[metapost] metapost-1.503 format files

[Hans Hagen]

On 17-11-2010 12:10, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:

> Hi Karel,
> thanks for the hint.  It's fine if no mem files are needed anymore.

In the case of metapost the amount of preloaded code is rather small and 
timings has shown that it makes not much different to have a mem file. 
Also, mem files complicate the code and in future metaposts it might be 
that the way mp is initialized matters (when several accuracy models are 
implemented) and then a mem file could have the wrong data structures.

(Tests with context and luatex have demonstrated that at some point even 
formats for tex can get obsolete ... esp when ssd disks are common and 
cpu caches are real large run time loading can come close to loading and 
unzipping a format; we estimated a different of 25-50%.)

> I stumbled about it because there was still an entry in updmap.cfg
> and updmap complains loudly if it can't create a mem file.

The mem flag is supported for backward compatible reasons.

Hans

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