[OS X TeX] 64-bit binaries in TeXLive 2010

[Alain Schremmer]

On Dec 4, 2009, at 10:54 PM, David Watson wrote:

> On Dec 4, 2009, at 9:05 PM, Alain Schremmer wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> There are the cutting edge people whom any update of TeXLive  
>> ravishes and who are thriving on debugging TeXLive 2009. And these  
>> are the people whom the "latest", whether hard or soft, indeed  
>> "forces" them to upgrade.
>>
>> But then there are those of us who "are typically very slow to  
>> update their computers and computing techniques" whom, regardless  
>> of what is in the latest TeXLive, would seem more likely than not  
>> just to ignore the latest TeXLive and keep on going with what they  
>> have. These, then certainly do not feel "forced" by the "latest"  
>> to upgrade anything.
>>
>> I must be missing something.
>
> I remember when Leopard came out, I mentioned mac users' proclivity  
> for upgrading their OS at every opportunity.
> You made your point then that you were satisfied with what you were  
> familiar with.

Not with what I was familiar with but with what I had---which I still  
am. Back in the days of the Mac 256, the limitations became tangible  
quickly enough and I did upgrade fairly often but, in fact, my  
upgrades did get sparser as things went.

> Just to be clear, the rest of this article is not about you, Alain,  
> but rather about the points brought up in previous replies.
>
> The issue here is that there is a point at which support for TeX on  
> PPC shouldn't be expected to outlast support for the current OS and  
> development tools.
>
> One of my employers uses equipment manufactured by HP during the  
> 80s which cost hundreds of thousands USD per instrument.
> If one of them crashes, the entire business is adversely affected.
> They run on HP-UX which was discontinued over a decade ago.
> The fact that they run at all is remarkable, and HP is to be  
> commended for that.
> But HP does not support these instruments and has not for well over  
> a decade.
> They are not even Y2K compliant, yet they still run.
> No one has made new software for them, and our company wouldn't use  
> it if they did.
>
> Of course HP made bank when they sold these units, and to this day,  
> you will not find instruments with similar capabilities for  
> appreciably less than the original costs.
> But when it comes down to it, the onus is on the purchaser to  
> decide when the risk of equipment failure outweighs the costs of  
> upgrading.
> The only strictly 32-bit Intel machines that I know of from Apple  
> are the original MacBook Pros that have the "Core 2" label.
> Everything since has been 64-bit capable, even if Apple hasn't made  
> it a priority to exploit that fact before Snow Leopard.
>
> I don't see why the developers behind TeXLive should feel the need  
> to support computer systems that are almost 4 years old when those  
> people can continue to use their original systems with no issues.
> If there is a package that's outdated and you "absolutely need" to  
> update, then do it the old fashioned way: download the package from  
> CTAN, decompress it, and slam it in your ~/Library/texmf directory  
> where it will override your outdated packages. Then follow the  
> installation instructions, if there are any available. Usually you  
> just "pdflatex somesillypackage.ins" and follow the instructions in  
> the Terminal.
> Honestly, that's the way it has been done for decades now, and just  
> because TeXLive has nice shiny new features like the "TeX Live  
> Utility" and Gerben has discontinued active support of the i- 
> Installer doesn't mean that you can't "roll your own".

I totally agree.

Regards
--schremmer