texmf/tex//

[Pierre MacKay]

It is maybe a bit too web2c-ish to point out that duplicate names are
often a sign of a badly maintained tree (They certainly are in my own case)
and that even when they have to exist, something on the order of
texmf.cnf provides a satisfactory way to get around the problem.  

I have run into the problem several times, often caused by my own 
inattention and and other times by the import of files from vastly
different worlds (arabtex vs. AMStex) for example.  My own
suggestion would be that on a fixed archive like a CDROM we weed
out the ambiguities, and otherwise suggest strongly that package
developers need to think about this.  I do not see the virtue in
going back to endlessly long paths which will inevitably fill up
the environment variable space of some machines.