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CREATING A LAN INSTALLATION OF TEX LIVE FOR WINDOWS CLIENTS

You can copy a TeX Live installation to a read-only network drive
and tell your users to add the <root>\bin\win32 directory to their
searchpath. However, this is not how things are done on the Windows
platform.

The w32client.bat/w32client script pair modifies the searchpath,
creates shortcuts and creates file associations. It also registers
an uninstaller script which will show up under Add/Remove Programs.

Consider these scripts prototypes. You may want to add a GUI which
lets the user choose whether [s]he wants any of those things.

As it stands, all changes are made for the user, not for the
workstation. This implies that in a roaming profile setup the
configuration is available from any computer on the network, and
that the user needs no particular rights on the workstation.

REQUIREMENTS OF THE NETWORK INSTALLATION

The prototype script assumes a standard directory layout:
<parent>---<year>
   |         |
   |         +---bin---win32
   |         +---texmf
   |         +---texmf-dist
   |         +---texmf-config
   |         +---texmf-var
   |         +---tlpkg
   |
   +---texmf-local

The w32client- and w32unclient scripts assume that they are in the
root of the installation, i.e. in <parent>\<year>.

Sticking to this default directory layout minimizes configuration
hassles. Still, there may be some:

XETEX

For XeTeX to support system fonts, it needs some information about
those fonts. For Windows, this information normally is collected by
a utiltity fc-cache during installation of XeTeX.

If all computers on the network have the same set of fonts, and if
the installation was created from such a computer, then XeTeX font
support might work perfectly without additional action.

However, it is better not to count on this, and to run fc-cache from
the client script. Since users don't have write access to
TEXMFSYSVAR, or <parent>\<year>\texmf-var, we need to use TEXMFVAR,
or <user profile>\.texlive<year>\texmf-var. This can be accomplished
with a file <parent>\<year>\texmf.cnf with the lines

FONTCONFIG_PATH=$TEXMFVAR/fonts/conf
FC_CACHEDIR=$TEXMFVAR/fonts/cache

The file should already exist, but would still be empty apart from
some comments. Settings here override settings in the main
texmf.cnf, in <parent>\<year>\texmf\web2c.

Users may need to rerun fc-cache if they move to another workstation
with a different set of fonts.

SEARCH PATH

If a workstation already has a locally installed TeX and if its
binaries are on the system path, then the locally installed TeX will
be found first. The demo script safeguards against this by
prepending the searchpath with the TeX Live binaries for individual
shortcuts. Wrapper scripts also do this, so the TeXworks shortcut
will always find our TeX Live first.

In addition, w32client adds a command-prompt shortcut with such a
locally patched searchpath.

VISTA

Under some circumstances, Vista needs to be told that a program or
batchfile doesn't require admin privileges. This can be done with a
manifest file, which has the name of the program, including
extension, with `.manifest' appended. In my own tests, I had to
create a manifest file w32unclient.bat.manifest for the uninstaller.

If you need additional manifest files, just copy this manifest file
and replace the program name in it.