Do you need to write your first thesis paper or do you want your publication published in a famous journal?

So LaTeX is for you. LaTeX is a document preparation system for high-quality typesetting based on Donald E. Knuth’s TeX typesetting language or certain extensions. It is most often used for medium-to-large technical or scientific documents but it can be used for almost any form of publishing.

Well, definitely *NIX systems have built-in latex support, but in windows you need to set it up for yourself. As few monthes ago I have started writting my first thesis paper using latex and for some reason I have used windows system, I need to setup latex environment in windows. Definitely a annoying, time consuming task, So I have decided to share it

I am going to describe it step by step, please follow these steps as described, its important. I am assuming you have Windows XP or later versions and you have administrative privilege.

Step 1:: Setting Up Environment

• Right-click on the “My computer” icon and choose Properties. Select the “Advanced” tab.Then click on “Environment Variables”.
• Create a “user variable” called “DICTDIR” with value “c:\usr\local\lib“. [ To create a new user variable, just hit "New" under "User variables for <System User Name> or to edit an existing one just hit Edit ]
• Create a “user variable” called “HOME” with value “c:\“
• Create a “System variable” under “System variables” called “Path” with the value c:\program files\emacs\bin;c:\program files\MiKTeX 2.7\miktex\bin;c:\program files\ghostgum\ghostview\gsview\;c:\usr\local\bin;c:\program files\ghostgum\gs\gs8.51\lib;c:\program files\ghostgum\gs\gs8.51\bin [There is a huge possibility that this variable is already there. In that case, just append the value]
• A restart of your system may be required.
• Run command prompt and type “set” to check if all these variables with their required values are set.

Step 2:: Required Software

• Download latest version of Emacsfrom here. Direct link: emacs-22.3-bin-i386.zip
• Download latest version of MikTeXfrom here. Direct link: basic-miktex-2.7.3164.exe
• Download latest version of Ghostscript from here. Direct link: gs863w32.exe
• Download latest version of GSview from here. Direct link: gsv49w32.exe
• Download latest version of AUCTeX from here. Direct link: auctex-11.85-e22.3-msw.zip
• Download .emacs from here

Step 3::Installation

• Put the .emacs file [you will get it after unzipping emacs.zip file] in C: [or your predefined HOME]
• As Local TexMF Tree, create a directory named “Local TeX Files” in C: [or your predefined HOME]
• Unzip emacs-22.3-bin-i386.zip to c:\program files\ . Rename the c:\program files\emacs-22.3 directory to c:\program files\emac. Run the file c:\program files\emacs\bin\addpm.exe.
• Unzip auctex-11.85-e22.3-msw.zip to c:\program files\emacs\site-lisp.  Rename c:\program files\emacs\site-lisp\auctex-11.85-e22 to c:\program files\emacs\site-lisp\auctex.
• Run gs863w32.exe. Choose c:\program files\ghostgum\gs as installation directory. Accept everything else.
• Run gsv49w32.exe. Choose c:\program files\ghostgum\ghostview as installation directory. Accept everything else.
• Run basic-miktex-2.7.3164.exe. When prompted for “Path to installation folder”, choose c:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.7. When prompted for “Create local TEXMF tree”, choose c:\Local TeX Files as “Path to root folder”. Accept everything else.

Step 4:: Opening Emacs in Latex Mode

• Type M-x latex-mode. As soon as you hit “Enter” after writing the command, you will notice “Command” and “LaTeX” menus.

Step 5:: Compiling Latex Files in Emacs

• Press C-c C-c <Return> to run latex.
• Press C-c C-l to view results of the compilation
• Press C-c C-c <Return> to run latex again
• Press C-c C-c <Return> to run latex again, again
• Press C-c C-c <Return> to run View. It will take a while to create fonts etc. the first time.
• Press C-c C-c FILE <Return> <Return> to run dvips (Note that the command is FILE and not Dvips as one might expect)
• Press C-c C-c Print <Return> <Return> to run GSview (Also somewhat misleading name)
• If you want to print the document, do it from GSview.

A million dollar secret, when you asked to do the following, use your brain

• C-c C-c = Hold CTRL while pressing c twice
• C-c C-l = Hold CTRL while pressing c, release c, While holding CTRL, press l (“ell”), release both
• M-x = Hold ALT while pressing x

And last but not the least, download Basic Latex Commands. This pdf file will help you to learn basic latex commands.

So start writting your thesis

But surely you can overcome this limitation.

