Rooting the Tree

The root of the TDS should be a directory containing only TeX-related materials. In this document, we shall designate this directory `texmf', but the actual name of the directory is up to the installer. On PC networks, for example, this could map to a logical drive specification such as T:. We recommend naming the directory of the system-wide TeX installation texmf, where possible.

Similarly, the location of this directory within the file system is site-dependent. On many systems, this may be at the root of the file system; on Unix systems, it would traditionally be located in /usr/local or /usr/local/lib.

The name texmf was chosen for several reasons: it reflects the fact that the directory contains files to an entire TeX system (including METAFONT, METAPOST, BibTeX, etc., not just TeX itself) and it is descriptive of a generic installation rather than a particular implementation (such as emtex).

The texmf root is not intended to be placed under an implementation-dependent directory. For example, emtex/texmf is wrong.