Braindump: Can we get rid of the font-cache-group question?

[Ralf Stubner <ralf.stubner@web.de>]

Hi everybody,

the question how to setup the font cache is really complicated. The
default is not what we recommend for most installations, there are users
that are not to familiar with the concept of groups¹, ... I think it is
possible to get rid of this problem alltogether by changing the
configuration of kpathsea, specifically the mktex* scripts. Right now in 

/usr/share/texmf-tetex/web2c/mktex.cnf

we set 

${MT_FEATURES=appendonlydir:varfonts}

(probably similar for TeX Live). From what I read in TETEXDOC section
2.6, I think that we would be better off with

${MT_FEATURES=texmfvar}

AFAIKT this would cause all created fonts to be written to TEXMFVAR,
which is in the users HOME. This would work without the need for any
debconf questions. The only disadvantage I can see is the case of a
multi-user machine where cached font data should be shared among
different users. In that case I would expect an admin who can change the
configuration, create fonts in advance, etc if pointed to the right
documentation. For single-user machines or buildds I see no
disadvantage. Comments?

cheerio
ralf

1 IMO it should be possible to use and administer a single user desktop
  machine without to deep knowledge on this.