Re: [MiKTeX] Search Path for Graphics

[Hans F. N. <Han...@hi...>]

On Sat, Oct 02, 2004 at 01:46:34PM +0100, Juan Antonio Navarro wrote:
(This was a long message...)

[cutting intro]
>   Now the context of my question... I had been thinking on: what is
> the better place to store graphics for inclusion of latex documents??
> After some thinking of the pro's and con's I have decided that it is
> better, for easy allowing "sharing" of graphics among different
> documents of one author without making multiple copies of the picture
> files, that the best option is to have one specific location to place
> all the graphics available for the author for inclusion in latex
> documents.

( One drawback with use one location is that the filenames have to be 
unique for all documents the user makes.)
 
> And some questions arise then:
> - Is there any way to give latex a path for looking for additional
> files?? I do know about \graphicspath{..} or some similar command
> (provided by graphicx package), also about some parameters that can be
> sent when executing the "latex" command. But I would like (for sake of
> simplicity) do not have to tell the user to add some particular
> commands to his document (except for the minimal and general
> \usepackage{graphicx}) or compile using latex with some particular
> parameters in order to include the pictures.. I am looking for a
> solution that could be achieved modifing some environment variable
> (such as "texinputs" but I think it is deprecated in miktex) or
> modifying some config file.

eTeX/pdfeTeX - the new engines for LaTeX/pdfLaTeX doesn't support the 
TEXINPUTS variable anymore. (This may or may not change in future versions,
but is not a MiKTeX issue.) 

I don't understand - you don't find it OK to ask the user to add a
\graphicspath statement, but find it OK to ask the user to add a environment
variable as TEXINPUTS? If your objection to \graphicspath is that it has to
be included in every document, just ask the user to put it in graphics.cfg 
in stead.
 
> - An option I had been considering is to place the pictures in some
> path inside the users local texmf tree, i.e.
> \localtexmf\tex\latex\myappname... But don't know if this is advisable
> or should I better do not touch the users tex instalation?? 

It is generally OK to touch the localtexmf tree, but as you note below - you
easily get into the "refresh the filename database" problem.

> Moreover,
> if you think it is a good idea to keep pictures inside the tex tree, I
> think i would need to "refresh the filename database" each time I add
> or remove pictures so that latex can find them, and this could be
> probably annoying for the user.. two subquestions then:
>   * How can I run some command from my app to update the filename database??

  initexmf -u

>   * Moreover, is it possible to tell the update procedure just to look
> into a single location in the tree?? (i mean do not update ALL the
> miktex tree installation, but just the specified pictures directory..
> i think this could be a nice solution)..

You can't do single directories, but just the localtexmf tree is OK:

  initexmf -uROOT

Run "initexmf --help" for more info.

Regards,
Hans