TEXMFHOME on Windows (for users with long names, diacritics or spaces in their names)

[Karl Berry]

    Further tests showed that kpsewhich appears to be coding its output
    in the system code page, which on my system (and probably a default
    Windows system in France) is CP1252

Other developers (Akira, Takuji, others) have added various things to
kpathsea/kpsewhich for Windows code pages. I know nothing about it, I
just see references in the code. (In Windows-only parts.) Perhaps they
can elucidate. I think their primary goal was to support utf8. -k