[OS X TeX] Textures vs. TeXShop typesetting speed

[Donu Arapura]

Charles Bouldin wrote:

> I've wanted to raise the issue of typesetting speed on the list for
> some time, but since I can't provide hard numbers (I no longer have
> Textures installed) I have hesitated to so. Perhaps you, or someone
> else can provide numbers on this. My perception is that we now have a
> set of terrific tools to edit Tex, manage documents, and easily access
> a standard install of the typesetting engine, but that typesetting
> speed is quite slow compared with other TeX environments.

Actually, I have noticed this also, and I have been puzzled
by it. I really like TeX under macosx, but I believe that  it could
be faster. Perhaps someone on this list has some ideas?

I don't have  Textures, but I do have tetex running on other *nix
machines, so I can provide numbers for that. Since there is
huge variation caused by differences in hardware, the fairest
comparison is perhaps between my 2 Macs.

  "scheme" is a 1.25 Ghz G4 powerbook with 1 GB ram, running  macos 
10.3.3
  "topos" is  a 450 Ghz G4 desktop with 448 ram, running yellowdog linux 
3.01
  "cohomology" is a 2.2Ghz Xeon with 1GB ram running redhat linux 
(enterprise...)

For most things ,the powerbook is a close second, leaving  the other
Mac far behind.  However, for tex it is the slowest.
Below are speeds for latexing a 200 page document from
the command line, and for compiling a recent xdvi (which I added to
back up my first statement ).

----------
scheme$ time latex book.tex
...
real    0m9.185s
user    0m6.130s
sys     0m0.220s

scheme$ time make (xdvi)
...
real    1m39.348s
user    1m10.200s
sys     0m18.120s


---------------------------------------
topos$ time latex book.tex
....
real    0m8.818s
user    0m8.500s
sys     0m0.090s

topos$ time make (xdvi)
...
real    3m0.066s
user    2m41.390s
sys     0m12.090s

------------------------------
cohomology$ time latex book.tex
...
real    0m3.071s
user    0m2.670s
sys     0m0.050s

cohomology$ time make (xdvi)
...
real    0m52.372s
user    0m37.430s
sys     0m3.540s

-------------------

- Donu



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