Is it possible to place standalone graphics in subdirectories

Question

When using standalone sub-directories do not seem to work properly.

While

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[subpreambles,mode=buildnew]{standalone} %standalone tikz

\begin{document}
  \includestandalone{standalonepic}
\end{document}

works

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[subpreambles,mode=buildnew]{standalone} %standalone tikz

\begin{document}
  \includestandalone{../fig/MAP/standalonepic}
\end{document}

Will fail. The figure will be inserted in the document but no pdf will be generated. Compilation states:

  Description Resource    Path    Location    Type Graphic
  '../fig/MAP/ray-casting.pdf' could not be
  build.  thesis_main.tex /Thesis/src line 60 Texlipse Build Error

The files are at the fitting locations and the document is produced but no pdf for the figure in the latter case. I like to keep figures separated. Is there a way to do this and use standalone?

I just found out that simple paths like \includestandalone{fig/standalonepic} work fine. More complicated ones (.. or subdirectories are problematic) — Martin, May 06 '12 at 14:46
I'm not sure I understand your folder structure. Why don't you put the standalone files inside of a subfolder that is inside of the folder containing your .tex file? It looks like you are currently trying to go up a directory (from where the .tex file is) and then down into a figure folder (that is on the same level as the folder containing your .tex file). — JohnReed, May 06 '12 at 17:16
@JohnReed: Yeah that's it. I adoptded this structure once and stuck with it but my current workaround is exactly what you suggest. Subfolders (fig/map) would be handy though since I can then keep one figure folder for every chapter, but as I said your suggestion works — Martin, May 06 '12 at 17:27
@JohnReed Can you make your comment a brief answer just for the housekeeping reasons? Thanks. — percusse, May 09 '12 at 23:57
@percusse I understand wanting to have answers to the question being posted as answers, but I really don't think that my comment answers the question (especially since they already know that my suggestion works). It sounds like their problem might possibly be a bug in the standalone package, in which case, somebody with more in-depth knowledge of TeX's internals will need to help. I'm pretty sure that the package author is a mod on this site... — JohnReed, May 10 '12 at 00:24

score 9 · Accepted Answer · edited May 11 '12 at 21:15

Creating files in directories containing .. is prohibited by LaTeX for security reasons. Otherwise a package could rewrite e.g. your ssh login config or something like this. It would still work with the PDF build in the current directory, though. I will try to add some detection for this and to chose a suitable directory.

If you are under Linux try to use symbolic links to your directories. Also, you can set the TEXINPUTS environment variable to the directories with your images: TEXTINPUTS=.:DIR1:DIR2: the .: at the beginning and the trailing : is important. Under Windows use ; instead of :. In this case the PDFs are build in the document directory.

Is it possible to place standalone graphics in subdirectories

1 Answers1

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