Installing LateX (on Windows)

If you have decided or are urged to write documents with LateX, first: congratulations! You definitely made the right choice. Documents created with LateX just look beautiful and it certainly is a very useful soft skill to be at least somewhat versatile in programming in LateX. Yes, programming! LateX is a programming language, that needs to be compiled (translated by your computer) and produces a pdf file as output. This means that working with LateX is not WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) as e.g. Microsoft word. By typing in commands that are a bit similar in structure to html you will rather get what you really mean (WYSIWYM).
Installing LateX is not quite as straight forward as installing other software. You'll have to install several elements separately. First you'll need MiKTeX which acts as a compiler and also provides you with packages. But I will talk about packages in another post.  The second important thing you need is an editor. Since LateX is a programming language, you could basically use the windows notepad, but other editors will provide you with some shortcuts and make life a bit easier. There's a link to an overview of editors on Wikipedia below. I used to use WinEdt which is $40 for students after a trial period. Recently, I have discovered TeXstudio which offers the same (if not more) functionality as WinEdt but is completely free!
Lastly, let me note that this is only one way to work with LateX. If you are very uncomfortable with programming, you might want to work with LyX or maybe Scientific Workplace which are more WYSIWYG.
So, let's go:

1.  Download and install MicTex:  http://miktex.org/
2.  Download and install Ghostscript and Ghostview: http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/ 
3.  Download and install WinEdt or other Editor: 
1. TeXstudio: http://texstudio.sourceforge.net/ 
2. Comparison_of_TeX_editors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_TeX_editors 
   
4. Download Jabref: http://jabref.sourceforge.net/download.php 

Try and run your first document. Every \LateX document has a header (everything above \ begin{document}) and a main part (between \ begin{document} and \ end{document}).

\documentclass{article}
\title{Our first document}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
This is our first LateX document!
\end{document}

Did it work?


Updated: 7/16/16