add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook 'turn-on-reftex)
(setq reftex-plug-into-AUCTeX t)
(setq-default ispell-program-name "aspell")
AUCTEX + RefTEX If you do not want to use my .emacs configuration file, you need to implement the follwing three paragraphs.
The integration of AUCTeX with RefTeX has to be activated separatedly. For this, start Emacs and use it to create the configuration file .emacs within you HOME directory (UNIX shortcut name ~) with
C-x C-f ~/.emacs RET (The shortcut
C-x stands for the keyboard combination
Ctrl-x, other keys equivalent. So translates to: Ctrl-x, Ctrl-f, type “~/.emacs”, press Enter. The “~/” means the file to be located within your HOME directory.). Here you add the following lines:
Ensure that you use the straight apostrophe in the expression, not some accent or typographic single quote.
Then save the file by C-x C-s, close Emcas with
C-x C-c, and the setup is completed. The installation was successful, if when opening a .tex file in the menu bar new entries “Preview”, “LaTeX” and “Ref” appear.
If you want faster and smaller preview images, you have to get the additional graphics library LibPNG from LibPNG. From the Website, download “libpng” and “zlib”. From the Binary archive extract the two DLLs libpng14-14.dll and copy them to your directory C:\Programme(x86)\emacs\bin. Do the same with the dependencies archive’s content bin\zlib1.dll, and place it in the bin directory of Emacs as well.
In PDF-Mode with (C-c C-t C-p) you now can call Preview-LATEX with C-c C-p C-d.
Aspell Aspell servers as spell checker. After downloading the program (“Full Installer”) and the dictionairy (“aspell-en-0.50-2-3.exe”) from GNU Aspell (Win32 version), first run the program installer, accepting all defaults, then your dictionairy installer.
So once again, inSTART| SETTINGS| CONTROL PANEL| SYSTEM| ADVANCED| ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES add to the variable PATH the respective directory, e. g. C:\ProgramFiles(x86)\Aspell\bin\; separated by a colon.
Finally you let Emacs know to use Aspell for spell checking in future by adding the following line to your .emacs configuration file:
3.4 File Types Setup
Only as a further simplification you create a new file type. First, add to your configuration file .emacs as first line:
Then download my Emacs-TEX registry file and edit it—so do not simply double click but right click and select edit. In line 6, containing the first @=, replace both occurrences of the directory name C:\\Programme(x86)\\emacs with the name of the directory you installed Emacs in. Take care that you really use two backslashes \\ path separators. Save the file and use the double click to add it to the registry. Confirm that you want it when Windows asks for.
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\texfile]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\texfile\Shell]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\texfile\Shell\Open]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\texfile\Shell\Open\Command]
@="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\emacs-26.1\\bin\\emacsclientw.exe -n -a \"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\emacs-26.1\\bin\\runemacs.exe\" %1 %*"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\.tex]
@="texfile"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\.bib]
@="texfile"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\.lco]
@="texfile"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\.sty]
@="texfile"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\.cls]
@="texfile"
You can do the same for further file name extensions like .bib, .sty, .cls and .lco. From then on double clicking a .tex file leads to execution of Emacs. Now Emacs is completely configured.
Now you have full system for generation of printer and camera ready documents in PDF or PostScript. If you do not want to generate HTML, you are done at this point.
3.5 Remedy if you have Admin Rights
Now start Emacs via the start menu. If your Windows user account has admin rights, you may get an error message about a rights problem of folder .emacs.d/server/.
Fix it by changing the owner: Close Emacs. Click on Start and enter cmd into the search field. This opens a command window. Change into the Emacs"=folder below HOME by typing
There you enter the following command:
You only need to execute the command if you have administrative rights, and only then you are able to execute it.
3.6 Install ImageMagick
TeX4ht is included in TEX Live and, if you selected the total installation, already on your hard disk for usage.
The precondition for TeX4ht on the one hand is Ghostscript that you installed in a previous section, and on the other hand ImageMagick, which gets configured as follows: Get the ImageMagick Windows Binaries from the ImageMagick web site and install it. Simply acknowledge the defaults, which automatically adds the converter program to your search path.
If you want to employ the LibreOffice export of TeX4ht, a Zip packer has to be available in the system. I apply Info-Zip for this, but only copy the file zip.exe to a directory already covered by the search path. After first use of oolatex.bat, if you discover that the generated file is corrupt, you can remedy by editing the file c:\texlive\2013\texmf-dist\tex4ht\base\win32\tex4ht.env and replace the tags <oo-alt> and
</oo-alt> by
<oo> bzw.
</oo> and vice versa, for activating an alternative processing.
4 And now? Begin typing...
Congratulation! TeX4ht is now installed and the TEX system can generate all important outputs.
What about exporting to Word? In principle there is no reason to export LATEX to Word, but there are programs that convert LATEX to the Rich Text Format (.rtf), which you can open in Word then. I sense the best way is via HTML or LibreOffice. This means: convert LATEX with TeX4ht to HTML or LibreOffice, and then open the output in Word resp. LibreOffice.
The generation of outputs is normally directed by the editor programs, there are buttons and/or keyboard shortcuts for this. For the usage of the Emacs add-ons I refer to their documentation. The access may be bitter, it is really worthwile.
TeX4ht usage TeX4ht is a flexible tool for converting LATEX to HTML, but with the loads of options one easily looses overview at the beginning. With a little practice, nevertheless, you can accomplish everything you imagine.
The TeX4ht documentation delivered is not so luxuriant. A comprehensive list of options, written to the log file, you get by calling
at the command line for a arbitrary LATEX file. Be sure to call htlatex.bat, not just htlatex, as this starts a TEX Live program instead.
Because I want XHTML as clear and as small files as possible, I tend to invoke by
for the conversion. This generates XHTML, separate files for two levels of sections, no special font information but basic logical formatting, non-scaled graphics and helpful hyperlinks. If you like to have a more precise reproduction of the fonts, skip the option NoFonts, which of course leads to bigger files. For a monolithic file specify a 0 instead of 2.
Graphics conversion For drawing, use vector oriented programs, like e. g. CorelDraw, LibreOffice Draw, Visio or related. Generally it is strongly dis-advisable to create diagrams or graphics as bitmaps, with Photoshop, GIMP or similar programs. Applications like Excel or PowerPoint also process their graphics vector oriented, and are able to generate nice PostScript files via our PostScript printer driver. These PostScript files then get conversed to EPS [14]. MATLAB directly can produce PS/EPS.
The generated file with the extension .eps can be loaded into GSview in order to e. g. control whether the bounding box has to be corrected. The bounding box can be showed by selecting the menu entryOPTIONS| SHOW BOUNDING BOX .
In case the bounding box does not fit, the commandFILE| PS TO EPS allows to set the bounding box automatically or manually and save the output to a new file. Automatic can be selected if the whole graphic should be used. Manual selection of the bounding box is useful if unwanted head or foot lines should be cropped.
Attention: For generating PostScript or DVI graphic files have to be present in (Encapsulated) PostScript (EPS), whereas with pdfLATEX only graphics in PDF, JPEG oder PNG can be processed. It is well possible to convince the one and the other to accept all file types, but has to use special options which may make the source document unportable to other systems. If both DVI and PDF should be generated, the graphics have to exist in two formats.
If you want to use pdfLATEX to create Portable Document Format from your documents, you have to convert the EPS files to PDF. For this there is the command epstopdf, like the following:
Bitmap files like JPEG or PNG can be processed directly by pdfLATEX. For usage with the normal LATEX they have to be converted to EPS using bmeps.
5 If something fails
If anything does not work or behaves apparently wrong, often the reason is a forgotten environment variable. So you first should check whether all environment variables suggested by this tutorial are set appropriately. If one misses or has a wrong value, it is possible that a succeeding installation failed, especially that of Preview-LATEX. So do it again. Another popular source of defect are files in wrong places. Go through the tutorial again and check and correct if necessary.
If needed, risk a look to the installation manual of the particular package to find more hints. Of course it cannot be ruled out that my tutorial contains an error. If you find everything in the right place and still not working, ask me and include the version number of the tutorial. Maybe I made some assumption that is not general, or a new version of a package works different.
6 Prospect
With all the possibilities offered by the numerous LATEX packages always bear in mind: Choose simple layouts and structure, especially if you plan to publish also in HTML. With help of this article nevertheless it should be possible for a reasonably Windows-experienced user to begin relatively quick with editing and typesetting texts.