When you download something from internet you get two links, one for the content you are going to download which we will call ‘URL’ or ‘download link’ and the other one is the ‘referrer link’ which is often the origin of requesting the file. Now for a definite page on a definite site, the referrer link is always same, but the download link changes based the download method the site uses.

To overcome the download limit, you have to use any download manager. A good choice would be Free Download Manager or Flashget. Both of them are free, easy to use and full of features.

First browse to the page from where you wish to download a file which is imposed a download time limitation. start downloading the file as you do in all cases. Now when the time is about exceed its limit, then browse the page once again. Save the URL of the page, it is your referrer link. Now click on the file link or start download icon or what ever you get in your case. When the download start, save the download link. If you have installed Free download manager or Flashget and their integration is enabled in your browser, a ADD URL dialoag box will open. from thet box just save the URL or download link.

Now back to the old download link again. If you are downloading the file, pause it. open the download item’s properties, you will get a dialogue box. Replace both the later saved URL and download link with the existing one. Click OK and resume download again.

I am using this trick successfully with flashget and free download manager. But I think, this method will work for all download managers and those sites allow downloading using download manager.

The reason behind the success of this trick is nothing but download managers normally work in append mode. When they download something, they search for a pre-existing complete / incomplete file. If the previous [assuming the file already exists and incomplete] and current file’s referrer links are the same, they assume them as same file and instead of opening a new file, they just start downloading from the last of the previous file and append the download content to the previous file.

Thanks to Rakib, my extra-ordinary genious classmate, who first brought this issue to my mind.

So what’s the reason behind this?

WWW [short form of World Wide Web] is not really a useful thing on internet. It work like a subdomain, where all your documents, HTML and other files reside which will be publicly viewable. This is what Wikipedia says about it..

The letters “www” are commonly found at the beginning of Web addresses because of the long-standing practice of naming Internet hosts (servers) according to the services they provide. So for example, the host name for a Web server is often “www”; for an FTP server, “ftp”; and for a USENET news server, “news” or “nntp” (after the news protocol NNTP). These host names appear as DNS subdomain names, as in “www.example.com”.

As a matter of fact, use of the www subdomain is redundant and time consuming to communicate. The internet, media, and society are all better off without it.

So the current web administrators are practicing the no www thing. But as people are used to use the www, so they keep the both settings in their server. Some of the admins redirect all the traffic to www.example-domain.com like Google do when some of them redirect every thing to example-domain.com. I will go with the later one, it should be the standard. Even Google crawlers like the no-www address.

So if you want to make your default address example-domain.com and want to redirect www.example-domain.com to example-domain.com, so that you can catch everyone’s traffic when they hit on your site, just open .htaccess file in your root directory [assuming you are using apache httpd] and write following lines.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.domain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

There is an organisation named No-www.org working on making internet www free Check them.

To validate your domain if it supports no-www, please use this link : http://no-www.org/verify.php.

• More secured
• More personal
• Easier to use
• Improved performance

Read the full list of features here. Download it from FTP or HTTP mirror, or directly from here.

• After downlaoding an ISO from any source, you must validate the SH1SUM or MD5SUM which one is required in your case to verify the security and integrity of your ISO.
• You can manually mount the ISO image to check its content when you are in Linux using the code

  su -c 'mount -o loop -t iso9660 <isofilename> <mountpoint>

• You can use VMware Player to boot your ISO image, even you can install it as a virtual OS in Linux. With this free software, you can not only verify the image but you can also test the installation without changing your current installation of Linux. Download it from here.

Some useful links about the topic:

• http://fedoraproject.org/en/verify
• http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-install-ubuntu-linux-from-usb-stick.html
• http://en.opensuse.org/Download_Help

With this app, you can post via Facebook to your blog. Your posts will appear both in Facebook and in your blog. Your friends will be notified by the mini-feed when there is a new post. You can view the stats of your blog directly in Facebook and can explore other friends blogs having the same app installed in their Facebook account.

To install the app, just point your browser to http://apps.facebook.com/wordpress-com/.

So lets start now……………….

It was Directory Printer. This is what they have told about the tool on their site:

No more fumbling with My Computer or Windows Explorer, wishing you could print information about all your files. Karen’s Directory Printer can print the name of every file on a drive, along with the file’s size, date and time of last modification, and attributes (Read-Only, Hidden, System and Archive)! And now, the list of files can be sorted by name, size, date created, date last modified, or date of last access.

And I found out every bits are true. Using it was really easy and over all its FREE!

This is the screen shot of the main window of Karen’s Directory Print -

You may visit their site to download the tool. The direct link to download is here.