Application: proTeXt Editor
Category: Office
Description: From the publisher's website:
proTeXt aims to be an easy-to-install TeX distribution for Windows, based on MiKTeX.
proTeXt Packaged:
Download proTeXt Portable 3.1.1 Dev Test 11 (178MB download / 543MB installed)
(MD5: df46c26e5f997ab6e149598fa245786c)
proTeXt Component-wise:
The packaged versions of MiKTeX and TeXstudio Plus have been moved to their own pages, since I am retiring the monolithic proTeXt package. Click here for MiKTeX and here for TeXstudio Plus. The applications will still have this page as the homepage in the Appinfo.ini file until the next update; updating to change a single text string is somewhat useless.
Note: From release 3.1.1 Dev Test 7 onward, proTeXt will use Ghostscript Portable instead of packaging it internally. Please make sure that you have this installed if you want full functionality.
Release Notes:
See all release notes at the SourceForge project page.
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If anybody decides to check out this app, please give me feedback on its usage. Possibly if someone can do a Regshot or make sure it leaves nothing in the profile. Both of my computers have the regular applications installed so it's difficult for me to test these things. Thanks in advance to any intrepid beta testers.
UPDATE: I've had all negative reviews on sourceforge with no actual feedback. So please, PLEASE tell me what your issues are.
In the portableapps menu under office it shows "[PAF Error - Missing Name]" instead of "proTeXt" or something like that and it shows it twice.
Anyway the program itself works perfect. *thumbs up*
Hmm... That's weird. The previous versions showed up right. I'll see what I can do about that.
UPDATE: I think I fixed the error. I'm uploading over the most recent version (since no other changes were made). I haven't tested it myself but I will be soon. Wait a few minutes for the massive installer gets to the Sourceforge mirrors and you should be set to go. BTW, thanks for testing, and I'm glad it's working for you
It's works properly now.
Thanks
I downloaded and ran the installer today. I've never used Regshot before, but I installed that from the PA.c Platform and tried to use it in my test.
First, I installed the Ghostscript Portable package. Then, I ran your installer. I recorded the first regshot after running the proTeXt Portable installer. The "proTeXt Portable" icon showed up in the launcher, and I clicked on it. The MiKTeX portable icon showed up in the tray, and TeXstudio was launched.
I have a fairly fresh install of W7 x64, so to test TeXstudio (I've never used the IDE before), I copied a folder with one of my LaTeX projects to "My Documents" on the C: drive; it's a fairly simple set of slides with pictures and graphs with pdf backgrounds and TeX overlays produced by Octave. I opened my .tex file and clicked "Build & View." Then, MiKTeX asked to download a package, as expected. The rest of the pdfLaTeX compilation went well, and the output looked as expected.
One thing you should note, in the TeXstudio "Open Recent" menu, there were two items already in there: one was blank but the other pointed to a file in a Window's user's directory. If that's a result of your packaging, you might want to remove that from wherever TeXstudio stores that info.
After reviewing the .pdf file, I closed TeXstudio and ran another regshot. There were quite a few keys added and values changed from me plugging in a new USB flash drive and using Paint to save a screenshot. TeXstudio showed up in "MuiCache," which I've read is to be expected, but it did show up in two other places that I don't know much about. These are parts of the lines:
HKU\S-1-[...]\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\LowRegistry\Audio\PolicyConfig\PropertyStore\[...]_0\: "{0.0.0.00000000}.{...}|\Device\[...]\PortableApps\proTeXtPortable\App\proTeXt\TeXstudio\texstudio.exe%b{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}"
and
HKU\S-1-[...]\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.tex\OpenWithList\a: "texstudio.exe"
The "[...]" are redacted strings of numbers or letters I wasn't sure would be safe to share in public, but I hope you get the idea. The second key I assumed would have something to do with the "open with" option in the Explorer context menu, but I couldn't find a reference to TeXstudio after I closed the program and tried to open a .tex file through that dialog.
One more comment, I closed TeXstudio but didn't tell the MiKTeX icon to exit. Later, I launched "proTeXt Portable," and it opened another instance of MiKTeX, so there were two MiKTeX icons in my tray. I'm not sure if that will be a problem, but it would be nice if it checked for MiKTeX already running.