If this document helps appeasing the timidity of installing and using such a system and by that lowers the inhibition threshold of the access to LATEX, it has fulfilled its purpose.
References
- [1]
-
Pascal Brachet. Texmaker. URL: http://www.xm1math.net/texmaker/texmakerwin32_install.exe.
- [2]
-
Robin Fairbairns. TeX Frequently Asked Questions. URL: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq.
- [3]
-
Ghostscript for Windows (64-bit Download). URL: https://github.com/ArtifexSoftware/ghostpdl-downloads/releases/download/gs919/gs919w64.exe.
- [4]
-
GNU Emacs for Windows (Download). URL: ftpmirror.gnu.org/emacs/windows/emacs-26/emacs-26.1-x86_64.zip.
- [5]
-
GSview. URL: http://www.gsview.com/.
- [6]
-
Eitan Gurari. TeX4ht. URL: http://tug.org/tex4ht/.
- [7]
-
ImageMagick Windows Binaries. URL: http://imagemagick.org/script/binary-releases.php#windows.
- [8]
-
Info-Zip. URL: http://www.info-zip.org.
- [9]
-
David Kastrup. »Revisiting WYSIWYG paradigms for authoring LaTeX«. In: TUGboat 23.1 (Nov. 2002), pp. 57–64.
- [10]
-
LibPNG. URL: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/libpng.htm.
- [11]
-
TEX Live. URL: http://www.tug.org/texlive/.
- [12]
-
Thorsten Maerz. GNU Aspell (Win32 version). URL: http://aspell.net/win32/.
- [13]
-
Frank Neukam, Markus Kohm, and Axel Kielhorn. Das KOMA-Script Paket. package documentation. Sept. 2002.
- [14]
-
Joachim Schlosser. EPS Writer für Windows. URL: http://schlosser.info/epswriter.
- [15]
-
Joachim Schlosser. Wissenschaftliche Arbeiten schreiben mit LaTeX. 6th ed. mitp Verlag, Aug. 25, 2016. ISBN: 978-3-95845-290-9. URL: http://www.latexbuch.de.
1CTAN is the abbreviation for Comprehensive TeX Archive Network, the complete collection of TEX related software.
2See mypost in de.comp.text.tex (in German)
3Which as is generally known is a difference to free of charge: “Free as free speech, not free beer.” See the pages of the Free Software Foundation at http://www.fsf.org.
4To be accessed much faster by keyboard shortcut Windows key+Break, by the way.
Install LaTeX for Windows 10 – a complete setup by Joachim Schlosser is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Germany License.
Based on a work at www.latexbuch.de.
Etn meint
Thanks for this document, it has been very helpful. I have been working on a mac and recently I decided to set up emacs (LaTeX, AUCTex, RefTeX) on windows 7.
I would be very grateful if you could please answer one quick question. relating to the “ref” menu. I have followed your instructions (see below). When I open a .Tex file, I can see the ‘preview’ and ‘latex’ menus, however ‘ref’ menu does not appear.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, as I have also tried several codes found online.
Many thanks
Etn
(The environment variable was checked)
I added the following code to my .emacs file:
>>(add-hook ‘LaTeX-mode-hook ‘turn-on-reftex)
>>(setq reftex-plug-into-AUCTeX t)
>>Then save the file by C-x C-s, close Emcas with C-x C-c, and the setup is completed. The >>installation was successful, if when opening a .tex file in the menu bar new entries “Preview”, >>“LaTeX” and “Ref” appear.
Joachim meint
It’s not your fault. Please ensure that when entering the 1st line with add-hook, you set a straight apostrophe ‘ at the two places, not an accent or typographic single quotes.
This is wrong: (add-hook ‘LaTeX-mode-hook ‘turn-on-reftex)
This is correct: (add-hook ‘LaTeX-mode-hook ‘turn-on-reftex)
Thanks for commenting, I will check in my document…
Etn meint
Thanks for your reply, however, unfortunately (after changing the apostrophes as above) the ref menu still does not appear….
Etn
Joachim meint
Please email me your full .emacs file as email attachment, and the output of the EMACS command M-x version. My email address is joachim at schlosser dot info. Thanks.
Joachim meint
Try removing all RefTeX-related configuration items from your .emacs file. Other commands might interfere with the mere 2 required in the tutorial.
Aaron meint
Thansk Joachim for putting this together, I appreciate it greatly!
