[XeTeX] xetex memory usage

[William Adams]

On Dec 16, 2008, at 4:51 PM, Jonathan Kew wrote:

> The RAM footprint is much larger than standard 8-bit TeX because many
> internal tables have been expanded to cover the full Unicode range of
> characters -- approximately one million, as compared to 256
> characters. Using over 100MB is not generally a problem on modern
> hardware; much of this memory is not actively used in a typical run,
> and so virtual memory systems need not even keep it in real RAM, but
> it does get allocated at startup.
>
>> On 16 Dec 2008, at 19:53, basketboy at bk.ru wrote:
>> 2. Is it possilbe to reduce RAM consumption in this case?
>
> Not with the existing program. Many of the internal arrays could be
> made much smaller by using a smarter "sparse array" implementation
> instead of simple flat arrays. This has not been a priority for me, as
> users do not normally need to run large numbers of xetex processes in
> parallel, but if someone wants to provide such a patch it would be
> welcome.


Interesting.

Perhaps a different approach would be warranted --- how about  
developing a ``daemon'' version of xetex which could stay resident and  
run jobs as needed?

http://sourceforge.net/projects/texd

William

-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications