[Bf-committers] Universal Binaries for Mac

[Ettore Pasquini]

On 8/25/07 4:58 AM, "Mathias Panzenböck" <grosser.meister.morti at gmx.net>
wrote:

> Timothy Baldridge wrote:
>> I'm not sure there is much point going Universal with GPL apps. The
>> only reason most programs do it is because then they can have one CD
>> and one program for both code architectures,

Actually, I think they do it to adhere to the platform specific user
experience.   

>> for blender it just makes
>> sense to make another download and distribute it separately.

Why? I'm not sure I understand your point.

> Especially because in an universal binary all the architecture dependent
> files are included twice (once for each architecture).
> So separate downloads will actually be smaller (if you don't have both
> architectures and therefore have to download both; then the universal
> binary is smaller, because the architecture independent files are only
> included once).

That's undoubtedly true, however I think it is more important to be a good
citizen of each platform and respect its user experience and its guidelines
for distributing software. In the OS X world, this means to use universal
binaries, which is what most apps do now. We could argue on the beauty or
ugliness of the solution but that would be beyond the point: that's what Mac
users expect and Blender should respect that. IHMO. Unless there are hard
technical reason that make it impossible.

-- 
http://www.3dconnexion.com/