[tex-live] please stop endless rant against case insensitive macOS file system

jfbu jfbu at free.fr
Wed Apr 11 08:22:20 CEST 2018


Hi,

quote from the Kpathsea manual

> In particular, Apple decided to make the default filesystem on Macs be case-insensitive some years ago, and this has exacerbated a problem of people creating documents that use, say, an image under the name foo.jpg, while the actual file is named foo.JPG or Foo.jpg. It works on the Mac but if the document is transferred and run on a standard case-sensitive Unix (file)system, the file can’t be found, due only to differences in case.

> This same problematic scenario has always existed on Windows, but for whatever reason, it has become much more common since Apple also went to a case-insensitive filesystem. Hence the move to change the Kpathsea behavior now.

I can not understand that. Obviously Apple opted for case-insensitivity to maintain compatibility with its older self. This was mandatory for not breaking everything when moving to Unix-like system.

That was ages ago. Now we learn that in 2018 a change happens in TeXLive distribution because of that ?

ALL cases of problem I have encountered on tex.sx originate with **WINDOWS** users.

I have always felt that supporting Mac was not on TeXLive agenda: I really needed to insist some years back to explain how **very very slow** kpsewhich behaved on it, and without Adam Maxwell's expertise and willingness to act that would **never have been solved**.

Best,

Jean-François




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