[XeTeX] performance on Windows (and other?) machines

[Jonathan Kew]

On 2 Oct 2006, at 4:03 pm, William Adams wrote:

> On Sep 12, 2006, at 7:12 AM, William Adams wrote:
>
>> I wonder if maybe my performance issues are caused by having filled
>> the font cache with the entire Adobe Font Folio set.... when next I
>> upgrade I'll check and see if only loading needed fonts improves
>> things.
>
> And I was right to wonder.
>
> Not loading any fonts at all, and instead loading them on demand
> using the new select-font-by-filename interface results in
> dramatically faster typesetting.

Yes, I'd expect it to be faster, though as I don't have anything  
remotely close to that many fonts, I don't know how much difference  
to expect.

Note, however, that when you select fonts by filename, you get just  
the font you asked for; as far as xetex is concerned, it's an  
"orphan" with no accompanying family members. So you don't get  
automatic selection of optical sizes, and fontspec will be unable to  
set up the bold and italic members of the family for you.

JK