[OS X TeX] Mactex and PowerPC processors

[Richard Koch]

Folks,

Yesterday there were a couple of messages about TeX PPC binaries. 
I claimed these problems were due to incompatible versions of X11.

Then Adam Maxwell wrote:


> On May 2, 2016, at 11:37 AM, Adam R. Maxwell <amaxwell at mac.com> wrote:
> 
> Dick,
> 
> FWIW, otool -L indicates that dvips is not linked against any X11 libraries, so I'd be cautious in pointing at that as the cause of problems. IIRC there were also compiler/processor compatibility settings that could cause a crash, but as you know, I gave up on supporting PPC some years ago :).
> 
> Adam
> 
> 

Adam is right. Tom Kiffe just wrote me that after reinstalling 10.5 on
his PPC machine and updating to 10.5.8, dvips works correctly.

This means that his PPC only has problems with X11, specifically
with xdvi and with gs-X11. Both fail with a message that
xdvi-caw requires version 10.0.0 but he only has version
9.0.0. Note that his Ghostscript problem is easily fixed since
we install both gs-X11 and gs-noX11.

Indeed, the X11 on my PPC machine is copy-write 2003 - 2011.
In more detail, XQuartz 2-3.3, xorg-server 1.10.3.

I obtained this XQuartz in 2013 when the hard disk broke and I had
to reinstall all software. I’m hoping this version is still available so
those few people who have PPC and use X11 can update to it.

I’m sending this to the full list to let you know that our PPC problems
are minor. The main thing on my list for that machine and its Intel
counterpart is that tlmgr didn’t work yesterday. I haven’t tested for
today.

I still believe that we should drop PPC support next year.

Dick Koch