From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.comp.tex.context/46369 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Lars Huttar Newsgroups: gmane.comp.tex.context Subject: Re: distributed / parallel TeX? Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:02:19 -0600 Message-ID: <4948337B.5080608@sil.org> References: <4946E2E2.1050108@sil.org> <49476213.9020709@elvenkind.com> Reply-To: mailing list for ConTeXt users NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1229470373 6248 80.91.229.12 (16 Dec 2008 23:32:53 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:32:53 +0000 (UTC) To: mailing list for ConTeXt users Original-X-From: ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl Wed Dec 17 00:33:57 2008 Return-path: Envelope-to: gctc-ntg-context-518@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from ronja.vet.uu.nl ([131.211.172.88] helo=ronja.ntg.nl) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1LCjQK-0006sN-KP for gctc-ntg-context-518@m.gmane.org; Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:33:56 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 54DE31FCB1; Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:32:42 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from ronja.ntg.nl ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (smtp.ntg.nl [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id 13497-02-17; Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:31:18 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from ronja.vet.uu.nl (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4CD281FB3C; Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:31:17 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9CBAF1FB39 for ; Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:31:16 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from ronja.ntg.nl ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (smtp.ntg.nl [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id 13497-02-16 for ; Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:30:04 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from smtp1.wsfo.org (smtp1.wsfo.org [208.145.81.51]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 531C71FBF1 for ; Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:02:21 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from mail.link77.net (mail.link77.net [172.22.0.125]) by smtp1.wsfo.org (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id mBGN2LNT024811 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DES-CBC3-SHA bits=168 verify=NO) for ; Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:02:21 -0500 X-CGP-ClamAV-Result: CLEAN X-VirusScanner: Niversoft's CGPClamav Helper v1.8.2 (ClamAV engine v0.94.1) Original-Received: from [172.20.4.229] (account lars_huttar@sil.org [172.20.4.229] verified) by mail.link77.net (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 5.2.10) with ESMTPSA id 203611635 for ntg-context@ntg.nl; Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:02:21 -0500 User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.18 (Windows/20081105) In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 0.95.7 X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.62 on 172.22.0.51 X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at ntg.nl X-BeenThere: ntg-context@ntg.nl X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.11 Precedence: list List-Id: mailing list for ConTeXt users List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl Errors-To: ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at ntg.nl Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.comp.tex.context:46369 Archived-At: On 12/16/2008 3:15 PM, luigi scarso wrote: > > > On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 9:08 AM, Taco Hoekwater > wrote: > > > Hi Lars, > > > Lars Huttar wrote: ... > So the question comes up, can TeX runs take advantage of > parallelized or > distributed processing? > > > No. For the most part, this is because of another requisite: for > applications to make good use of threads, they have to deal with a > problem that can be parallelized well. And generally speaking, > typesetting does not fall in this category. A seemingly small change > on page 4 can easily affect each and every page right to the end > of the document. > > > Also > 3.11 Theory of page breaking > www.cs.utk.edu/~eijkhout/594-LaTeX/handouts/TeX%20LaTeX%20 > *course*.pdf Certainly that is a tough problem (particularly in regard to laying out figures near the references to them). But again, if you can break down the document into chunks that are fairly independent of each other (and you almost always can for large texts), this problem seems no worse for distributed processing than for sequential processing. For example, the difficult part of laying out figures in Section 1 is confined to Section 1; it does not particularly interact with Section 2. References in Section 2 to Section 1 figures are going to be relatively distant from those figures regardless of page breaking decisions. Thus the difficult problem of page breaking is reduced to the sequential-processing case... still a hard problem, but one that can be attacked in chunks. Indeed, the greater amount of CPU time per page that is made available through distributed processing may mean that the algorithms can do a better job of page breaking than through sequential processing. Lars ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________