[TUHS] "Imake: an obsolete build tool" -- anybody got this?

Clem Cole clemc at ccc.com
Wed Mar 19 03:44:06 AEST 2025


On Tue, Mar 18, 2025 at 1:23 PM ron minnich <rminnich at gmail.com> wrote:

> you're right, that works fine, thanks.
>
Yep - so does Acrobat if you have it.

>
> no idea why apple preview won't just open .ps files any more, I thought
> that used to work.
>
As Henry once so wisely observed: "*4.2BSD is just like UNIX, only
different.*"

DEC lived, and, I guess, eventually died, by "The Promise" - that old
things kept working on newer releases.  Be it VMS, Ultrix, Tru64 or
whatever.   Maybe not easily, maybe not fast, But they worked.  If you were
"inside" it, was very difficult to remove an old feature.  It may also be
that DEC and the like cared about the ISVs and the promise was for more
that the end user.   Modern systems (to be fair, even penguins) don't seem
to care as much about that idea. The license to "improve" something or
"deprecate" old behavior is based on a Greek hubris that was taught to many
over the years.  Apple and Microsoft often seem to have always had a few
extra helpings.  It seems silly to me, too.

BTW: ps2pdf is using ghostscript under the covers, so you should have been
able to call it directly.  In "brew" pstools kits which ps2df is part,
requires it and thus ensures it is installed.
ᐧ
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