[OS X TeX] Threads on MacIntel

[Jonathan Kew]

On 10 Jun 2005, at 6:59 am, Fernando Pereira wrote:

>
> On Jun 10, 2005, at 8:14 AM, Bruno Voisin wrote:
>
>
>> "Our initial analysis and prediction of a smooth transition still  
>> appears to be accurate, even after a few days of review and  
>> analysis," Siegel said in an e-mail interview. "There are some  
>> adjustments to be made, but nothing particularly daunting."
>>
>
> Swinging this back to TeX on OS X... The issues are different for  
> TeX (and its command-line support programs) and for front-ends like  
> TexShop. We know that TeX and its companions work fine on x86. The  
> problem will not be with the code itself, but rather with the  
> availability of development tools and systems to create fat  
> binaries for these applications. In particular, it's not clear yet  
> whether fat binaries can be built in a standard command-line *nix  
> way, which is what the build processes for those programs require.

Yes, they can.

However, this isn't really necessary (depending on the overall  
setup). Consider the output of

     $ which tex

which, on my machine, responds

     /usr/local/teTeX/bin/powerpc-apple-darwin-current/tex

Note the path. If I were on an Intel Mac, the "powerpc" part would be  
replaced by "i686" or something. So the binaries would be separate  
anyway. The two architectures can co-exist in a single filesystem  
even without universal binaries, by appropriate PATH configuration, etc.

>
> For OS X front-ends, making sure that they use Cocoa fully would go  
> a long way to ensure portability.

Those who have been at WWDC this week are, of course, constrained by  
the usual NDA rules from saying much, but I think I can take the  
liberty of commenting that I see no reason to be concerned. :)

JK
--------------------- Info ---------------------
Mac-TeX Website: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
           & FAQ: http://latex.yauh.de/faq/
TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
List Post: <mailto:MacOSX-TeX at email.esm.psu.edu>