[OS X TeX] Re: The microtype mystery

[Josep Maria Font]

El 18/08/2010, a las 19:21, Herbert Schulz escribió:

> It's clear that /usr/texbin is not on your PATH. What version of OS X are you using? Did you transfer everything from one machine to another?
> 
> Assuming you are on Snow Leopard (actually I think this also is the way it works in Leopard too) take a look at parts (d) and (e) for the answer to QM.10 on the MacTeX FAQ, <http://www.tug.org/mactex/2009/faq/#qm10>. I know it refers to MacTeX-2008 but this will work for any MacTeX on Snow Leopard.
> 
> Since things seem to work properly under GUI apps /usr/texbin seems to be defined and working correctly.

Thanks for pointing out that FAQ, Herb. Yes, I did use Migration Assistant to move everything to my new machine, which came with Snow Leopard. This was a 2008 TeXLive installation, and after some time I upgraded to 2009. And applying fix #d has solved the issue.

Now I can make my microtype timing more precise. For a 133-page manuscript, without \included graphics at all:

Without microtype: 
real	0m4.266s
user	0m2.422s
sys	0m0.058s

With microtype (just uncommenting \usepackage{microtype}):
real	3m39.757s
user	3m37.741s
sys	0m0.151s

Which means increasing by a factor of 51.51. With a 27" iMac with 2.8GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 8Gb of RAM. 

It would be certainly nice to improve this! Even if one uses microtype only in the final production stage, adjusting the many small spacing issues that appear entails typesetting many many times!


JMaF