I would be very greatfulif you could help me with the same issue as Etn regarding the ref menu not appearing although the preview and latex menus do appear. I’m using your .emacs file (with no change)that you kindly shared and put it in a directory I set up for the HOME system variable.
Would you have any insights as to what the problem maybe?
Many thanks in advance!
Aaron
Joachim meint
Hey Aaron, let me get back to you via email and post the result here in the comments once we solved it.
Minda Hilger meint
I enjoyed reading this blog post! Keep up the great work.
Lalit Kapoor meint
Many thanks for this piece of wisdom. I was using MikTeX and TeXnicCenter for preparing LaTeX documents. I came know about Emacs and AUCTeX five days back. But after five days (and night) struggle I could not get the preview-latex results in my Emacs windows. I read every manual mutliple times. Even on net (Google) I made many searches but end up to get the same information again and again which could not help. Every thing was ok with my system. But few minutes earlier I read one specific line about ghostscript that it should be of version 8.71 not later. I simply uninstall ghostscript 9.02, download and install ghostscript 8.71 and lo . . . it works on very first run. I got the preview of my LaTeX document.
I want to add only one thing that there is only one image support dll (i.e. libXpm.dll) included in the precompiled emacs 23.3 which you have mentioned also. For image support (like png in preview-latex) you have to download libpng.dll which should be of version 1.2 or later and copy it in the bin directory of emacs. I got libpng14_14.dll from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages.html.
Thanks again.
Joachim meint
Thanks, Lalit. Currently I am updating the guide, and the section on libpng, which I took out some months ago, will come back in. So thanks again for reminding me!
Joachim meint
did so.
Joachim meint
The new version has arrived. Problems with setting up file types for Emacs in Windows 7 without admin rights should be past, since I threw out
ftype
andassoc
and replaced it by entries to the registry. Another plus: the guide has become smaller again.Please let me know if something remains unclear. Thanks!
Pavel meint
Hi there Joachim:
Thank you very much for the detailed guideline! I am starting with LaTex and you made my life easier while getting everything set for it. I just want to let you know that something went wrong in your directions for installing LibPNG, you forgot to write the last part of the paragraph including name of the two binary files (libpng3.dll, libpng12.dll) and the path for extracting them (C:\Programme(x86)\emacs\bin), which are available in you German guideline.
Best regards,
Joachim meint
Oh, thanks, so I got to update the English version. Thank you!
Joachim meint
Thanks again, Pavel, all set.
Tamal meint
Only giving thanks will be nothing. Any how thank you a billion …this is great.
Joachim meint
Thank you!
Chris Grafikkarte meint
Finally a Installationsguide for Latex that worked. Thank you so much!
Joachim meint
Thanks, nice to hear!
Daniel meint
Wow, danke für diese ausführliche Beschreibung Joachim! Genau danach habe ich überall gesucht! Frohe Festtage 🙂
Joachim meint
Danke! Ebenfalls frohe Weihnacht, Daniel!
Jin meint
Thanks! First entry in google search! Very practical and useful.
You might want to mention that “C-x” in Emacs means “Ctrl+x” etc..
Joachim meint
Thanks, Jin! The meaning Ctrl-X for C-X is mentioned in the footnote, but you are right, maybe it would be better to inline all the footnotes in the text.
Sif meint
Thanks,
This pages have made my day 🙂
Joachim meint
Great, that was the intention!
Wayne meint
I am very interested to give auctex a try. Since I have been using Texstudio, Winedt for a while, I am so confused to customize emacs+auctex. I hope you can help me out:
I use latex+dvi+ps+pdf+pdfviewer routine in Texstudio and Winedt. But it seems quite difficult to set such a routine in emacs+auctex.
I saw some tips to configure latex+dvi+ps+pdf. But after the pdf file is generated by ps2pdf, I can not find a simple way to open the pdf file.
The only way I know is to switch to PDF mode and use VIEW to open the pdf file. It is not very convenient, because I can bundle all the commands to a key in texstudio.
Do you have any idea how to define or add a function to open a pdf file under latex mode without switching to PDF mode?
