On Jan 26, 2006, at 11:26 AM, Charilaos Skiadas wrote:
command is potentially something that could break cross-platform compatibility of the .tex file itself, or would pose problems if one were to move the local texmf tree for some reason. I'm not entirely familiar with how the innards of that file-finding actually work, but eventually being able to search the texmf tree would probably be a good way to go about it.
That is true, but it is a bit more elaborate than what I want to go into right now. I guess I keep my bib file near the corresponding tex file. Where do other people keep their bib files? I could try to come up with a better search, but I don't really know where I should be looking.
I agree that it's pretty elaborate and that relative paths ought to do the trick and will work across platforms -- assuming one's directory structure matches on the two platforms. My bib files are all in my local texmf tree: ~/Library/texmf/bibtex/bib/. Latex and bibtex have some behind-the-scenes settings that direct them to find that tree. I think this is where kpsewhich comes into play, as do the optional environment variables of BIBINPUTS and TEXINPUTS.
-Alan