Re: LilyPond is excessively slow on Windows Vista

[Patrick McCarty]

On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 3:19 AM, Trevor Daniels <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> I don't understand the technical issues, but on Vista
> the fonts are contained in ~\.lilypond-fonts.cache-2.
> (To see these make sure you have the options set in
> Windows Explorer to Show hidden file and folders.)
> This should contain a number of smaller files (>=2)
> and one large file, c. 800Kb on my system.  Check the
> date/time the large file was last modified.  It should
> only be changed infrequently (I don't know what triggers
> it.)  If it changes on every LP run, then this is the cause
> of the slowness.  Two of the smaller files should be rebuilt
> on the first run after a new install, which causes the
> this first run to take more time, around 20 secs more,
> than subsequent runs.

I just installed GUB builds of 2.11.63 on Windows XP and x86
GNU/Linux, and the cache folder has the same name on both of these
systems.  After the first run, 15 cache files are created on
GNU/Linux, and 3 are created on Windows XP.  And exactly one of these
cache files is significantly larger than the others (163Kb on
GNU/Linux, and 169Kb on Windows XP), just as you have said.

However, on second and subsequent runs, the timestamp on the large
cache file updates each time on Windows XP.  This does not happen for
me on GNU/Linux.

This seems to be the reason behind the slightly "delayed" start after
every invocation of LilyPond on Windows XP.  lilypond --verbose shows
the delay happening at the "Building font database." step.  The delay
on GNU/Linux is non-existent.

Is the large cache file being rebuilt mistakenly (on some Windows systems)?

I hope this test case helps!

Thanks,
Patrick