Re: Two quickies

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

At 03:01 PM 8/3/2002 -0400, Glenn R Williams wrote:
>Hi All,
>
>Two quick questions:
>
>1. Is there a variable I can set to have all the temporary work files
>    placed in a separate directory for texexec runs?

no, although this is on the to do list

btw it is possible to run files that come from an other path, so you can co 
to a temp path, run texexec with --path=sourcepath, and copy the result back

>2. I have a project/product/component structure, and all works fine
>    except that in my environment I have an abbreviation file which
>    I \input in the environment file. when I try to generate a document
>    from one of the product subdirectories, tex can't find the input
>    file. The envirnment file and the abbreviation file are are in the
>    same directory. A bit like this:
>
>    /main_directory
>        tri_env.tex (the environment file)
>        tri_abbrev  (the abbreviation file)
>        tri_proj    (the project file)
>        /product1
>           tri_prod.tex (the product file)
>
>I am executing texec from the "product1" directory.

There are several ways to control paths; using \input is a bit dangerous 
since it looks in the current path and in the main tex tree which can lead 
to funny results (loading the wrong files)

There a few ways out:

(1) an ugly one:

\input ../tri_abbrev

(2) since env are taken from . ../ ../../ you can use:

\environment tri_abbrev

given that the file looks like

\startenvironment ...

\stopenvironment

(3) you can also explicitly set the paths to look at (env and components 
and alike) using

\usepath[...,...,...]

or even the recently added:

\usesubpath[...,...,...]

This is typically the control needed for more complex workflows

(4) as a last resort there are commands in supp-fil.tex, like

\readfile
\readlocfile
\readsysfile

Hans
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