WinShell Installation Following these 3 steps [plus 2 optional] will lead to a working LATEX environment. -> LATEX package A LATEX package is required. There are two common ones: MiKTeX: http://www.miktex.org/ TeXLive: http://www.texlive.org/ These packages can also be found at the different TEX communities: ftp://ftp.dante.de/ Germany ftp://ftp.tex.ac.uk/ England ftp://ctan.tug.org/ USA The LATEX packages are located at: /pub/tex/systems/win32/ -> PDF viewer A PDF viewer has to be installed to view .pdf documents. There are several possibilities, e.g. with Foxit Reader, GSViewer, Adobe Reader or Sumatra PDF: Sumatra PDF: http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/ Foxit Reader: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php GSView: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/index.html Adobe Reader: http://www.adobe.com/ Sumatra PDF supports SyncTeX which allows forward and inverse search in .pdf documents. -> PostScript viewer [optional] A PostScript viewer is optional and not necessary if the focus is on creating .pdf documents. To view the PostScript files install PostScript and the GSviewer: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/index.html -> WinShell WinShell comes as a zip file and as a complete setup program. Only ONE is needed! Zip file: Extract the zip file to the directory of your choice and start WinShell.exe Setup program: The setup program copies all the WinShell files to a specific directory, e.g. C:\Program Files\WinShell. Registry entries are made for the .tex and the .wsp files. When WinShell starts for the first time, the following files will be created in a directory depending on the OS (Operating System) version you are running: WinShellMacros.bmp WinShellUserTools.bmp WinShell.ini WinShell.macros WinShellDict.txt WinShell.bibtex_fields WinShell.bibtex_types By default, WinShell tries to find the executable files by searching the registry. The LATEX binary path should be added to the environment variable PATH in the autoexec.bat (depending on the OS version). That is why WinShell should be installed in the last stage of the LATEX installation procedure. -> SpellChecker [optional] For spell checking download a dictionary from http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Dictionaries and copy it to the Dictionaries folder in the WinShell folder, e.g. C:\Program Files\WinShell\Dictionaries