Every TeX distribution expects to find personal additions (such as private style files or packages not part of the main distribution) in a local folder or directory. The name of this folder is 'texmf' and it has a specific structure of sub-folders so that the TeX programs can find files correctly.
On a Mac, the local texmf folder is located in the Library folder of your Home directory. This is usually notated as "~/Library/texmf", where the "~" means "your home directory" (i.e. what you get when you click on the Home icon in a finder window.).
The texmf folder contains a number of folders, and these folders themselves contain other folders. For most users, the three top-level folders that are most important are the following:
Folder | What goes in it |
---|---|
bibtex | This is where bib files and bst files go. It should contain at least the following folders: |
bst | Put bst files here. |
bib | Put bib files here. |
tex | This is where new packages go. It should contain the following folders: |
latex | Put latex packages here. |
plain | Put plain tex files here. |
xelatex | Put xelatex specific packages here. |
xetex | Put plain xetex files here. |
context | Put context files here. |
generic | Put files that are usable with any TeX flavor here. |
doc | Put documentation files from packages installed in the tex folder here. Putting the documentation files here allows them to be found by the texdoc system (or the "Show Help for Package" function in the Help menu of TeXShop). |
Other top-level folders in include fonts, scripts, and source.
Below is a sample environment.plist file sent me by Nathan Potter; thanks! For further details, consult
http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2001/qa1067.html.