[XeTeX] Performance [was: Some fontspec details]

Adam Lindsay atl at comp.lancs.ac.uk
Thu Dec 2 11:13:57 CET 2004


Jonathan Kew said this at Thu, 2 Dec 2004 09:33:07 +0000:

> Currently, 
>Quartz-based PDF generation is the worst bottleneck; if you run xetex 
>-no-pdf you'll find that the actual formatting process isn't so bad. 
>It's xdv2pdf that really drags things down. I've done some profiling, 
>which indicates that an awful lot of the time is spent on low-level 
>glyph access within the PDF-generating backend of Quartz. :(

Yeah, xdv2pdf being the bottleneck has been crystal clear to me ever
since making texexec run with -no-pdf  and having xdv2pdf on the final
run automatically. It's quite quick, and then there can be 5-10 secs
before the final output is ready.

It doesn't bother me, though, cos xdv2pdf is doing some real *work*, ya
know, man? That's the stuff that makes it all pretty.

What does concern me is the occasional infinite loop that XeTeX spins
into. I presume this is from failing to find a break in a word for an
overfull box? Does anything else set it off? Has anyone had success in
staving it off?

adam
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 Adam T. Lindsay, Computing Dept.     atl at comp.lancs.ac.uk
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 Lancaster, LA1 4WA, UK             Fax:+44(0)1524/510.492
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