[twg-tds] storing scripts in the texmf tree

[Hans Hagen]

At 17:05 14/02/2004, Olaf Weber wrote:

>It's not _that_ hard, as the infrastructure is mostly in place in my
>new code.  However, for individual files (e.g, a .gz'd file or a
>single file in a .zip) it is unlikely to be of much use.  In a
>filesystem, the granularity of storage is typically the filesystem
>block size.  Filesystem block sizes are typically 1024 bytes (ext2),
>2048 (ISO), 4096 (XFS), and let's not talk about (V)FAT.  Most of our
>files are in this range of sizes, with very few larger.  This means
>that compressing them singly doesn't gain storage, doesn't gain
>improved I/O access times, and incurs a compression/decompression
>penalty.  A net loss, in other words.

i always wonder what block size to take -)

if ISO blocks are that large, then why are the afm files gzipped on tex 
live (i always have to recursively gunzip them in order to be useful

>The exception is storing an entire tree into a zip file, where a large
>part of the gains is not the compression but the fact that we do not
>lose half a filesystem block per file.

indeed, much can be gained there, so ... if it's doable ... let's do it -)

Hans



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