Thanks,
Wayne
Joachim meint
Yes, you can do this, but I would not advise to immediately start fiddling around with macro definitions in TeX. So far I never faced the necessity to implement new macros in AucTeX, as I use a simple trick to get around the close-compile-reopen cycle: for instant preview in PDF mode, I use GSview to display the PDF files. GSview does not lock the files, and so I can compile and immediately get the result in the existing window without reopening. And, even more imporant: without any hacks. Try it!
So why do you need the latex+dvi+ps+pdf thing in the editor? Why does Postscript not suffice for Preview? Simply use GSview as previewer, it will save you the ps2pdf step while you are working on the document. I would only then convert to PDF when it’s finished.
Wayne meint
I have just tried your tricks. It works well! And the sumatra PDF unlocks pdf file as well.
As I said, I am used to latex+dvi+ps+pdf+pdfviewer routine in texstudio, so I think emacs+auctex can also do that and it’s said that emacs+auctex is highly customizable. If that is possible, I would like to know. But as you suggested, ps is already enough for preview. I think I have to get used to it.
BTW, I have another question about the preview fuction. As I use psfrag to add some math on the .eps figures, the auctex preview cannot display the modified figures correctly. Is there any trick to avoid this?
Joachim meint
Yes, psfrag: since it uses an extra script to replace the strings (at least it did when I last used it some years ago), this behavior is not implemented in the standard preview-latex functionality. If this is a show-stopper for you, you might want to contact the authors via their mailing list and ask about.
Wayne meint
I have another question now. Do you know where I can find other useful extensions for auctex, like auto completion and others?
Joachim meint
Wayne, I highly advise to read the AucTeX intro. AucTeX comes with all sorts of keyboard shortcuts that are to make your writing faster and are inline with Emacs’ philosophy of editing. There might be experimental branches of Emacs/AucTeX for command completion, but so far I have not seen it.
Wayne meint
I am still trying to add a “pdfviewer” command which looks like
(add-to-list ‘TeX-command-list
(list “pdfviewer” “sumatraPDF %s.pdf”
‘TeX-run-command nil t))
Emacs can fine sumatraPDF. But it looks that the option %s.pdf is wrong. With that, Emacs tries the command sumatraPDF “filename”.pdf instead of sumatraPDF filename.pdf. With this extra “”, sumatraPDF cannot find the right file name.
I also tried %o, but in Latex-Mode, %o means filename.dvi by default.
Maybe you know something that can help me out here. There should be an option that represents filename.pdf. But I have no idea what it is and how to find it.
Thanks,
Wayne
Joachim meint
Have you checked the documentation or Stack Exchange?
Wayne meint
Thank you for your hints. But those links are not useful.
Emacs+Auctex is very powerful, but at this stage, it’s very difficult for me to customize it.
Joachim meint
Yes, you are right, it’s difficult in the beginning. And yes, the power of Emacs+AucTeX comes with exactly that price of difficulty.
Jeff meint
Yes, it seems not easier for newer to emacs.
But once you used to it, you will love it.
About Emacs + SumatraPDF, I have a batch file for you!
http://www.ai.soc.i.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~shi/files/Emacs_SumatraPDF.bat
http://www.ai.soc.i.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~shi/latex/emacs4ls.html
Wish you have fun!
Wayne meint
Hi Joachim,
I came across another “little” issue that I cannot find some math symbols in the latex-math mode. Auctex provides a long list of math symbols, but still some symbols are not there. As you know, Winedt as well as Texstudio has a rich math menu. One can probably find the most symbols in those sub-menus.
How do you find and input extra math symbols in auctex?
Joachim meint
Wayne, you got to enter math mode by the keyboard shortcut
C-c ~
. For general refefence, I would like to refer you to the AucTeX manual.chiara meint
Hello!
thanks for the tutorial!I have a problem…I cannot preview a document in pdf. When I try to do it, it says
‘pdflatex’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,operable program or batch file.
Preview-LaTeX exited as expected with code 1 at Tue Jul 24 13:39:11
LaTeX: LaTeX found no preview images
I have tried to install everything twice but it didn’t change. Can it have something to do with GSview/Ghostscript or with the EPS printer? Because there I had some problems
As per the first, I run the installation of GSView after Ghostscript but I could not find the place where to put the program group (and I have no idea where I can find the program group of Ghostscript)
As per the second, as instructions are in German I have not done it yet.
Thanks in advance for the help!!
