Re: context vs texinfo

[Taco Hoekwater <taco@elvenkind.com>]

Hi,

Shiv Shankar Dayal wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I was using context and I had to wait for 16 seconds for one run
> approximately. I switched to texinfo and it barely takes 2 seconds.

A whole 2 seconds? That's ridiculously slow! I just tried to print a
document with  'cat | lpr' and it took much less than a tenth of a
second! :)

> Can you please explain the diffrence? I know context is complex but still?

Seriously: you gave the first half of the answer yourself. The second
half is that texinfo is very simple. Yes, context is quite a bit slower
thanks to extra complexity.

I am not going to list all of the things context can do that texinfo
cannot as that would take the better part of an hour, but there
are a few other reasons as well:

* context usually needs three runs the very first time you process
a document (but typically only one or two runs after that) and it
does these consecutive runs automatically. It keeps running tex
until there are no more runs needed, and this sometimes (well,
often, to be honest) means that it does one run too many. But one
run too much is still a lot better than a wrong link.

* context typically is set up to use much larger values for the
internal memory arrays, and this results in a slower runtime. You
can actually speed up context by reducing its memory footprint
to just what is needed for your own typical document types
(dont forget to regenerate the formats).

Best wishes,
Taco

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