Re: [Texmacs-dev] Disastrous boot time for new versions

[Joris van der Hoeven]

> > Yes, this might be an interesting idea, but maybe not for now,
> > since it is quite complicated to implement and I also fear that
> > it will not always work. Indeed, the startup need not always to
> > be identical; TeXmacs might for instance discover new plugins.
> 
> If any such methodology shall be implemented in the future, I think it
> should be controlled by a ./configure switch.  The reason is that
> TeXmacs /should/ be able to operate as it does now, IOW without having
> to have the Scheme code pre-built.  That way, easy modification of the
> Scheme bits is still possible.  One won't have to re-build TeXmacs in
> order to test the effects of having a line uncommented somewhere.
> 
> Also, you might want to take into consideration my-init-buffer.scm and
> my-init-texmacs.scm .  They cannot be optimized in the same way as the
> system-wide Scheme code, but they are comparatively small, too (at least
> mine are).

If we do such a thing, then things will be cached in a safe way,
which will automatically detect changes. That is why I was writing
about caching entire environments later in the email you quote.

> > One thing I currently do have in mind is to postpone a lot of
> > things which are done at boot time. For instance, there is no need
> > to load the LaTeX<->TeXmacs and Html<->TeXmacs converters;
> > this may be done when we actually need to do a conversion.
> 
> Why is it necessary to load any of the converters ?  Why is it necessary
> to load, for example, tmtex ?  For saving, the file format the user has
> selected is known before (texmacs-save-buffer ...) is called.  As a
> result, the *save-buffer* functions could load the appropriate file and
> only then call texmacs-save-buffer, which would not need any
> modification.  The same thing is true for tmhtml, AFAIK.  This can be
> implemented "right now", i.e., without any need for major restructuring.

That is precisely what I mean. More generally, I plan to design
a system of "lazy loading". But this is quite complicated,
because one has to be careful about all dependencies.
On the positive side, it increases modularity.

> Besides, I don't know about "disastrous".  It is noticeably longer, yes,
> but, I mean, it's only done once.  TeXmacs is not nedit, i.e., "Wow,
> that's a very cool quote ! Let me save that !" -> Run nedit -> Paste ->
> Save As -> Close nedit.  In my experience, TeXmacs is up and running for
> a while.

I agree, but many people stay at the first impression of a long boot time.
Also, when developing, it is more confortable to have a small boot time.