What is a simple and free LaTeX program for Windows?

[philosophking]

Hey everyone. I wasn't sure where to post this but I thought this was probably the best place.

I need to find just a simple program that does LaTeX. Obviously it would be best if it was free :). I did a google search on it and wasn't able to find what I wanted, really. Basically, I want to be able to have a program where I input some LaTeX code and get back what it looks like in the program. Thank you very much for your help.

 

[so-crates]

LaTeX is built on top of TeX. You can get a distribution of TeX which includes LaTeX from http://www.tug.org/.

I just started using TeX, and found it to be well, a PITA. If you try to deviate from their predefined styles, you will encounter much difficulty. For example, try http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=changemargin. . Doing this in Word or OO is few mouse clicks. For typesetting software, why shouldn't this be easier? Like a \margin{} command?

 

[Edgardo]

This is for Windows:
http://www.miktex.org/setup.html

This is the FAQ to Miktex: http://www.miktex.org/faq/
read especially: http://www.miktex.org/faq/basics.html

In addition, you will need an editor, like this one:
http://www.winedt.com/

Open a textfile, put the latex coding (for example formulas) and save it as "document.tex"
This tells the text editor (for example WinEdt) that it is a Latex file.


Nice introduction to Latex codes:
http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwilkins/LaTeXPrimer/