[OS X TeX] PPC to Intel

[Justin Walker]

On Jun 7, 2005, at 18:17, Rodrigo Banuelos wrote:

> ...and so the question, for those who know best, will the transition
> from PowerPC to Intel be painless, as far as TeX (and all the related 
> apps
> that we so cherish) is concerned?

Ha!  It will be as painless as possible :-}.  Most of the pain will be 
borne by developers, as they learn to live with the unliveableXXXXXnew 
architecture.  For higher-layer code, such as Cocoa based apps (e.g., 
TeXShop), "it should just work", depending on how much or little skanky 
code lies beneath.

For the Unix-flavored stuff, like teTeX, I should think that will 
indeed just work, since those bridges have been long-since crossed 
(this code runs on all manner of architectures, OS's, ...).

There will certainly be rough spots, and the early adopters of the Macs 
with Intel Inside (shudder) will see growing pains.  That should soon 
pass, though.  There has been a significant amount of work put into 
this already, and Apple has been working on this, in one form or 
another, for the past 12-15 years, so I don't expect serious issues 
once shipments to real end users begin in ernest.

Regards,

Justin

--
Justin C. Walker, Curmudgeon-at-Large
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