I hope this helped you. Thanks for your work!
Thank you for the very in-depth analysis of my packaged program. I didn't know about the registry artifacts or the Recent documents. I will remove those for the next release. As for the MiKTeX tray icon, I didn't have it close because people may use TeXworks instead of TeXstudio, and if they close TeXstudio before trying to open TeXworks from the menu, the menu would close. Though it is helpful to know that this may not be preferred behavior.
Edit:
I took a look at the two registry keys that were being kept around and I realized that only one of them is of any significance. The "OpenWithList" is the one that I am choosing to do something about because that really shouldn't be there. I'm not sure what the other one does, but I think it doesn't have any particular link to the package.
Edit 2:
Unfortunately, I can't force the tray icon to close, but I can force a single app instance and have the program wait for the tray icon to be closed. When I get this next version compiled, hopefully it's more like the expected behavior.
My comment about the tray icon was just remarking that it was easy to get multiple instances of the MiKTeX icon running without meaning to. I imagine someone who closes and reopens TeXstudio several times and doesn't pay attention to the tray would get several redundant programs running. Any method to prevent that situation would be good, I think.
A new problem has shown up for me: when I try to launch TeXworks from the tray icon, I simply get a Windows 7 crash report. Here is part of the crash info:
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: miktex-texworks.exe
Application Version: 2.9.4535.0
Application Timestamp: 4fc8dc3c
Fault Module Name: MiKTeX209-twluaplugin.dll
Fault Module Version: 2.9.3826.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 4eba52fb
Exception Code: 80000003
Exception Offset: 000e7004
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Yap opens without issue, but the "Command Prompt" shortcut opens a terminal window with the title "C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe", but it only has the flashing cursor in the upper-left corner and doesn't show the splash text or allow me to type a command.
I ran the tray icon from the official MiKTeXPortable download, and that package's tray icon instance opens TeXworks and the command prompt without issue.
I'll be honest, those features weren't heavily tested by me, so thanks for that extra info. I'll try to get them working right for the next version.
...to help test your product. This is something you do in your spare time, so I don't expect perfection. But, I hope that my contribution will get you (close) to perfection quicker than you would on your own, and I look forward to proTeXt Portable being made official, when it's ready.
Turns out that when I used the AppCompactor, it broke a lot of the features including TeXworks. So, when the next version comes out, it's going to be bigger, but it'll work better. Hopefully I can find a compression scheme that works with it.
. . . and was glad to find your recent project. There were a few older attempts at getting MiKTeX in a PA.c format, but those seemed to be abandoned. I also found that there is an official build of portable MiKTeX from its development team, but I wanted to have the PA.c platform organize it for me.
I like your proTeXt package, but I have a suggestion. I think it would be nice if you broke-out the MiKTeX distribution as a separate but dependent package. I willing to try the TeXstudio IDE that's part of proTeXt, but if I don't like it, I would like the option of keeping MiKTeX and using it with Notepadd++ while getting rid of the components I don't want.
Anyway, thanks for your hard work! I'm also looking forward to your work with Media Player Classic Home Cinema, which was my media player of choice before I started using PA.c, and gnuplot, which would be one step closer to having the components for a GNU Octave Portable.
Thanks for the feedback. As of right now, I'm going to continue to package MiKTeX as part of proTeXt mainly because of the other components that I included with the program (Asymptote and gsview) I'm not completely comfortable putting into plugin format (like jPortable) quite yet. If and when that happens, I'll gladly have a proTeXt "package" where you can download TeXstudio, MiKTeX, Asymptote, and gsview separately. Then I could have TeXstudio depend on the other three existing, or something like that. Also, I'm glad you've gotten some use out of 2 of my other projects; it's always nice when something I've done was useful. Can you link me to "GNU Octave"? I might take a shot at it if it relies on other things I've already done.
GNU Octave is a MATLAB compatible(ish) programming language/mathematics package. MATLAB is very popular for DSP and filter design and is used in many other Science and Engineering fields, too. The last couple of years in my EE program, I've been able to switch to using Octave instead of MATLAB.
Octave can use gnuplot for its plotting capabilities. I've never used gnuplot on its own; I always use the Octave functions that are on top of the gnuplot commands.
