[tex-live] running programs from texlive tlc2

[Tigran Aivazian]

On Thu, 9 Dec 2004, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
> Anyway, I am _still_ puzzled by these huge LaTeX runs. Since
> I started with TeX in the mid 80s on floppy disks, I don't
> think I have _ever_ seen a TeX run take more than an hour.
>
> The TeX book takes 3 seconds on this box, and generates 483 pages.
> Lets assume that your whatever bible has approx the same number
> of final pages, and takes 3 hours. That means your macros are
> *3 and a half thousand* times more complicated than Knuth's.
> I just cannot conceive what they are doing!

Sebastian, you are very welcome to have an ssh account on my development 
box and try it for yourself (if/when you have spare time).

All you need to do is to email me (privately) with your static IP address 
(so I enable the firewall to pass you through) and what you want your 
login name to be.

Alternatively I can send the source code of the most complex of my Bibles 
(Hebrew OT) but in order to compile it you need Tiqwah by Yannis 
Haralambous (plus Tiqwah Type 1 fonts which I produced, but these I'll 
send you if you have Tiqwah already). I can't send Tiqwah to anyone 
because I promised Yannis. And you can't copy Tiqwah out of my box because 
it is "hardwired" to only run on it.

Then you can have a look and see if you can speed it up or explain why it 
is taking so long.

Of course I know that you are extremely busy with your responsibilities 
and there are more important things to do, but there is a chance that 
it is a genuine TeX or LaTeX bug which only shows up in my Bibles --- 
in the past I did discover obscure bugs, so it is a possibility...

Kind regards
Tigran