[texworks] question on local TEXMFHOME

[Tim Arnold]

On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 10:47 AM, Joseph Wright
<joseph.wright at morningstar2.co.uk> wrote:
> On 04/04/2012 15:42, Tim Arnold wrote:
>> Hi,
>> This isn't a bug, I just have a misunderstanding. I'm on Windows 7,
>> using TeXworks (0.4.3 r.858) and I have a locally written package
>> 'mypackage'.
>> When I give this command in a command window:
>> c:> kpsewhich --var-value=TEXMFHOME
>> I get the response:
>> c:\Users\tim\texmf
>>
>> So I put mypackage.sty in that directory and it is not found when I
>> compile my document in TeXworks.
>>
>> But when I create the correct (?) subdirectories like this:
>>
>> c:\Users\tim\texmf\tex\latex\mypackage
>>
>> and put mypackage.sty in the mypackage subdirectory, it is found when
>> I compile in TeXworks.
>>
>> My question is why the package is not found when I put it at the top
>> level but it is once I create the tree structure.
>>
>> If this is off-topic for the list, I apologize; I'm not sure if this
>> is TeXworks or TeX itself.
>>
>> thanks for any hints,
>>
>> --Tim Arnold
>
> Hello Tim,
>
> This is a TeX question, not a TeXworks one :-)
>
> TeX distributions include a lot of files, and to make searching for them
> easier there is a standard layout: the TDS or 'TeX Directory Structure'.
> Within a TeX tree, only the 'correct' places are checked for the known
> file types. In the case of .sty files, that is inside <texmf>/tex/latex.
> (By convention, this is subdivided by package, but that is not required
> for the search to work.) In a similar way, .bst files have to be inside
> <texmf>/bibtex/bst, and so on.
> --
> Joseph Wright

Hi Joseph,
Thanks for answering my off-topic question anyway!

I see what you mean and that makes sense, I was just confused. The
behavior makes plenty of sense and now I'm happily 'in-the-know'.

thanks,
--Tim