[texhax] Throughput

[Peter Davis]

On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 10:13 AM, Peter Davis <pfd at pfdstudio.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm testing some code I wrote to generate .tex files from XML files.  These
> .tex files are then processed via XeLaTeX to produce PDF.  The code seems to
> be working, in that I get a valid .tex file, which then compiles into a
> valid PDF.
>
> However, running one test of 34,500 pages took 10 hours(!) to compile with
> XeLaTeX.  This was on a 3GHz/4Gb Windows 7 Pro machine, using the XeTeX from
> MiKTeX 2.9.
>
> I expected this job to complete in a matter of minutes, but it basically
> took 100 times longer than I anticipated.  The job uses perhaps a dozen PDFs
> via \includegraphics, but it uses the sames ones over and over again.  It
> also uses  \textpos to position blocks of text arbitrarily on the page.
>
> Can anyone think of reasons why it might be so slow?  The .tex file I have
> is 123Mb, but I can create a smaller one, with just 2 pages, if anyone can
> help diagnose the performance issue.
>

Thanks for the flurry of responses.  I have to run out for a while, but I'll
do the experiments you've suggested shortly.  Here's the header of the .tex
file, showing the packages used:

\documentclass[letterpaper]{article}
\usepackage[landscape]{geometry}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{setspace}
\usepackage{grffile}
\usepackage[absolute]{textpos}
\usepackage{soul}
\setlength{\TPHorizModule}{1bp}
\setlength{\TPVertModule}{\TPHorizModule}
\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}
\setlength{\unitlength}{1bp}
\pagestyle{empty}

I'll also create a small (~10 page) version of the file to show what's in
there.

Also, sorry for cross-posting, but I wasn't sure which list best fit this
topic.

Thanks again!

-pd



-- 
----
The Tech Curmudgeon
http://www.techcurmudgeon.com
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