Tag: Mac

I just wanted to share an experience with the FARAO software we recently published a paper about, and its compatibility with the GD and libpng libraries (used for creating PNG files). I have got questions from users about how to get this to work, and to test it out I decided to try to install it on my Mac. It turned out that it is nearly impossible to get this to work. These two packages are extremely picky with versions and dependencies. After trying for about on hour, I gave up and turned to my Linux machine. Surprisingly, I could not get it to work from scratch there either, despite that I have had it running (with some previous version combination) when we programmed and tested FARAO.

I find this extremely annoying myself, and I will try to look into other solutions for PNG or JPEG output from FARAO. In the mean time, I can only recommend to instead use the EPS output option, which produces more nice-looking figures and is considerably easier to set up. I am sorry about this and hope to be able to provide a better solution soon.

I usually try not to be too personal on this site, but to stay more scientific in my tone and scope. However, today’s news that Steve Jobs have passed away inclines me to make a short comment. My dad brought home a Macintosh Plus in 1989. Since then, I have without any breaks been a Mac user. I did my first programming attempts around the age of nine in HyperCard. In short, without the Mac I probably wouldn’t have ended up where I am today. And without Steve, there would have been no Mac. Steve’s vision on ease-of-use computers helped me getting into the programming bandwagon in the early nineties. And even though my computer use has changed a lot since, I still feel hugely indebted to Steve Jobs for bringing the computing revolution into my living room. Thanks for the ride, Steve.