Joachim meint
Hey Chiara, did you check whether you can call pdflatex from the command line (Windows Start->Run->”cmd”)? If not, then something with your LaTeX distribution is wrong.
chiara meint
Hello,
Thanks. I went to cmd and wrote “pdflatex” and it says that: ‘pdflatex’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,operable program or batch file.
I dowloaded and installed the complete version of MikTex 2.9. Shall I install it again? Or do I need to modify something? Or to install the 2.8 version maybe?
And if I do so, shall I uninstall all the other packages in order to install all in the right sequence?
Thanks in advance!
chiara
Joachim meint
It seems that the installer did not add the executables to the search path of your Windows system. Just run the installer again and watch out for something like “add to path”.
chiara meint
Hello! Thanks for the suggestion. I re-installed everything again starting with MikTeX and there are some progress…especially, it seems it recognizes pdflatex now. However, I still cannot manage to create a pdf. At first, I thought I didn’t insert the right formatting; so, I dowloaded a template; as it was still not working, I dowloaded the template package for AuCTeX.
So, I open the document, activate pdf mode and then ask to see the preview. It says to press control-c control-l to see compilation results and below you have what appears.
Can you help me, please?
THanks a lot!!!
chiara
Running `Preview-LaTeX’ on `TEMPLATE.tex.tpl’ with “pdflatex “\nonstopmode\nofiles\PassOptionsToPackage{active,tightpage,auctex}{preview}\AtBeginDocument{\ifx\ifPreview\undefined\RequirePackage[displaymath,floats,graphics,textmath,sections,footnotes]{preview}[2004/11/05]\fi}” “\input” “TEMPLATE.tex.tpl.tex””
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.4-1.40.13 (MiKTeX 2.9)
entering extended mode
LaTeX2e
Babel […] loaded.
No auxiliary output files.
! I can’t find file `TEMPLATE.tex.tpl.tex’.
…2004/11/05]\fi} \input TEMPLATE.tex.tpl.tex
Please type another input file name
! Emergency stop.
…2004/11/05]\fi} \input TEMPLATE.tex.tpl.tex
! ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!
Transcript written on texput.log.
Preview-LaTeX exited as expected with code 1 at Thu Aug 02 13:05:02
LaTeX: LaTeX found no preview images
Joachim meint
Chiara, what are you trying to achieve? And how does the document look like?
a) You want to compile a document.
b) You want to get a preview within Emacs.
c) You have formulas, graphics or symbols in your document.
What is the template package for AuCTeX? Never heard of this before.
chiara meint
Hello Joachim,
I am so sorry I am asking you so many questions…..
what I’d like to do with emacs is writing my PhD thesis (with graphs, formulas and references).
This is the first time I ever use LaTeX, so what I was trying to see was what a .tex doc looks like in pdf (and how to transform it).
I used a template article(template in the sense that it has already commands like begin/ end document and the various sections)and I wanted to check that I installed everything properly. So I just opened a .tex document and tried to preview it in pdf: first I switched in pdf mode and then asked to preview (C-c C-t C-p, then C-c C-p C-d.). Emacs then asks me to type C-c C-l for results. And then it appears what I copied above.
Maybe, I am just doing the wrong thing and everything is installed correclty…but I don’t know…
The template package is Emacs-Template
Thanks a lot for your patience and help!!!
chiara
Joachim meint
No problem. Now I understand what you are trying to achieve: You don’t want to create a »preview« as done with C-c C-p C-d, what you want is simply to compile the document. This can be done with C-c C-c, after that, your output PDF will be available for viewing – again C-c C-c.
chiara meint
It workkksssssssss!!!!Thaaaaanks!!!!!! With C-c C-c twice it told me that it was an undefined command, but I modified a bit my .emacs (with things that I am not totally understanding yet, but hopefully I will in the future! 🙂 ) and I set .pdf as a default with a .tex
Thanks again for this wonderful and very useful blog!!!!
chiara
Roy Genis meint
Ich habe jetzt etwa ein Dutzend Latex-Programme unter Windows 7 installiert. Kein einziges funktioniert. Und dieses hier läßt sich noch nicht mal installieren. Windows 7 ist der letzte Mist. Was unter Windows XP noch ohne Probleme funktioniert, funktioniert unter Windows 7 gar nicht mahr. Es läßt sich überhaupt kein PDF-File mehr generieren. Unter Windows 7 geht gar nichts mehr.
