3 Binary distribution

3.1 What to get ?

Currently, this 0.4 version is not yet packaged for distribution. There is a new installer under construction called TeXSetup.exe dedicated to the TeX-Live and to fpTeX that will have interesting features :

• XML/RDF descriptions of the packages,
• database of installed packages,
• live upgrade of installed packages though the internet.

The first release of this new setup program is available on the TeX-Live 5a, 5b and 5c CD-ROMs. It is not yet completed, but future versions are expected soon.

3.2 How to install it ?

Jusr run TeXSetup.exe from your temporary directory. Next follow the instructions. Here are some hints:

Welcome Page:

the description of the available packages is read, it can take time on a slow machine. Check the “Quick Install” if you want to proceed without any further question; TeX will be installed with the recommended setup, and all default options.

Root Page:

Choose a root for your installation, c:\Local\TeX is proposed by default, but you can change it because you will need a lot of disk space: more than 300Mb for a full installation, and beware to the cluster size on FAT partitions that will make the package to appear even bigger – see section 2.4.

You can use a path with embedded `space' character like c:\ProgramFiles\TeX instead the default c:\Local\TeX: TeX will understand it from this version, but it is safer to avoid this⁶.

This path name will become you <root> directory.

The “Browse” facility won't be available on older platforms on which it is not implemented. The disk space requirements take your cluster size in account.

Setup Type Page

Choose any setup type you want. You will be able to rerun TeXSetup to add packages later on if needed. You can use you CD-ROM as source of files that you did not install at first. You can even choose a minimalist setup where everything runs from the CD-ROM.

“Source Files” and “Documentation Files” refer mostly to LaTeX packages. You will have the general and fpTeX specific documentation even if you do not check the box.

You can choose to do the setup only for the current user or for all users, assuming you are running on an Administrator account under Windows NT. It is recommended to run the setup from an Administrator account.

Directories Page

Only if you choosed a “Custom” setup type, you will be presented with this page.

You have the opportunity to custimize your texmf trees:

• The local texmf tree, which is designated by the variable $TEXMFLOCAL and is assigned the default value of <root>/texmf-local. It is intended to store your site local macros and style files.
• The extra texmf tree, which is designated by the variable $TEXMFEXTRA and is empty by default. It is intended to access some other texmf tree, like the TeX-Live CD-ROM for example;
• The home texmf tree, which is designated by the variable $HOMETEXMF and is assigned the default value of $HOME/texmf. It is meaningful only under Windows NT, where users have a $HOME. Usually, Windows 9x users do not have a $HOME, so should leave this place empty.
• the variable texmf tree, which is designated by the variable $VARTEXMF and is assignated the default value of <root>/texmf-var. It will hold all configuration information. The configuration files will be copied there at setup time, and it is intended that the forthcoming TeXConfig uses this place too.
• the variable fonts texmf tree, which is designated by the variable $VARTEXFONTS and is assignated the default value of <root>/texmf-var/fonnts. It will hold all of the locally generated font files.

These locations can be edited manually by looking for their variables names in the file texmf-var/web2c/texmf.cnf.

Package Selection Page

Only if you choosed a “Custom” setup type, you will be presented with this page.

You are presented with a tree view of the collections and packages. You must choose which one you want to install and at which level. Clicking on the global set, or on any collection makes the selection rotate through “Basic”, “Recommended”, “Full” and “None”. Clicking on an individual package make it selected or unselected. If your selection for a collection does not fit the predefined schemes, the collection is in the “Custom” state. You can click again on the collection to make it enter one of the predefined states.

Supplementary Page

You will be offered to install packages that either have restricted licence, either are not strictly speaking part of TeX, but are useful.

Review Your Settings Page

is your last chance to backup and change your selection.

File Copy Page

The files will be copied to your hard disk. If you asked for packages available from the internet, they will be downloaded and installed. If you ask for a CD-ROM setup type, this stage will be very quick; if you asked for a full setup type, it might be quite long.

Configuration Page

Some of the packages installed need that their configuration files be edited. For most of them, the TeXSetup program will do it for you.

