How to set up pdftricks using miktex on windows xp

Things you need

• http://www.miktex.org/ Miktex I recommend the full installation
• http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl/ Perl
• This package of pdftricks modified for Miktex by Shujun Li (http://www.hooklee.com)
• http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/index.htm

How I set it up

• Install Ghostscript
• Install Miktex
• Install Perl
• make sure that Perl/bin is in your PATH (under System -> Environment Variables)
• make sure that the Ghostscript bin directory is in your PATH (for me it's C:\gs\gs8.14\bin).
• unzip the above zip file
• copy the localtexmf subdirectories from pdftricks to your miktex localtexmf directory
• copy the texmf subdirectories from pdftricks to your miktex texmf directory
• open a command window on your miktex localtexmf directory and type initexmf -u and hit Enter. Your new files are then being registered. Don't worry if it takes a while. That is normal.
• find the test file under localtexmf/doc/latex/pdftricks/test.tex
• compile it using the -shell-escape command line switch (in TexnicCenter you can set that up at Build->Define Output Profiles... then choose pdftricks and add -shell escape to the command line arguments

Possible Errors

• Bounding boxes are wrong: recheck that ghostscript is in you classpath
• You get many errors compiling your document: recheck that you are using the -shell-escape option for compiling latex