Joachim meint
Welches ist denn “dieses hier”?
Eugen meint
Great tutorial! I was able to configure the Emacs+Auctex system thanks to you !
I wonder how did you figure out so many steps in this installation!
Joachim Schlosser meint
Thank you!
Jeff meint
Thank you for your guide!
Based on your works, I have prepared an installation package for the someone, who wants to try it under windows 7.
http://www.ai.soc.i.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~shi/latex/emacs4ls.html
Just wants to say thank you!
Joachim Schlosser meint
De nada!
Jason meint
I’m having trouble getting the Emacs configuration steps to work correctly.
I created the .emacs file in my ~\HOME\ directory and then went to “File-> Visit New File”… here I do not see the LaTex, Preview or Ref entries.
Also, when I added in the step for the (server-start) line, I get a “directory is unsafe” error.
I attempted to fix the issue using this walkthrough, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5233041/emacs-and-the-server-unsafe-error, but that didn’t work.
Thirdly, where should I create the Registry Key as mentioned later in the tutorial? (that is, when in regedit, under which directory do I create the new key?)
Thank you! I’m looking forward to hearing back…
Joachim Schlosser meint
So do I understand correctly:
You edited ~/.emacs and added all the lines? And then, when you edit a .tex file, there are no LaTeX menu entries?
Could you please check whether you properly did set the HOME environment variable? It seems that this has not taken place, and so Windows assumes c:\
And that, of course, is an unsafe place.
On the registry file: if you use the download file, it automatically creates the key at the right spot.
Does that help?
Jason meint
I had to create the ~/.emacs file… and then I “copy-pasted” the code you had listed in to that file.
As far as the regestry key goes, I’m using Firefox. It opens the file in a new tab when clicking on it… i’ll see if there’s another way to download the file.
Joachim Schlosser meint
Good, so you now have the LaTeX major mode running?
For downloading such a file, right click and select “save link as”.
Jason meint
Yes, I was able to download the registry key and edit it like in step 3.5.
And yes, the major mode of Emacs is running… but I don’t have the additional options like listed in the AUCTEX + RefTEX section. Those don’t appear in my Emacs menu. The .emacs file is listed in my ~\HOME directory.
What’s interesting is that even though the .emacs file exists, when first opening Emacs via the Windows start menu and putting in the command C-x C-f, the “Find file:” defaults to something other than the \HOME directory… in this case my “C:\Windows\System32” directory…
Joachim Schlosser meint
We’re making progress. Please open a command window, type
echo %HOME%
and see whether it gives you the place you want to. If not, please go to the installation tutorial section on setting up the HOME environment variable.
Jason meint
Yes, that command “echo %HOME%” shows the correct path.
Jason meint
But, I’m still not seeing the correct listings in the menu…
bob meint
I don’t understand how to get the Auctex precompiled package. All links I have found online go to a zip file that contains nothing except a single file, the doc, including this page.
So confused. 🙁
Joachim Schlosser meint
What URL did you try?
Jake meint
Hi Joachim,
Thanks for the tutorial. I’m having the same problem as Chiara in the comments above, namely not being able to preview a document and use Preview-LaTeX. I tried using C-c C-p C-d on a sample .tex file which gave me the following:
Running `Preview-LaTeX’ on `samplefile’ with “latex “\nonstopmode\nofiles\PassOptionsToPackage{active,tightpage,auctex}{preview}\AtBeginDocument{\ifx\ifPreview\undefined\RequirePackage[displaymath,floats,graphics,textmath,sections,footnotes]{preview}[2004/11/05]\fi}” “\input” “samplefile.tex””
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.5-1.40.14 (TeX Live 2013/W32TeX)
restricted \write18 enabled.
entering extended mode
LaTeX2e
Babel and hyphenation patterns for 78 languages loaded.
No auxiliary output files.
(./samplefile.tex (c:/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/article.cls
Document Class: article 2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX document class
(c:/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/size10.clo)) (./samplefile.aux)
(c:/Program Files (x86)/emacs-24.3/site-lisp/auctex/latex/preview.sty
(c:/Program Files (x86)/emacs-24.3/site-lisp/auctex/latex/prtightpage.def)
(c:/Program Files (x86)/emacs-24.3/site-lisp/auctex/latex/prauctex.def
No auxiliary output files.