I usually download a Windows installer for GNU Octave from here: Octave-Forge. Octave-forge provides a Windows compatible Octave binary installation along with hosting many Octave packages that provide functions for symbolic math, statistics, image processing, neural networks, etc.
Looks like an interesting group of programs. I can't see any way to integrate my current gnuplot build into it, but it doesn't look too difficult to make into a portable app. The only problem is that it's pretty big, so if I can get it working, it might be a while before I'm satisfied with the installer. I'll try to keep this particular thread updated as I work on it. If I figure it's too much, I'll say so, etc.
I took your suggestion to break the package into parts and I have co-released an altered version of the original package. I realized that I could create MiKTeX alone and then have a "Plus" package of TeXstudio. So, try it out if you can. This way might suit you more. If I get enough positive feedback on that way of packaging, it might become the normal version. Thanks for that suggestion again.
I've done a few different tests with the updated files, so I'll do separate posts with my procedures and results from each test. My procedure steps and in bold, and if something happened that I didn't expect or if I thought needed clarification, I wrote the text normally.
1st RegShot
Run proTeXtPortable_3.1.1_Dev_Test_9_English.paf.exe
Open proTeXt Portable
Open .tex file from C: My Documents folder
Build and View
Save .tex file
Close TeXStudio
Open TeXworks
Open .tex file
Typeset with pdflatex selected
Make change to .tex file
Typeset again
Close TeXworks
Update MikTeX -> Updated one package and repaired another
Open proTeXt Portable -> dialog asked me to close TeXStudio or MikTeX
Exit MikTeX
Open proTeXt
Close TeXStudio and MikTeX
2nd RegShot
Interesting items from RegShot comparison:
I don't know if these are a problem.
Uninstall proTeXt Portable -> It did not fully uninstall, I refresh the app list and the icon disappears but a file is left:
This happened also when I tried to uninstall Dev Test 7 before beginning this test, but there were more files left at that time:
I had to delete the "proTeXtPortable" directory manually.
I will never cease to be amazed by the information people can give me. I was unaware that TeXworks was QT based. I can take care of that fairly easily in the proTeXt combined and MiKTeX standalone package. As for the uninstall, I've never actually had anyone uninstall it and tell me the results. As far as I know, the uninstall is something that is handled by the platform, not the launcher or installer. Also, I think it just attempts to delete the folder that the program is in, so I'm not sure why it leaves artifacts. Thanks again for the info; it helps make a better app.
I'm glad we were able to catch the Qt issue.
I believe the "Uninstaller" isn't necessary to get rid of programs and any trace they leave behind. The platform seems to be just as happy to allow you to delete the App's folder, and it will catch that the program isn't there anymore. But, I figure it's good to have the uninstall behavior documented.
This is a test of the stand alone MiKTeX package. Thanks for offering this!
1st RegShot
Run MiKTeXPortable_2.9.4250_Dev_Test_1_English.paf.exe
Open MikTeX Portable
Open TeXworks
Open .tex file
Make change to .tex file
Typeset with pdflatex selected
Close TeXworks
Update MikTeX -> "I want to get updated packages from a remote package repository" had an available option for "http://mirror.jmu.edu (last used)" that I don't remember from updating MikTeX in my previous proTeXt test.
Select "Use the nearest package repository"
Update one package and repaired 2 others
Open TeXworks
Check "open recent" -> only my .tex file was in the list
Exit MikTeX
2nd RegShot
Interesting items from RegShot comparison:
Again, I don't know if these are relevent.
I found I was able to open multiple instances of the MikTeX icon.
Uninstall MikTeX Portable -> Again, dialog says it was unable to uninstall and only this file was left over:
Ok, this is my last test to post today
1st RegShot
Run MiKTeXPortable_2.9.4250_Dev_Test_1_English.paf.exe
Run TeXstudioPlusPortable_2.5.1_Dev_Test_1_English.paf.exe
Open TeXstudio Plus Portable
Open .tex file
Build and View
Change .tex file
Build and View -> The MikTeX icon isn't in the tray and TeXstudio is getting the typesetting done
Close TeXstudio
2nd RegShot
This RegShot comparison is interesting in that it didn't have the TrollTech Keys, but from your previous comment, I guess that is because TeXworks is based on Qt and I never ran MikTeX much less TeXworks. There wasn't really anything else of interest in this much smaller RegShot comparison.
