bug#21028: Performance regression in revision af1a69f4d17a482c359d98c00ef86fac835b5fac (Apr 2014).

[Clément Pit--Claudel]

On 2016-12-22 14:08, Clément Pit--Claudel wrote:
> On 2016-12-22 13:04, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> I would like to try and understand the problem.  For that I need a
>> minimal setup that will show the problem while still making sense,
>> i.e. when the characters in the buffer are displayed by the offending
>> font.  A setup with a font that is not actually used for display
>> doesn't seem to be sensible; if showing the problem with real
>> characters requires a somewhat more elaborate setup, please show it.

Hi Eli,

Here's a minimal recipe :) I followed these steps:

1. Downloaded a copy of Linux Mint 18.1 at 
https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=226
2. Installed it in VirtualBox, without proprietary add-ons (I turned on 3D 
acceleration in VBox's settings)
3. Installed VirtualBox's guest additions
4. Downloaded Emacs 25.1 from http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/emacs/
5. Extracted it to ~/emacs/emacs-25.1
6. Installed dependencies: sudo apt install libmagickwand-dev libgtk-3-dev 
libxpm-dev libjpeg-dev libgif-dev libtiff-dev libgconf2-dev librsvg2-dev 
libselinux1-dev libgnutls-dev libxml2-dev libfreetype6-dev libm17n-dev 
libotf-dev libsystemd-dev libncurses-dev texinfo
7. Compiled emacs: ./configure; make -j12
8. Ran emacs and confirmed that it was working normally
9. Downloaded XITS Math from 
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/khaledhosny/xits-math/master/xits-math.otf 
and saved it to ~/.fonts
10. Updated the font cache using fc-cache
11. Ran the following command: src/emacs -Q --eval "(progn (set-fontset-font 
\"fontset-startup\" 'unicode \"Ubuntu Mono\" nil) (set-fontset-font 
\"fontset-startup\" 'unicode \"XITS Math\" nil 'append) (dotimes (_ 500) 
(insert (make-string 20 8658) \"\n\")))"
12. Confirmed that XITS math was in use:
             position: 10472 of 10500 (100%), column: 13
            character: ⇒ (displayed as ⇒) (codepoint 8658, #o20722, #x21d2)
    preferred charset: unicode (Unicode (ISO10646))
code point in charset: 0x21D2
               script: symbol
               syntax: .        which means: punctuation
             category: .:Base, h:Korean, j:Japanese
             to input: type "C-x 8 RET 21d2" or "C-x 8 RET RIGHTWARDS DOUBLE 
ARROW"
          buffer code: #xE2 #x87 #x92
            file code: #xE2 #x87 #x92 (encoded by coding system utf-8-unix)
              display: by this font (glyph code)
    xft:-STIX-XITS Math-normal-normal-normal-*-13-*-*-*-*-0-iso10646-1 (#x448)
13. Ran a simple benchmark: time src/emacs -Q --eval "(progn (set-fontset-font 
\"fontset-startup\" 'unicode \"Ubuntu Mono\" nil) (set-fontset-font 
\"fontset-startup\" 'unicode \"XITS Math\" nil 'append) (dotimes (_ 500) 
(insert (make-string 20 8658) \"\n\") (run-with-idle-timer 0 nil 
#'kill-emacs)))"
    real        0m5.807s
    user        0m1.064s
    sys 0m1.260s
14. Compared this to the same benchmark without XITS Math: time src/emacs -Q 
--eval "(progn (dotimes (_ 500) (insert (make-string 20 8658) \"\n\") 
(run-with-idle-timer 0 nil #'kill-emacs)))"
    real        0m0.439s
    user        0m0.236s
    sys 0m0.032s

This sequence of steps yields an unusably slow copy of Emacs.  The font setup 
in that last step ensures that Emacs falls back to XITS Math for all characters 
that Ubuntu Mono does not handle.  This is my usual setup for programming with 
proof assistants (Agda and Coq), as I want a consistent fallback for symbols 
not covered by Ubuntu Mono.

Let me know if this helps!  I'll be happy to share a copy of the VM, too, if 
needed.

Cheers and thanks for your help,
Clément.

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