Software Collection, Department of Mathematics, University of York
Release 3 2003/09/19

The most up-to-date information about this CD can be found on the WWW at http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~spe1/cd/

Installation instructions are immediately after the following:

IMPORTANT NOTICES

I have assembled this CD in the hope that it will be useful, but neither I nor the Department of Mathematics can accept any responsibility for its operation.

The programs on this CD are from a variety of sources and are distributed under a variety of licenses, but they are all freely distributable for non-commercial purposes. Any charge levied by the Department of Mathematics is to cover duplication costs only; you are not being charged for the software. You are free to copy this CD or use it to install the software it contains on any number of computers, subject to the licenses governing each piece of software.

This CD has been assembled and tested under Windows 98SE and Windows 2000. I expect it to work under 95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000 and XP but this has not been extensively tested.

Please read the likely problems section before reporting problems, and please note also that in many cases I have included software at the suggestion of a colleague and know nothing about it myself!

Simon Eveson
spe1@york.ac.uk

Contents of the CD

Installation: Generalities

If you have autorun enabled, on inserting the CD you should see an Explorer window called "maths_cd" showing the contents of the top level of the CD (it might be hidden behind this window; if it's not there, open My Computer, right-click on your CD or DVD drive and click on Explore). Files and folders mentioned below are in this window unless otherwise stated.

Since almost nobody will want to install all of this stuff, and most of these programs have their own installation wizards, I haven't supplied a single, overarching installation tool: you'll need to install individually the bits you want. However, I have provided two scripts which run existing installers consecutively (and in the right order!): one for GhostScript/GhostView and one for the whole TeX setup.

I generally say "don't change the default settings" below. Obviously you can change them to reconfigure things, but if you want to do this then make sure you change them all consistently, and don't expect much help if it doesn't work! One hint: the extra York stuff is normally installed in c:\localtexmf. If you put this somewhere else, you must tell MiKTeX by appropriately setting "local texmf tree" in the MiKTeX installation wizard.

If you have problems with this you might have more success running the installation programs separately: see manual installation below.

Double-click the "setup_ghost" icon to run the two installers in succession, and then follow the instructions. All the defaults are sensible, so just leave them alone. If you have an existing installation of GhostView, you might be asked if you want to uninstall it; say yes. If you're given a list of versions of GhostScript and asked to choose one, choose 8.00.

When it's finished, there will be various Explorer windows and possibly a "Finished" command prompt or MSDOS prompt window; you'll have to close these manually.

TeX and friends: automatic installation

Double-click the "setup_tex" icon and follow the instructions. This one runs four separate installation wizards back to back (GhostScript, GhostView, extra York stuff, MiKTeX), so it goes on a bit; but the defaults are all sensible, so by and large you just have to keep clicking OK and Next until it finishes, with the following exceptions:

1. The installation process might stall after GhostView has been installed. This is because there's a window saying "Installation successful" in which you have to click on Exit before the next installer can run. It might be hidden behind an Explorer window containing GhostScript or GhostView icons, which you can close if it's in the way.
2. In the MiKTeX wizard, if your CD is not drive D: then you'll have to browse for the "local package repository" which you'll find at e.g. z:\miktex-2.3-repository if your CD is drive Z:
3. The MiKTeX wizard will give you the option of "small", "medium" or "total" package set. If you have enough disk space (500Mb), go for "total"; otherwise, choose "small" and install any other bits you need later on (see likely problems below).

Note that MiKTeX can take quite a a while to install. I timed it on one machine at 5 minutes before the progress meters even started moving, then a further 15 to complete the installation.

When it's all over, you'll find an icon on the desktop called "LaTeX via MicroEMACS" and also a group in the start menu. You'll also find a MiKTeX group in the start menu, but under normal circumstances you won't need to use this.

Restart the computer before you try to use TeX.

If you have problems with this you might have more success running the installation programs separately: see manual installation below.

R, Octave, Dev-C++ 5 (beta), arc, winbugs: automatic installation

Installation wizards for all these are in the "distributions" folder: open it and double-click on the appropriate file.

In each case, just follow the instructions to install the software and some combination of start menu and desktop shortcuts (or possibly not: arc failed to install a shortcut on my office PC, but that's probably because it doesn't understand the user profiles stuff in Windows 2000 Pro).

Dev-C++ 4: installation

Since version 5 is a beta release, you might prefer to run 4. You'll need to unzip the file devcpp4.zip in the "distributions" folder to a temporary folder somewhere and run setup.exe. There's an unzipper in the "tools" folder (wiz502xN.exe) if you haven't got one. I'm assuming anyone in the market for a C compiler doesn't need any more detailed instructions than this!

