Re: distributed / parallel TeX?

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

Lars Huttar wrote:

> We have close to 7000 mpgraphics, and they add about 15 minutes to the
> run time.

most of them are the same so reusing them made sense

> But the run time was already quite long before we started using those.
> 
>> - define fonts beforehand
> 
> OK, we will look into this. I'm sure Jelle knows about this but I'm a
> noob. I'm pretty sure we are not *loading* fonts every time, but maybe
> we're scaling fonts an unnecessary number of times.
> For example, we have the following macro, which we use thousands of times:
> 	\def\LN#1{{\switchtobodyfont[SansB,\LNfontsize]{#1}}}

indeed this will define the scaled ones again and again (whole sets of 
them since you use a complete switch); internall tex reuses them but it 
only know so when they're defined

> Would it help much to instead use
> 	\definefont[SansBLN][... at \LNfontsize]
> and then
> 	\def\LN#1{{\SansBLN{#1}}}
> ?

indeed:

\definefont[SansBLN][... at \LNfontsize]

but no extra { } needed:

\def\LN#1{{\SansBLN#1}}

>> - use unique mpgraphic when possible
> 
> I would be interested to know if this is possible in our situation. Most
> of our mpgraphics are due to wanting thick-and-thin or single-and-double
> borders on tables, which are not natively supported by the ConTeXt table
> model.

i sent jelle the patched files

> The advice I received said to define each mpgraphic using
> \startuseMPgraphic (we have about 18 of these), associate them with
> overlays using \defineoverlay (again, we have 18), and then use them in
> table cells using statements like
> 	\setupTABLE[c][first][background={LRtb}]
> Empirically, this seems to end up using one mpgraphic per table cell,
> hence our thousands of mpgraphics. I don't know why a new mpgraphic
> would be created for each cell. Can someone suggest a way to avoid this?

metafun manual: unique mp graphics

>> i changes the definitions a bit and now get 5 pages per second on my
>> laptop in luatex; xetex processes the pages a bit faster but spends way
>> more time on the mp part
> 
> My last run gave about 0.25 pages per second on our fastest server, when
> taking into account multiple passes; that comes out to about 2 pps for
> --once.

the patched files do 5-10 pps on my laptop (was > 1 sec pp) so an 
improvement factor of at least 5 is possible

there are probably other optimizations possible but i cannot spent too 
much time on it

Hans

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                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
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