[OS X TeX] Jaguar
Bruno Voisin
Bruno.Voisin at hmg.inpg.fr
Thu Oct 3 22:50:20 CEST 2002
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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