First of all, using the MacTeX distribution of TeX Live, you should set any paths in your editor to point to /Library/TeX/texbin, not to the particular folder for the distribution. This is so that subsequent updates will not require you to reset these paths. /Library/TeX/texbin will always point to the binaries of the currently selected distribution. (MacTeX allows you to have multiple years of TeXLive coexisting on the same machine, and selectable by a System Preferences control panel.)
The acrotex bundle requires installation via a .ins file. Unzip the acrotex.zip folder and put it in ~/Library/texmf/tex/latex/.
You can do this part from the Finder by using the Go To Folder item in the Go menu and then entering ~/Library/texmf/tex/latex. (If you are using OS 10.7 or later, you will have to do get to it this way, since the users Library is now hidden by default.)
If that folder is not found, you will need to create one by opening a terminal window and typing the following. This creates a tex/latex folder to place the .sty and .cls files that you will generate plus an acrotex folder for the documentation.
mkdir -p ~/Library/texmf/tex/latex
mkdir -p ~/Library/texmf/doc/tex/latex/acrotex
(Or you can create the folders in the finder, but the above is faster.)
Once you've copied the acrotex folder to ~/Library/texmf/tex/latex,
do the following from a Terminal window:
cd ~/Library/texmf/tex/latex/acrotex
latex acrotex.ins
This should generate all of the appropriate .sty and .cls files.
To make the documentation findable by texdoc, do the following:
cp doc/* ~/Library/texmf/doc/tex/latex/acrotex
Now everything should work.
/use/local/texlive...should only effect the executables that get run, and not the packages that get loaded. – Peter Grill Sep 27 '11 at 21:08/usr/texbin. Local additions go into~/Library/texmf. If you don't already have such a directory, you need to create one. See How to have local package override default package for the basic structure. – Alan Munn Sep 27 '11 at 21:10