[XeTeX] [texhax] Throughput

[Jonathan Kew]

On 3 Mar 2011, at 15:47, Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote:

> 
> 
> Peter Davis wrote:
> 
> > I expected this job to complete in a matter of minutes, but it basically
> > took 100 times longer than I anticipated.  The job uses perhaps a dozen
> > PDFs via \includegraphics, but it uses the sames ones over and over
> > again.  It also uses  \textpos to position blocks of text arbitrarily on
> > the page.
> >
> > Can anyone think of reasons why it might be so slow?
> 
> No, but as you have yourself suggested two possible causes,
> would it not make sense to eliminate each in turn and see
> what effect this has on performance ?  If it turns out
> to be the \includgraphics then you might want to drop
> down to whatever the XeTeX equivalent of PdfTeX's
> 
>    \pdfximage
>    \pdfrefximage
>    \pdflastximage
> 
> are, and see if this improves things.

How about saving each such graphic in a \box, and then just using \copy to place it wherever needed? I'd expect that to give a pretty big win, if the same graphics are used many times.

JK