Welcome to the world of TeX!

TeX is a text-editing tool which allows you to produce beautifully typeset
mathematics. This is a program which greatly predates Windows and other
MicroSoft products, so if all you've ever used before is MS Word or 
something similar, you may find that there is a steep learning curve, but
if you intend to be producing mathematical documents all your life, it is
to your advantage to learn TeX.

In this document I will discuss the installation of two TeX programs which
are on this  CD : the TeXNiC Center, and MikTeX. I apologize in advance if
I mess up the details since I don't use Windows much.


The TeXNiC Center provides a framework for those who like pull-down menus
and other things on-screen which will guide them through the process of
producing a TeX document. Personally I don't use this but you may find it
very helpful. To install it, simply open up the CD on your computer; you'll
find just one program there -- click on it. I opted for the "normal"
installation, without any icons on the desktop, and with the programs
installed in   \Program Files\TeXNiCcenter\  .  Installation is pretty fast.
You're not done though; you still need  MikTeX (see below).

There are some TeXNiC Center options you might want to tinker with. The 
default procedure is to take a TeX or LaTeX file and produce something called
a ``DVI'' file. There are reasons to prefer this but practically speaking I 
would recommend that you opt to produce  ``PDF'' files since you probably 
already have a reader for those files on your computer (likely Adobe's 
Acrobat reader). Also, if you don't choose MikTeX's default directories
below, you'll need to inform TXC of your decisions (Build -> Define Output
Profiles), and you may need to inform TXC of the location of its own
directories (Tools -> Options -> DIrectories).


The other program here is MikTeX. It's very large and can handle just about
anything you might ever want to type: for instance, not only can it easily 
print Greek letters, but it can handle correct hyphenation in French and
knows that Hebrew is written from right to left. This is probably all I
would use, but then, I already know how to use TeX...

To install MiKTeX, open up the directory (folder) called   setup  on the
CD. There's a file called  install.html  which you can read with your
internet browser which will tell you what to do, but it's pretty easy 
since you can skip all the parts about downloading and jump straight to
installation. Just click on the program ``setup.exe''  in the directory 
``setup''. You will be asked how much of the program you want to install;
the small version will be sufficient. You can choose to make the program
accessible to all users of your computer (under Windows XP). I made a
new folder   C:\Program Files\MikTeX  and installed all the programs into
there (it makes two large folders called  texmf  and  localtexmf).
The setup program will collect some shortcuts into a folder called MikTeX, too.
This installation takes a LONG time.

(Are you security conscious? Do you run  SpyBot on your computer? You should!
During installation, Spybot might complain that a registry entry 
(wextract_cleamup0)  is being changed; that's OK -- I allowed it.)

When you are using TeX you will probably find it handy to have a window
giving you easy access to the relevant files. Click on "My Computer",
then on your C: drive, then burrow down to  
    C:\Program Files\MikTek\texmf\miktek\bin
The cycle of events will use that window, something like this:
 (a) Type up an ordinary text document (say, in Notepad) called, say, proj1 .
 (b) Drag the icon for this document to the icon for  pdftex.exe  or
     pdflatex.exe  as appropriate 
 (c) If there are syntax errors, return to step (a)
 (d) A new icon for  proj1.pdf  should appear in that window; you can
     review it with your  PDF-reader (probably Adobe Acrobat)


Whichever tools you wish to use, your first exercise is to create a
PDF document which simply says,
   Hello, world!
That way you'll know you have everything installed correctly.

To learn more about LaTeX formatting instructions, turn to the next
document.