Do you have a personal texmf tree?

[Andrew Parsloe]

I would like to know how widespread the use is among LyX users of a 
personal texmf tree. Do you have one?

There are the standard LaTeX distributions (usually MiKTeX or TeXLive). 
But what do you do with "waifs & strays" which are not part of these 
distros but can be found on CTAN? Or personal packages where you may 
have tweaked some settings in a standard package and you need somewhere 
to put them where they will not be overwritten by the standard distro or 
an update of the standard distro?

MiKTeX (and presumably TeXLive) can be alerted to this personal texmf 
tree so that it integrates seamlessly with the standard distro. I 
thought the use of a personal texmf tree would be widespread, but now I 
suspect it is rare. Answers please.

The reason I ask is that LyX has acquired sufficient distinctive 
features that LaTeX packages might be written explicitly for use with 
LyX rather than in LaTeX generally. For instance, LyX has custom insets 
(with a vastly improved treatment of arguments in LyX 2.1), it has 
modules and, especially, it has instant preview which allows dynamic 
interaction with LaTeX packages (e.g. for table sorting, formula 
evaluation). Also, the LaTeX it produces is 'regularized' meaning it can 
be parsed in a simpler way than 'general' LaTeX since alternatives are 
eliminated. (E.g., in general LaTeX $E=Mc^2$ is possible as well as the 
LyX form $E=Mc^{2}$; in general LaTeX a table row like 
a&b&c&d\tabularnewline is possible as well as the LyX form a & b & 
c\tabularnewline. A package written for LyX doesn't need to consider the 
alternatives.) The final point is that the expl language of LaTeX3 
allows "the general programmer" to write large LaTeX packages. (If TeX 
corresponds to machine code/assembler, then expl corresponds to 
something closer to python.)

Andrew