Re: XeConTeXt bug report I: strange benchmark

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

Yue Wang wrote:

>>> \font\a="[simsun]"
>>> \starttext
>>> \dorecurse{10000}{ hello {\a 你好}\par}
>>> \stoptext
>>>
>>> runtime: TeXExec | runtime: 2.922
>>>
>>> \font\a="[simsun.ttf]"
>>> \starttext
>>> \dorecurse{10000}{ hello {\a 你好}\par}
>>> \stoptext

as taco already mentioned there's a problem with xetex caching fonts

in a traditional tex engine (pdftex, xetex) one can say

\font\xxx=blabla

many times but blabla is loaded only once; however, it looks like in the
following case

\font\xxx=blabla.suffix

no caching takes place and as a result you load the font 10000 times
(can be seen when you enable a file tracer)

however, memory consumption does grow only in small steps so some
caching takes place (maybe only new id's)

if you define a font grouped {\a ...} the font gets defined each time
(as context has delayed font loading and supports local redefinitions
which is quite handy when using SymbolicNames for fonts) and normally
xetex's internal caching should make that efficient

i would not be surprised if the (forced) name-lookup problems are kind
of related to this

so ... this suffix problem is not related to context at all

Hans

-----------------------------------------------------------------
                                          Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
              Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
     tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
                                             | www.pragma-pod.nl
-----------------------------------------------------------------
___________________________________________________________________________________
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
___________________________________________________________________________________