<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Gerben,<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Nice to hear from you. Congratulations on the book.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">-------</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Gerben was active in the TeX on OS X world from the very beginning</div><div class="">of OS X. He wrote i-Intaller, a program which installed packages over the internet;</div><div class="">in particular this was the standard way for Mac Users to get TeX for many, many years.</div><div class="">See</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><a href="http://ii2.sourceforge.net" class="">http://ii2.sourceforge.net</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Users also obtained Ghostscript, Font Utilities, and other important pieces of TeX</div><div class="">that way.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Gerben’s TeX distribution was based on teTeX by Thomas Esser. When teTeX was</div><div class="">discontinued in 2006, Gerben created a new distribution based on TeX Live and</div><div class="">still distributed through i-Installer.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Gerben wrote simpdftex, a script in TeX Live which typesets by calling latex to</div><div class="">typeset, and then calling dvips to convert the resulting dvi to postscript, and then</div><div class="">calling ghostscript or other distillers to convert the postscript to pdf. This script</div><div class="">is still used in TeXShop and other front ends.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The first versions of MacTeX installed Gerben’s TeX Distribution. He did all the</div><div class="">hard work, and we just repackaged.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Shortly after Gerben created a TeX Live based distribution, he announced</div><div class="">end of support for that distribution. This caused panic in the Mac world, until</div><div class="">we switched to TeX Live.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">So how to put this — Gerben was THE key figure in the Mac world for TeX from</div><div class="">the start around 1998 until at least 2007. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Dick Koch</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Dec 9, 2014, at 5:31 PM, Herbert Schulz <<a href="mailto:herbs@wideopenwest.com" class="">herbs@wideopenwest.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">On Dec 9, 2014, at 7:16 PM, Ettore Aldrovandi <<a href="mailto:ealdrov@mail.math.fsu.edu" class="">ealdrov@mail.math.fsu.edu</a>> wrote:<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">On Dec 9, 2014, at 20:03, Alain Schremmer <<a href="mailto:schremmer.alain@gmail.com" class="">schremmer.alain@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br class=""><br class="">Isn't Wierda the author of SyncTeX?<br class=""><br class="">Regards<br class="">--schremmer<br class=""><br class=""></blockquote><br class="">It’s Jérôme Laurens, as far as I remember.<br class=""><br class="">Again, if memory doesn’t fail me, with Wierda they authored the system of symlinks that points to /usr/texbin plus the distribution switch.<br class=""><br class="">—Ettore<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">Howdy,<br class=""><br class="">Jérome Laurens did write synctex (and the pdfsync package before that). He also worked on TeXShop, in the early days, and wrote iTeXMac, YAFE (Yet Another Front End) to TeX. Finally he put together the TeX Distribution Preference Pane; and hopefully is working on a fix for Yosemite. :-)<br class=""><br class="">Both Gerben and Jérome worked on the TeX Distribution structure used by MacTeX to allow for changing of active TeX distribution.<br class=""><br class="">Good Luck,<br class=""><br class="">Herb Schulz<br class="">(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">----------- Please Consult the Following Before Posting -----------<br class="">TeX FAQ: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq" class="">http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq</a><br class="">List Reminders and Etiquette: <a href="http://email.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/" class="">http://email.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/</a><br class="">List Archive: <a href="http://tug.org/pipermail/macostex-archives/" class="">http://tug.org/pipermail/macostex-archives/</a><br class="">TeX on Mac OS X Website: <a href="http://mactex-wiki.tug.org/" class="">http://mactex-wiki.tug.org/</a><br class="">List Info: <a href="https://email.esm.psu.edu/mailman/listinfo/macosx-tex" class="">https://email.esm.psu.edu/mailman/listinfo/macosx-tex</a><br class=""><br class=""></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></div></body></html>