Here, I will describe how to install Imaxima.el on Windows XP with Win32 compiled applications such as NTEmacs, MiKTeX, Ghostscript, and the Win32 binary distribution of Maxima with GCL.

Here is the complete list of what you are going to install:

1. NTEmacs23, MiKTeX2.7, Ghostscript8.63, and Maxima 5.17.0.
   

Step by step instructions

1) MiKTeX 2.7

"MiKTeX (pronounced mick-tech) is an up-to-date implementation of TeX and related programs for Windows (all current variants) on x86 systems." It's official web site is www.miktex.org. You can move to http://www.miktex.org/2.7/Setup.aspx and click "Download "Basic MiKTeX 2.7" Installer" on that page. You may save the installer exe file anywhere (such as your desktop). Installation starts by double-clicking it. You need to install it in the default place.

2) GPL Ghostscript 8.63

You can visit http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/ for Ghostscript. To download the latest Ghostscript 8.63 compiled for Windows, you move to GPL Ghostscript 8.63. In the middle of the page is there a link to the sourceforge download page http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/ghostscript/, which you will click to move there. In the download page, choose gs863w32.exe.

You can double click the gs863w32.exe file to start the installation. You need to install it in the default place.

3) Latest Maxima (5.17.0 as of writing)

Next to install is the Maxima. You should move to http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=4933&package_id=4960&release_id=621838, which is the Sourceforge download page for the Maxima. You can choose maxima-5.17.0.exe for the download of Windows pre-compiled binary installer.

Double click the maxima-5.16.3.exe file to start the installation. You need to install it in the default place.

4) NTEmacs 23

NTEmacs is nothing more or less than the standard GNU Emacs. The same source code can be compiled for Win32 environment, resulting the NTEmacs.

The very official precompiled release can be obained from http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/. However, the distributed precompiled binary does NOT support image features, hence not good enough for imaxima.

Thanks to the http://ntemacs.sourceforge.net/ project, you can obtain the precompiled binary installer for ntemacs23, which is based on GNU Emacs 23.0. This binary installation package contains everything to support features of GNU Emacs. Please go to the web page and choose "ntemacs23-bin-20070819.exe" for download. You may follow the instructions by the installer to install it in the default place.

Start ntemacs, visiting the file ~/.emacs, add the line

(load "c:/Program Files/Maxima-5.17.0/share/maxima/5.17.0/emacs/setup-imaxima-imath.el")

and quit the ntemacs.

Next time you run ntemacs, you can do:

1. M-x imaxima
   

If this is your first time using imaxima, MikTeX may ask if you want to add mh package from CTAN. Please proceed with yes for installation of mh package. This may take some time, so be patient.

Then, you will see the initial screen of Maxima 5.17.0. Enjoy!!