Finish or Reboot Page

Depending if you are running Windows 9x or Windows NT, you may be asked to reboot or not. It should not be needed under Windows NT, and I had prefer to avoid it. But the documented method to propagate environments variable into the system seems to fail sometimes. So it might be safer to reboot anyway, even under Windows NT.

A number of items will have appeared under the Start->Programs->TeXLive menu.

All relevant information about the installation will be logged in a (somewhat) huge file. This log file is located:

• either under the directory config at the root of your installation if you choose to install on your hard disk,
• in the Windows TEMP directory if you choose to run from CD-ROM.

In case of problems during the installation, thanks to read this file, and if you are unable to locate the source of your problems, please send an email to Fabrice.Popineau@supelec.fr describing precisely your configuration and problems. Don't send the log file at first, but keep it handy and zip it if it is requested.

3.3 Uninstalling and other options

Uninstallation is handled by a shortcut available from the Start->Programs->TeXLive menu.

The TeXSetup program has a number of other interesting options. You can get the list by running :

Here is the description :

--automatic-reboot

reboot without waiting user confirmation once installation is over;

--dry-run

do nothing, just log everything that will be done without this option;

--quick

use the recommended installation and default directories, ask nothing up to rebooting;

--net-download

enable to download components whith restricted licenses from the net: you need to have an available network connection and some of the packages are huge;

--source-directory<dir>

this is by default the parent directory of the one from where TeXSetup is run, if you ever upgrade TeXSetup, you won't be able to copy the new version to your CD-ROM, so you will need to use this option;

--installation-directory<dir>

this is the root of your installation, all files will be copied under this location. The default value is c:\Local\TeX;

--with-source

copy the source files for TeX packages;

--with-doc

copy documentation files for TeX packages. Beware: this is only documentation about specific packages, geenral documentation will be installed anyway;

--program-folder<folder>

the name of the folder under which you will find the menus;

--add-package<pkg>

this is used to add a specific package after a first (not full) installation;

--uninstall

this option will remove anything TeX related coming from the CD-ROM, which means there can be files left if you added style files or format files, and also that supplementary tools will not be removed⁷...

--help

this option opens up a box with the list of options.

3.4 Supplementary tools

3.4.1 Text editors

A number of editors are offered to drive TeX:

GNU Emacs

The one true editor – at least from the point of view of Richard Stallman. The fine point with it is that it comes completely preconfigured with AUC-TeX, and for ISpell use. Available from the CD-ROM.

XEmacs

If you have a really good internet connection, you can try to download this one (around 40Mb). This is much fancier than the GNU version.

WinEdt

A full featured, shareware text editor to download from the internet (2.5Mb).

PFE

A small text editor, easy to use and to program. Available on the CD-ROM.

WinShell

See http://www.winshell.de for details. Available from the CD-ROM.

TeXShell

A small, very basic text editor for TeX.

3.4.2 Other tools

There are two sets of graphics converters offered:

ImageMagick

from http://www.wizards.dupont.com/cristy/ImageMagick.html, to be downloaded from the internet,

NetPBM

which is an old collection of programs to manipulate and convert image files of various formats (available on the CD-ROM).

Those converters are usable by themselves, but they are also needed by TeX4ht, the TeX to HTML converter.

The French package, due to its restricted license is only available through Internet download.

The Postscript utilities, best known as PSUtils by A. Duggan are available on the CD-ROM too.

The free versions of Ghostscript (5.50) and Ghostview (2.7) are available from the CD-ROM. The non-free versions (Ghostscript 6.01 and Ghostview 3.0) are available from the Internet.

Last a Perl package (version 5.6, 22Mb) is available for download.

3.5 Testing the installation

A valuable tool to test the installation now is the program kpsewhich.

As a first step, you should check if Web2C correctly identifies the location of your texmf tree. Open a command prompt window and type

The answer should be the location of your texmf trees (e.g. c:/Local/TeX/texmf if you unpacked the archive files as in the example above–note that the answer is a Unix style path, i.e. the DOS style \\ is substituted by /; you don't have to worry about this).

Given a root directory prefix (c:/Local/TeX was my compile-time default), we have default locations as follows:

This layout is identical to the standard one for teTeX under Unix and follows the TDS specification.

You can always check if kpathsea finds a specific file by typing

A typical example would be