Uninstall TeXstudio Plus Portable -> Success
Uninstall MikTeX Portable -> Success, which is unusual, but I never actually launched MikTeX Portable with this install
You are THE most thorough tester I have ever run into. I greatly appreciate your analysis of the apps. Based on what you commented here, I have new versions of MiKTeX and proTeXt bundled up and going. It may take a few minutes for Sourceforge to get them to mirrors (being pretty big and all), but they should directly address the issues you brought forth. Again, thank you so much. You are an amazing person.
Addendum: You also got a shout out for your efforts in both changelogs.
Hey,
I got a problem with your new version. The intern pdf viewer doesn't work. It opens an windows with no content. I don't know whether it's a configuration thing or that you messed up something. External viewer works well. Hope you can fix this. Thanks.
Is the version you're using the combined "ProTeXt" or the individual "MiKTeX" and "TeXstudio Plus" packs?
combined versionThe update set my config to default. I found the right conifg so no problem with your version.I've been mulling around with the idea to discontinue the fully packaged version of proTeXt in lieu of the component-wise version. My reasoning is that TeXstudio updates much more than MiKTeX and is also much smaller. Except that each update of TeXstudio means a complete reinstall of the entire package instead of just the TeXstudio part. So my question to those who will actually comment back is this: do you think it is better to go with just the separate versions or should I continue with the fully packaged version as well?
In my view you should drop the fully package and go on with the seperate versions. Would this lead that the setting would be saved? Everytime I update my settings are gone.
To be honest, I'm not sure what settings you're changing. Though I think I know how to fix whatever settings are getting messed up. It's somewhere in the installer.ini file, and I think I've done it before. So on the next update, I'll try to see what settings would get overwritten.
I said before that I like the separate packages, and you've found another reason that I didn't mention before.
If separate parts of the proTeXt system update with different schedules, I think it is better to have them separate. It saves on download bandwidth, it might save you time when updates need to be packaged, and it allows other projects to build off of some parts like MikTeX and Ghostscript.
Why isn't DirectoryMoveOK set? Isn't moving directories supported?
I don't if this installation of TeXstudio Plus is fully portable, but the .reg file in the Data directory didn't seem to contain any paths so I think it's possible to set this value to "yes".
What I didn't get was where this .reg file came from, since it's not mentioned in the TeXstudioPlusPortable.ini in the Launcher directory.
Can someone shed some light on this?
Anyways, thanks for the great app. I was already using MikTeX Portable, but now I also have an awesome Kile-like editor!
Yes, I set the working directory!
Each particular program has some quirks when interacting with the registry. TeXstudio inherently leaves behind something in the OpenWith for .tex files. MiKTeX has many more remnants due to MiKTeX and some QT elements. I did a quick check, and the registry item is actually mentioned in the .ini file, so I'm not sure why it would be missing in your copy. As for DirectoryMoveOK, I did another quick check and saw that the .ini file does in fact have it in there, so again, not sure why it would be missing in yours. Thanks for the feedback!
Wow, you're right, it does contain that line. It still gave me an error though. Now I know what the error is:
---------------------------
TeXstudio Plus Portable (PortableApps.com Launcher)
---------------------------
Error: invalid value 'true' for [Launch]:DirectoryMoveOK. Please refer to the Manual for valid values.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------
It shouldn't be "true", like in a programming language. It should be "yes". As the documentation states (link in previous post).
Happy to help and thanks for the hard work!
Yes, I set the working directory!
Wow, I really did pull a stupid there. Something I never noticed because I am a 1-directory pony while testing. Thanks for the catch, and it'll be fixed in the next release.
The newest version of proTeXt has been released only in component form. If there is actually a want for the bundled version, I will bundle it. If there is no want for the bundle, I may retire this page in lieu of separate pages for both TeXstudio Plus and MiKTeX. If I don't get feedback, this page is retired, just so you know. Thanks to everyone who's continued to use these programs.
Oh, also, the new versions fix the saved configuration problem that prior versions were having. If you do customize the configuration in any way, I would recommend making a backup of the configuration files then placing them in the folders defined in the launcher.ini files.
Hello,
Version 3.1.8-051917 is out.