There should be a settings variable that expands to the user's home directory

I agree with this wholeheartedly.  Having things like project workspaces store filenames with absolute paths is pretty primitive.  I take pains to have my home directories be identical under a certain point, but there's literally nothing I can do when interacting with a difficult IT department if they require home directories to be a strange format, or be mounted in a weird place.

Can someone please address this?