[texhax] Where to put amslatex package files on a PC?

[Barbara Beeton]

On Fri, 13 Nov 2009, Uwe Lueck wrote:

    Well, this were 2 HTML postings (therefore unreadable for many), the
    second of which said that the problem has been resolved by AMS LaTeX
    support. The first posting said that AMS LaTeX documentation tell users
    to install the files in the "TEXMF" folder (and another advice not
    applying). The poster said he is working with a MiKTeX installation. I
    think MiKTeX recently by default used "miktex" instead of "texmf" for the
    TeX installation tree.  AMS LaTeX documentation should account for
    this. -- Cheers, Uwe.

i'm the person who answered the original
question, and also maintain the ams latex
documentation.

you say that ams latex documentation should
account for changes in the miktex installation.
this is impractical for several reasons:
 - nobody at ams is using miktex, so there is
   otherwise no reason to subscribe to a forum
   in which such changes might be announced.
 - if we managed to keep up with one distribution,
   we would have to do the same for all.  how
   many are there, counting all the different
   unix/linux varieties?  we simply don't have
   the resources to handle this volume.
what we *do* say is that a user should refer to
the instructions for the particular distribution
regarding installation of extra packages.

i was able to go to the miktex site and find
reasonably coherent instructions, although the
answer to the question wasn't in what i thought
were the most obvious places.  (i know from
experience that maintaining a faq isn't trivial,
so i don't mean to knock whoever is doing that
for miktex.)

we are soon undertaking an update of all of
ams-latex, both the document classes and
amsmath.  upgrading the documentation is part
of that effort.  we will continue to offer the
best suggestions that we can, assuming a tds
distribution, but we will continue to be
generic and rely on the various distributors
to clarify the specific requirements of their
systems.
						-- bb