Using components (e.g. book chapters), with each component in its own directory, say I have \startproduct onebook \project manybooks \component 1/chap \component 2/chap \stopproduct with this 1/chap.tex: \startcomponent 1/chap \product onebook \project manybooks \title{One} An essential chapter. \useexternalfigure[ff][abc.1] \placefigure[here][ff]{Some caption}{\externalfigure[ff]} \stopcomponent I'd like to keep the figures and source for a chapter together, e.g. abc.mp and abc.1 in 1/chap/ since each chapter has many figures, and I edit and test one chapter at a time. That arrangement works fine if I build the component: cd 1 && texexec chap.tex but not if I build the product: texexec book.tex (it doesn't find abc.1 since it's not in the same dir as book.tex) The details.pdf manual says that figures are searched for in the local path (current directory) and the global one, with the global one set by the directory keyword: \setupexternalfigures[directory={c:/fig/eps,c:/fig/pdf}] Is there a way to specify "current directory relative to this component", or a way to add that setting to the default 'local' path (even before '.')? I could add it manually in the preamble of the 1/chap.tex but it would mean hardwiring the pathname into it, which seems hacky. E.g. it fails if I export the whole source tree to /tmp/tmp.2773ab/ to test rebuilding all the pdf's from scratch. -Sanjoy