[OS X TeX] Jaguar

[Bruno Voisin]

Themis Matsoukas wrote:

> 2] is TeXShop with syntax coloring on as slow as was reported earlier in 
> this list?

 From my own experience, and I just checked again (I am running a G4 
PowerMac at 400 MHz with 384 Mb RAM): for a typical 150 kb LaTeX 
document, it takes more than 5 minutes to syntax-colour the whole 
document on opening (you can litterally see the lines being processed 
one by one).

The worse, however, happens when you actually try to do some editing: it 
takes about 1/2 second to display or erase a single character. It's the 
first time in my life as a computer user that I can actually type faster 
than my computer is able to display! (About my typing speed: I'm not a 
programmer, but I used to play the piano on my spare time for several 
years, so I guess my typing speed is about average.)

> 4] is the switch worth it? I am referring to the 
> efficiency/compatibility with respect to tetex/TeXShop

For TeXShop, apart from the above, the only change I noticed is that 
dragging EPS or DVI documents onto TeXShop for having them converted to 
PDF does not work any longer. The command line tools still work, however.

For GhostScript the OS X bug that prevented some PDF files created by 
GhostScript 7 to be displayed correctly by Preview.app and TeXShop is 
gone. There are other, new problems with some accents (see two recent 
threads on this list), but they are indeed minor and easily resolved.

The most interesting thing, in any case, is not related to TeXShop but 
to OS X itself: almost all components of the system (at least those 
visible to an average user like me) have been significantly modified 
inside, generally for the better. For example:

- Preview.app can display and export more graphical formats (it's not 
yet GraphicConverter, but coming closer to it),

- almost all System Prefs have redesigned old and original new settings,

- the connection to other computers, including Windows PCs and Unix 
wokstations running Samba servers is now absolutely transparent in the 
"Connect to server..." (Cmd-K) Finder window, you see all available 
computers whatever OS they are running,

- Print Center has been redesigned, it is now much much more flexible.

I'm just mentioning here the features that I immediately think of, there 
are many others I'm forgetting right now.

So, in this respect, I think the switch is really worth it. (And you're 
"hearing" this from somebody who had his account messed up in the 
upgrade process, who had to recreate another account, migrate all his 
files, modify permissions accordingly, reinstall several softwares, 
finally spending hours on the phone with Apple technical support and on 
the whole losing one week of work time on the process.)

Bruno Voisin


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