Gnuplot: installation

This doesn't seem to come with an installation wizard. You'll need to unzip the file gp373w32.zip in the "distributions" folder to an appropriate folder and sort out shortcuts etc. by hand. See also the documentation in gpdoc.zip. There's an unzipper in the "tools" folder (wiz502xN.exe) if you haven't got one.

1. Open the "distributions" folder on the CD. Eveything referred to below is in this folder.
2. (GhostScript installation) In the "distributions" folder, double-click on gs800w32.exe and follow the on-screen instructions. If you want to live on the edge, try the beta-testing gs810w32.exe instead.
3. (GhostView installation) Double-click on gsv44w32 and follow the instructions.
4. (York Extras) Drag the "localtexmf" folder from the top level of the CD to the top level of your C: drive.
5. (MiKTeX installation) Back in the "distributions" folder, double-slick on setup_miktex.exe and follow the instructions, The loacl package repository is z:\miktex-2.3-repository where Z: is the drive letter of your CD or DVD drive.
6. (Set up a desktop shortcut to MicroEMACS) Right-click on the desktop (the background window) then click on New and Shortcut. In the Command Line box enter

   c:\localtexmf\microemacs\mewin.exe @c:\localtexmf\microemacs\texmenu.cmd
   

   and click on Next (you can cut and paste: highlight the above line, press Ctrl-C, click in the Command Line box, press Ctrl-V). Type in a suitable name like "TeX via MicroEMACS" and click on Finish. The default startup directory isn't very sensible in this case, so you might want to change it. To do this, right-click on the MicroEMACS icon on the desktop, click on Properties and in the Start In box type c:\ as a neutral starting point, or the name of the folder you keep your TeX files in. You can set up start menu shortcuts to the same target, of course.
7. Restart the system before you try to use TeX.

All the commands on the TeX menu give "Macro failed ..." errors.

The most common cause of this is trying to run TeX immediately after installation, without restarting.

The MiKTeX installer (or some other program) complains about missing DLLs or missing exports.

This is caused by missing or out of date DLLs, usually on old W95 systems. Look in the tools folder on the CD for a file called vcredist_enu. Double-click it and follow the instructions.

The previewer takes a long time to start up.

This is normal the first few times you use it but startup time improves as it builds the resources (fonts, mostly) you most commonly use.

GhostView asks "which version of GhostScript do you want to use"

This is normal the first time you use it. Choose 8.00 (probably the only version on offer), unless you installed the beta-testing 8.10

GhostView prints rubbish.

Your printer settings are probably wrong. In the bottom left hand corner of the Print dialog there's a section called Print Method. The most reliable setting is Windows GDI Printer (others may be better or faster; read the documentation if you want to experiment.)

MicroEMACS doesn't start or is missing the TeX menu, or you haven't got a shortcut to MicroEMACS at all.

Delete the shortcut (if you've got it) and recreate it manually following the manual installation instructions above, making sure you get the command line exactly right (cut and paste is the most reliable method).

TeX can't find pstricks or rsfs or some other package.

If you went for the minimal installation of MiKTeX, you're missing various useful things. Proceed as follows:

1. Put the source CD in your CD or DVD drive.
2. Click on Start|Programs|MiKTeX|MiKTeX package manager.
3. The first time you do this, you need to click on Database|Site Wizard then on Local Folder and browse to z:\MiKTeX-2.3-repository (or whatever your CD drive is). It should remember this for subsequent uses.
4. In the list of packages on display, click on the names of the ones you want to install. The list is very long, so you might find it useful to enter a filename, name or keyword in the boxes at the top of the screen and click on Filter.
5. Click on Task|Install and OK, then Close when it's finished.

If this doesn't work, try Start|Programs|MiKTeX|MiKTeX options and click on "Refresh Now" in the General tab.

yap (the previewer) complains about your printer having the wrong resolution (dots per inch)

Details are too complicated to go into here. To avoid this problem, use "Print PostScript" instead of "Print" or use GhostView instead of yap.

The "Preview or print" commands in the MicroEMACS TeX menu give an error window saying "Macro failed ..." but other commands on the TeX menu work.

The most likely cause is an incompatibility between different versions of Windows. Try the following: shut down MicroEMACS, open the "tools" folder on the CD and double-click on:

force_9x_me	if you have Windows 95/98/ME
bludgeon_9x_me	if force_9x_me didn't work
force_2k_xp	if you have Windows 2000/XP
force_exec	if nothing else works
restore_auto	to revert to the installation defaults.

Then start MicroEMACS again and see if it works. Note that this will not work unless you have installed the York extra stuff in the default location.