[texworks] Still an un resolved problem

[Karl Berry]

    whet \input foo.bar resulted in a foo.bar.tex lookup as well as a 
    foo.bar one

That is true for foo.bar, but not true for (say) foo.tex or foo.sty.
And it is necessary, because lots of people in the world write documents
with names like foo.bar.tex, and then run tex foo.bar and expect it to
work.  Or have images like foo.bar.eps.  Etc.

Here is what I wrote in texmf.cnf as an attempt at explanation.

% If this option is set to true, `tex a.b' will look first for a.b.tex
% (within each path element), and then for a.b, i.e., we try standard
% extensions first.  If this is false, we first look for a.b and then
% a.b.tex, i.e., we try the name as-is first.
%
% Both names are always tried; the difference is the order in which they
% are tried.  The setting applies to all searches, not just .tex.
%
% This setting only affects names being looked up which *already* have
% an extension.  A name without an extension (e.g., `tex story') will
% always have an extension added first.
%
% The default is true, because we already avoid adding the standard
% extension(s) in the usual cases.  E.g., babel.sty will only look for
% babel.sty, not babel.sty.tex, regardless of this setting.

try_std_extension_first = t


     (a noticeable slow down on network)

Maybe on your network.  It's a non-issue for almost everyone, afaik.
Feel free to set try_std_extension_first=f for ConTeXt if you haven't
already.

Best,
karl