(c:/Program Files (x86)/emacs-24.3/site-lisp/auctex/latex/prauctex.cfg))
(c:/Program Files (x86)/emacs-24.3/site-lisp/auctex/latex/prfootnotes.def)
Preview: Fontsize 10pt
)
! Preview: Snippet 1 started.
l.89 example, $
2x^3 – 1 = 5$ is typed between dollar signs as
Preview: Tightpage -32891 -32891 32891 32891
! Preview: Snippet 1 ended.(533465+54613×3326398).
l.89 example, $2x^3 – 1 = 5$
is typed between dollar signs as
[1]
! Preview: Snippet 2 started.
l.91 $
\lim_{N \to \infty} \sum_{k=1}^N f(t_k) \Delta t$.
! Preview: Snippet 2 ended.(642987+196611×6591481).
[…]
(see the transcript file for additional information)
Output written on samplefile.dvi (4 pages, 2520 bytes).
Transcript written on samplefile.log.
Preview-LaTeX exited as expected with code 1 at Mon Jan 6 03:17:54
LaTeX: LaTeX found no preview images
I also tried to compile the document as a PDF (instead of previewing) using C-c C-c, which resulted in Emacs saying it is an undefined command.
One more question: I got zlib1.dll for zlib version 1.2.8 but I can’t find a .dll file for libpng version 1.6.8; do you know where I can find this?
Thanks in advance for the help!
Joachim Schlosser meint
Did you check the Preview LaTeX FAQ? What did you try so far? Does the document compile from command line?
Jake meint
Yes, I checked the FAQ. I tried to check what I was using by running preview on circ.tex. I had some issues though:
1. I used http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/download-for-windows.html to download “auctex-11.87-e24.2-msw.zip” which I merged with my emacs folder as you mentioned in your instructions. However, I couldn’t find circ.tex using that zip file.
2. I went back to http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/download-for-other.html to download the zip file which did contain the circ.tex file and opened it on emacs. I ran preview-latex on it by using C-c C-p C-d. It gave me a warning that said there were undefined references and also said
Preview-LaTeX exited as expected with code 1 at Wed Jan 8 13:32:13
LaTeX: preview-image-type setting ‘png unsupported by this Emacs
It outputted a dvi file but when I opened it using TeXLive’s dviout viewer, it didn’t have much on it.
Sorry, what do you mean by “Does the document compile from command line?”
Joachim Schlosser meint
Please re-read+execute the section on libpng. Something likely went wrong.
Joachim Schlosser meint
It looks like you were not downloading the correct file, which might have happened because the literature list of this page recently was corrupted. Sorry for that, come back now please, as it is fixed meanwhile.
Jake meint
Thanks for all the help Joachim. I wasn’t sure if this guide was supposed to have links or not so I didn’t bring it up.
I think it’s working now, although I still sometimes get the message : “LaTeX found no preview images”. I think this may be due to something I’m doing, however.
I have one more question (sorry for all the questions). When I added the Emacs registry file and changed the name of the directory, I still get an error message after double clicking on a .tex file which says “C:\Program Files (x86)\emacs-24.3\bin\emacsclientw.exe: error executing alternate editor ‘C:\Program Files (x86)\emacs-24.3\bin\runemacs.exe'”. This doesn’t happen if I already have Emacs open.
masoud meint
tank you very much.
ihave a qustion:
what means this error.
! Fatal fontspec error: “cannot-use-pdftex”!! The fontspec package requires either XeTeX or LuaTeX to function.!! You must change your typesetting engine to, e.g., “xelatex” or “lualatex”! instead of plain “latex” or “pdflatex”.!! See the fontspec documentation for further information.!! For immediate help type H .!……………………………………….. }
Joachim Schlosser meint
Did you check http://tex.stackexchange.com/ for possible answers on that?
Sean Shepherd meint
Danke vielmals! Dieser Artikel hat mir wirklich geholfen. =)
Jake meint
Thanks for the guide! I was able to set everything up with no issues. One quick comment: at the end of 3.4 it seems to say path variables are supposed to be separated by a colon, when I think it should be semicolon. Again, thanks for the help!
Antworten
Joachim Schlosser meint
Thank you for the note, you are right. To be fixed in next iteration.
Ronald meint
You can use Long Path Tool to solve the problem of filename or extension is too long . It is very useful to solve such type of problem.