fixing #1081:

- tightened-up detection of the correct path for the plugins by checking if the plugin file *itself* actually exists in the given path; it's done this way to cope with scenarios where JSDoc is executed in another project's working directory where *that* project has plugins of itself in a similar directory structure (`plugins/*`).

  We DO NOT change the search path used by JSDoc.

- ditto for templates: we know that a template MUST have a `publish.js` file at least, so we go and check if that one exists at the location where we would otherwise have assumed it does.

cli.js

@@ -314,11 +314,17 @@ function resolvePluginPaths(paths) {
     paths.forEach(function(plugin) {
         var basename = path.basename(plugin);
         var dirname = path.dirname(plugin);
-        var pluginPath = path.getResourcePath(dirname);
+        // convoluted way to detect the correct path for the plugins; done this round-about way to cope
+        // with scenarios where JSDoc is executed in another project's working directory where that
+        // project has plugins of itself in a similar directory structure (plugins/*)
+        var pluginPath = path.getResourcePath(dirname, basename + ".js");
 
         if (!pluginPath) {
             logger.error('Unable to find the plugin "%s"', plugin);
             return;
+        } else {
+            // correct the path to the plugin:
+            pluginPath = path.dirname(pluginPath);
         }
 
         pluginPaths.push( path.join(pluginPath, basename) );
@@ -410,7 +416,18 @@ cli.generateDocs = function() {
 
     env.opts.template = (function() {
         var publish = env.opts.template || 'templates/default';
-        var templatePath = path.getResourcePath(publish);
+        // convoluted way to detect the correct path for the templates; done this round-about way to cope
+        // with scenarios where JSDoc is executed in another project's working directory where that
+        // project has templates of itself in a similar directory structure (templates/<name>/)
+        var templatePath = path.getResourcePath(publish, "publish.js");
+
+        if (!templatePath) {
+            logger.error('Unable to find the template "%s"', publish);
+            return publish;
+        } else {
+            // correct the path to the template:
+            templatePath = path.dirname(templatePath);
+        }
 
         // if we didn't find the template, keep the user-specified value so the error message is
         // useful

lib/jsdoc/path.js

@@ -111,11 +111,25 @@ exports.getResourcePath = function(filepath, filename) {
         return true;
     }
 
+    function fileExists(_path) {
+        // see also:
+        // - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4482686/check-synchronously-if-file-directory-exists-in-node-js
+        // - https://nodejs.org/api/fs.html#fs_fs_existssync_path
+        try {
+            var stats = fs.lstatSync(_path);
+
+            return stats.isFile();
+        }
+        catch (e) {
+            return false;
+        }
+    }
+
     // absolute paths are normalized by path.resolve on the first pass
     [path.dirname(env.opts.configure || ''), env.pwd, env.dirname].forEach(function(_path) {
         if (!result && _path) {
             _path = path.resolve(_path, filepath);
-            if ( pathExists(_path) ) {
+            if ( pathExists(_path) && (filename ? fileExists(path.join(_path, filename)) : true)) {
                 result = _path;
             }
         }