What a mathematician needs for a happy work? A TeX system and a good text editor. Also, PostScript and PDF viewers. Then, one has to have tools for handling compressed files and for exchanging files with remote machines.
For me, a Russian, it is also important to have my computer and software properly "russified".
Under Windows NT/95/98, in my humble opinion, the best choice is MiKTeX as a TeX system, with WinEdt as a shell and text editor. MiKTeX is a freeware 32-bit native implementation of TeX and its relatives. It includes tools for generating PostScript and PDF files. WinEdt is a powerful customizable editor and a graphic shell which is originally designed to serve as a graphic interface for MiKTeX. It is shareware. Freeware Ghostscript/Ghostview exists for all platforms. After you install all this, you basically work in WinEdt as a graphic shell which allows you to run TeX, view dvi files, convert them to PS and run Ghostview (with many other things).
There are discussion groups for WinEdt and for MiKTeX.
After you installed MiKTeX and Ghostview, you might have to tell to WinEdt where the programs reside. (Normally it has some idea, but it may be different from where you actually put them.) As for TeX, LaTeX and BiBTeX, there should be no problems as far as Windows knows the path to them. (WinEdt does not use absolute path in these cases.) If there are problems, check PATH variable in autoexec.bat in the case of Windows 95/98. For Windows NT, autoexec.bat is irrelevant. For setting PATH variable, go to Start>Control Panel>System>Environment. Be sure that PATH corresponds to your actual path to TeX related executables.
As for Ghostview and other utilities that you would like to launch from WinEdt, in the main menu go to Options > Menu setup, find there Accessories in the list which will appear at the left, open it and find the necessary menu item (i.e., Ghostview). Check (at the field Utility) that the path to the program is correct. (Various "%N", "%B", etc., are WinEdt variables for files and directories like base WinEdt directory. You can figure them out easily.)
Using Russian alphabet in WinEdt. You can change the font by going to Options>Fonts and pick the right font. Important remark: you may have a peculiar behaviour of WinEdt (some Russian characters can be regarded as control characters) unless the Custom Alphabet is set correctly. Go to Options>Settings and check the list of letters. Be sure that, e.g., the letters "Ch ch" (×÷) and "Yo yo" (¨¸) are there.
During the installation MiKTeX automatically creates a directory with the standard name localtexmf at the root of the installation drive (if you have not changed the name and path during installation). I strongly advise not to ignore this directory but rather use it for storing all things like new LaTeX packages that you download from the web or whatever you add to your TeX system. The point is very simple: this directory won't be overwritten during future upgrades of MiKTeX. Remark: the subfolder tree in localtexmf should follow the pattern of the MiKTeX directory.
Configuration of MiKTeX is controlled by the file miktex.ini. There can be two such files: global (with all standard settings) and local (with your own settings, which override the standard settings). I strongly advise to create the local file -- this is not automatic. If you won't do it and edit the global file instead, then you will lose your settings at the next upgrade.
miktex\config of the MiKTeX installation directory to the directory localtexmf\miktex\config.
e in response to TeX error message, uncomment the line with WinEdt and comment the line with Notepad (which is the default editor). Warning: check if the path shown there fits the actual path to winedt.exe.
initexmf --personal=C:\localtexmf\miktex\config\miktex.ini
From my own experience, one has to have in mind that MiKTeX is very memory-consuming. It is very easy to run into "TeX ran out of virtual memory..." error message unless you have plenty of free space on the hard disk where Windows keep their swap file. Experts say that MiKTeX requires 32 M of total memory (RAM plus virtual) while working. Notice that other programs that you run in parallel with MiKTeX also consume RAM, so having disk space for the virtual memory is essential for smooth work.
Normally under Windows 98/NT you should not worry about this, as the standard fonts are now Unicode-based and include Cyrillic characters.
One thing is that you might want to use the complete set of Russian characters (which includes i-with-a-dot (Unicode 1030,1110), yat' (Unicode 1122,1123), fita/theta (Unicode 1138,1139) and izhitsa (Unicode 1140,1141). You can install the so-called Royal Russian fonts for this. Unfortunately, there are still problems with the support for the complete Russian alphabet. E.g., the "standard" Unicode fonts do not contain the complete set of characters in the Cyrillic range; for non-Unicode fonts there is no universal agreement about the position of the "lacking" characters - one project of the standard is here. You can find a discussion and further information for Windows at the site of Stt Cyril and Methodius Gymnasium in San Francisco and for Unix at Serge Vinitsky's personal page. (See also the conference of "Pechatny Dvor" and the page of Nicholai & Elena Andrushchenko, both pages in Russian.)
Windows NT:
\usepackage[cp1251]{inputenc}
\usepackage[english,russian]{babel}
\inputencoding{cp1251}
(This is if you are using the Windows encoding (CP-1251).)
<HEAD> <TITLE>Your page title</TITLE> <META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=Windows-1251"> </HEAD>(If you are using CP-1251. Put KOI-8 if you are using this encoding. Notice, by the way, that WinEdt currently does not support Unicode.)
Ted Voronov. 21 January (3 February) 2008