Run a library from a folder?

Question

I'm struggling to get Tikz to run on my University terminal, for some as of yet unknown reason, and I don't have the permissions to install Tikz. I've emailed the 'computer help people' asking them to fix it, but that could take anywhere between a day and a month.

I found this question which has gone someway to answering my question, namely this answer. The answer points here and it looks like I want this sort of syntax:

\import{/base/otherfolder/million_other_folders}{oneOfTheFiles}

But it seems like this is going to take one line for every file I want, and Tikz is very large.

Am I doing this right? How can I use Tikz without 'installing' it properly?

#Edit the first: Using kpsepath tex | sed 's/:/\n/g' I found that ~/texmf/tex exists and is accessible to me. Running tree on the base dir the folders I downloaded look like so, how much of this needs to go into ~/texmf/tex ?

base
|-- doc
|   `-- generic
|-- source
|   `-- latex
`-- tex
    |-- context
    |-- generic
    |-- latex
    `-- plain

#Edit the second:

I'm getting conflicting results from kpsepath tex | sed 's/:/\n/g'|sed '/!!/d' (I've removed the results appended by !! as I think they are folders I don't have permission for.) The issue is I don't think the files it finds don't exist. It may just be my universities set up of this terminal. Here is a screencap:

enter image description here

you can add a path to the tex search engine. But usually ~/.texmf or ~/texmf are enabled as default. So try place a style in those folders (restrain to use TDS compliant folder structure) and see if you can load it. You may need to run a rehash in that folder. — nickpapior, Feb 09 '12 at 12:30
you can type kpsepath tex | sed 's/:/\n/g to get an overview of directories that TeX looks in. If an entry ends in /// it is searched recursively. As @zeroth mentioned ~/texmf is usually in there, in my case it's actually ~/texmf/tex. — Roelof Spijker, Feb 09 '12 at 12:53
And in case you are not using TeXLive: Also with miktex there must be at least one local texmf-tree where you have writing rights (tex needs e.g. one such tree to store tfm-files generated on the fly), so you always can install tikz in such a local tree. Which local tree is the best depends on your installation. — Ulrike Fischer, Feb 09 '12 at 13:00
@wh1t3 How much of what I have needs to go into ~/texmf/tex ? — AncientSwordRage, Feb 09 '12 at 14:11
Well, you can put everything in there, really. TeX searches through it, so you can't really put too much in there (version conflicts aside). It is a good idea to keep it structured though. You can have the same structure under ~texmf that you now have under base. The main thing for compilation will be the tex folder though, since that contains the actual packages and code required. The doc and source folders aren't required, you can have them though if you want to keep the docs and source in your local tree. — Roelof Spijker, Feb 09 '12 at 14:16
Please don't use backticks for blocks of code. Just indent them by 4 spaces so that they get higlighted properly. — Thorsten, Feb 09 '12 at 14:26
The directories you get from kpsepath don't necessarilly exist. You can just create them and then put the files in there. — Roelof Spijker, Feb 09 '12 at 14:55
@wh1t3 I've now go this sort of error: ! Undefined control sequence. \pgfsetplottension ...ttension {\pgf@sys@tonumber \pgf@x } l.104 \pgfsetplottension{0.5} But I'm using \usepackage{...} for pgf and tikz. What am I missing? — AncientSwordRage, Feb 09 '12 at 16:53
You only need to do \usepackage{tikz}, not both. I don't know why you are getting that error, perhaps you should post your code. — Roelof Spijker, Feb 09 '12 at 18:24
@wh1t3 I did some googling and it turns out my version of latex is outdated, and being unable to update (uni computer) I've had to abandon this for now. I'll post code later if I still have the same issue at home. — AncientSwordRage, Feb 09 '12 at 18:39

Run a library from a folder?

0 Answers0