Ok after rereading the above spec snippet and some background info I've gotten from Alex Taylor by email, I think it's supposed to be like so:
any file referring to a texture, should load that texture by looking at:
absFileLocation +"/textures"
normal ldraw search order locations +"/textures"
absFileLocation
normal ldraw search order locations
any file referring to a texture, should load that texture by looking at:
absFileLocation +"/textures"
normal ldraw search order locations +"/textures"
absFileLocation
normal ldraw search order locations