(preview-latex.info)Requirements

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B.2 Requirements
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B.2.1 Which version of (X)Emacs is needed?
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See also the table at the end of the section.

   preview-latex nominally requires GNU Emacs with a version of at
least 21.1.  However, Emacs 22 (currently under development) offers
superior performance and wider platform support, and is even now the
recommended platform to use.

   While recent versions of XEmacs 21.4 are supported, doing this in a
satisfactory manner has proven to be difficult due to technical
shortcomings and differing API's which are hard to come by.  If
preview-latex is an important part of your editing workflow, you are
likely to get better results and support by switching to Emacs.  Of
course, you can improve support for your favorite editor by giving
feedback in case you encounter bugs.

B.2.2 Which versions of Ghostscript and AUCTeX are needed?
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We recommend to use GNU or AFPL Ghostscript with a version of at least
7.07.

   preview-latex has been distributed as part of AUCTeX since version
11.80.  If your version of AUCTeX is older than that, or if it does not
contain a working copy of preview-latex, complain to wherever you got
it from.

B.2.3 I have trouble with the display format...
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We recommend keeping the variable `preview-image-type' set to `dvipng'
(if you have it installed) or `png'.  This is the default and can be
set via the Preview/Customize menu.

   All other formats are known to have inconveniences, either in file
size or quality.  There are some Emacs versions around not supporting
PNG; the proper way to deal with that is to complain to your Emacs
provider.  Short of that, checking out PNM or JPEG formats might be a
good way to find out whether the lack of PNG format support might be
the only problem with your Emacs.

B.2.4 For which OS does preview work?
-------------------------------------

It is known to work under the X Window System for Linux and for several
flavors of Unix: we have reports for HP and Solaris.

   There are several development versions of Emacs around for native
MacOS Carbon, and preview-latex is working with them, too.

   With Windows, Cygwin and native ports of XEmacs should work.
preview-latex will not work with any native version 21 of Emacs under
Windows: you need to get a hold of Emacs 22 which is at the time of
this writing not released but available as a developer snapshot.

   The entry "X11/Unix" currently means Linux, Solaris or HP/UX, as
well as the X-specific version for Mac/OSX.

OS             Emacs version   XEmacs version
X11/Unix       21.1            21.4.9
Win9x cygwin   21.3.50?        21.4.8
Win9x native   22.1            21.4.8
MacOSX native  22.1            -