[tex-live] HOME in win32 [was: dates]

[Philip TAYLOR]

Staszek Wawrykiewicz wrote:

> Dear Phil and others,
> 
> I do not think that's good time to investigate all that mess with
> HOME on Windows *at this moment*. Sorry, but such discussion cannot have
> any impact for *this* release of TL.

I am happy to agree to that, but the lack of
the HOME variant (as opposed to the VAR
variant) was always a shortcoming of Fabrice's
installer and led to several exchanges between
myself and Fabrice, myself and Sebastian and so
on, none of which actually resolved the problem.

So, all I am trying to do in adducing the existence
of HOME variants in Windows' environment variables
is to /try/ to ensure that, for some future TeX Live,
we can do even better to achieve consistency between
the various platforms.

I have even given some thought to how an
installer might reasonably (a) interrogate
the user as to his/her preferences, and (b)
interactive with the Windows environment so
as to (where necessary) create new environment
variables /and/ enumerate them in a configuration
file so as to reduce (and ideally eliminate)
any adverse effect on any other program(s) that
rely on environment variables that clash with
the preferred names.  But that is for the future :
as you (Staszek) say, this is too late for TL2006/7.

But PLEASE : let us not forget it for TL2007/8.

** Phil.