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From the Acrotex installation manual:

"Placement. The ZIP file installs in a folder called acrotex, so place the ZIP file in a directory in the search path of your LATEX system where you want the acrotex folder to reside."

How can I know what this directory should be? I'm on Ubuntu.

Speravir
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Mika H.
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1 Answers1

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Since the acrotex bundle does not ship with TeX Live, it is probably wise to put it in your 'personal' texmf tree. On GNU/Linux OSes, this is probably located at ~/texmf (which is short for /home/<username>/texmf). If you are unsure, you can check with the following command:

kpsewhich --var-value TEXMFHOME

(This returns for me /home/jon/texmf.)

The thing to remember is that your local texmf tree must mimic the system tree in order for things to be found. Thus, most 'local' packages for LaTeX should be put in the appropriate directory, namely:

~/texmf/tex/latex

So, in the case of creating an acrotex directly, you can type:

mkdir -p ~/texmf/tex/latex/acrotex # where -p allows you to create multiple directory levels all in one go

Now you can put the unzipped contents of the acrotex bundle there. However if it comes with documentation, you might want to put the documentation in the corresponding location; so:

mkdir -p ~/texmf/doc/latex/acrotex # try: kpsewhich --var-value TEXDOCS

and copy the docs to that directory.

If you are unsure what the sub-structure of ~/texmf should look like, you can compare the system structure at (for TeX Live 2012):

/usr/local/texlive/2012/texmf-dist

It may also be worth noting that many (though not all: e.g., acrotex) packages are also available in as a .tds.zip, which make it very easy to install at the base of any texmf tree; e.g., in your local tree:

unzip -d ~/texmf/ <package>.tds.zip
jon
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  • Just incase the package author has TeX Directory Structure maintained zip file-package-name.TDS.zip. Where can I find which packages are available as tds.zip? – texenthusiast Apr 06 '13 at 22:31
  • @texenthusiast -- True. I added this as a final point. – jon Apr 07 '13 at 00:16
  • Is there a macro, some package or something different that I can use to include a subfolder relative to my main .tex document to include in the path? This way I could make the compiler look there before looking in the main distribution (e.g. to use an old package version, or to not install a package in for the entire distribution|user|computer). – Erik Mar 18 '15 at 16:28
  • @Erik -- Anything in $TEXMFHOME is searched before $TEXMFLOCAL, which is searched before $TEXMFDIST (these also determine how "local" a file is). How many old package versions do you need? – jon Mar 18 '15 at 16:40
  • @jon - Thanks for your quick comment! I use ShareLaTeX and some of its packages are outdated, which means I can't compile as I'd like (I get errors or incompatibilities). How would I force their compiler to use a newer or missing package (e.g. garamondx is unavailable), without the need to put all files from garamondx.zip in my root dir (next to main.tex) on ShareLaTeX? – Erik Mar 18 '15 at 16:52
  • @jon - It uses its own closed LaTeX distribution (I believe TeX Live, judging from the output log files), in which you cannot change a thing, so have some sort of personal folder per document you create in which you can put any files you like for your docs, e.g. .tex files, figures, bibliography files, (sub)folders to keep things ordered, just like a folder on most OS. You can't touch the distribution, but you can select the compiler ((pdf)LaTeX, XeLaTeX, LuaLaTeX). This means the maintainers are responsible for keeping up-to-date and if some package is missing, you need to upload it yourself. – Erik Mar 18 '15 at 19:56
  • @jon - I'll consider asking a question about it, but first I'll wait fro a reply from the ShareLaTeX devs, whom I have contacted about the issue. With your "dirty hack", do you mean e.g.: \usepackage[<opts>]{/path/to/subfolder/packagename}? – Erik Mar 19 '15 at 08:25
  • @Erik -- Yes, that's the dirty hack. It is not recommended, and I've no idea if it will work for ShareLaTeX. I think you're right, too, to see what they say about your question. (I'm going to delete some of my comments.) – jon Mar 19 '15 at 14:19