Well, it turns out that setting up a Windows machine to run LaTeX turns out to be a smudge more complicated than I had thought (I'm usually a Mac or Unix person). I want you to learn how to use LaTeX, but I did not intend to bog you down with computer problems. A lot of you have sent me messages saying you were having trouble setting up MiKTeX, so I borrowed one of my husband's computers and installed it myself to see how the process works. What follows is a step-by-step guide to getting it all set up and working. Enjoy!
First, you have to get it downloaded and set up:
LaTeX works like this: you use a text editor (like TextPad) to create a LaTeX document foo.tex --> MiKTeX/LaTeX compiiles the document and makes files foo.aux, foo.log, and foo.dvi --> you view the pretty foo.dvi file in some viewer/previewer (in this case, "yap", which is part of MiKTeX). So to use MiKTeX you need a text editor. Probably the easiest to deal with is TextPad, and you'll need to download it, as follows.
Now you have to create a LaTeX document to work with. You could use the "latexsample.tex" file from the class website/handout, but to keep things simple we will make the simplest LaTeX document in the universe and work with that.
Now you have to ``compile'' the LaTeX document. Right now I'll tell you how to this from the command line, so you know what is going on. Then later I'll show you how to set TextPad up so that it can be done from a menu within the program.
Okay, now that you know how this process works, let's set up TextPad so you can do ``latex'' and ``yap'' right from the TextPad program without explicitly opening the command line like we did above. Luckily for us, my husband is a computer programmer genius, and he not only figured out how to do this, he made you a step-by-step document with screenshots that explains exactly how to set it up.
Your life will be easier if you configure TextPad to color LaTeX source code so that you can easily distinguish comments, commands, et cetera. You don't have to do this, but you will be happier if you do.