[Tex/LaTex] How to download and use LaTeX?

miktex

Explain what programs (based around LaTeX) I need to download (Windows) in order to write up a mathematical document (must be able to do basic things like type mathematical symbols, insert equation labels, make changes to font colours and sizes etc.)

There are many variants of programs, which I am confused about. If possible, explain each one: LaTeX, MiKTeX, TexMaker, TeXworks, LyX etc.

Best Answer

The following might be incorrect, imprecise and plain false:

LaTeX A collection of macros (format) of/for TeX. It is the most used format out there.

MiKTeX A LaTeX distribution (meaning a collection of packages) used on Windows PCs.

Texmaker An editor specifically made for TeX and friends. It has some nice features to help people write there stuff

TeXworks See Texmaker

LyX An editor which hides much of LaTeX from the user. Think of it as LaTeX for Word-people.

Google A handy search engine to look up stuff. All of the above could be easily found by a minute search (and most likely would be more precise and correct). If you like another more you might use this one.

Edit

Most of what I say stands as an explanation of why this is happening, but it looks like something more involved is going on from the error you provide:

Error: Command crashed:

pdflatex.exe -synctex=1 -interaction=nonstopmode "texstudio_qc1464.tex"

Compile from the command line (just run the above) and look for any strange error messages it outputs.

[Tex/LaTex] Problems compiling arXiv LaTeX source files

Try adding the .tex extension back on to the file. I'm not sure why arXiv would remove it, but many editors will assume that it's there when running compile sequences.

To see what I mean, compare the compilation for pdfLaTeX and BibTeX:

$ pdflatex myfile.tex
$ bibtex myfile

Note that bibtex doesn't need the file extension since it also looks at the files generated by the LaTeX run. Editors like TeXworks (and others, no doubt) will run these sequences for you automatically, but this requires that it knows where the extension is so that it can remove it. When there is no extension to remove, ambiguities will arise:

$ pdflatex myfile
$ bibtex myfile

It's likely that one of these programs picked up on the 'wrong' myfile, causing the error that you saw. (For example, take a look inside the aux file; running pdflatex directly on this file would certainly throw an error.)

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[Tex/LaTex] Good at using TeX, bad at installing it

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[Tex/LaTex] Problems compiling arXiv LaTeX source files

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