Several TEXMF:s

[Eli Zaretskii]

On Mon, 16 Nov 1998, Jonas Bofjall wrote:

> So, I'd like to configure TeX to prefer files under C:/TEMP/TEX and
> otherwise use J:/TEX which is the networked one. This is no problem for
> TEXINPUTS but TEXMF doesn't seem to like to have several trees to choose
> from. Is it possible to do this?

If your TEXMF variable mentions several directories, you need to set
TEXMFMAIN to one (and only one) of them, the one which includes the web2c
directory and texmf.cnf file.  Did you do that?  If not, you will see all
kinds of weird error messages and failures. 

> Where can I find documentation on the different environment variables used
> in (fp)tex and how they can be used?

The Kpathsea docs describes them.  Additional valuable info is inside 
texmf.cnf in the comments.

> Is my idea with caching at all sane?

I don't understand why do you call it ``caching''.  AFAIK, Kpathsea 
functions look in the directories mentioned by TEXMF in the order they 
are named there.  So if the local disk is the first one, it will be 
searched first.  If that is what you mean by ``caching'', then I think it 
should work (given a correct setup, see above).

Usually, it makes sense to point VARTEXFONTS to the local disk, so that 
font files generated by the programs go to your local storage.  After 
some time, the programs would never access networked drives, except for 
new fonts and rarely-used files.