[XeTeX] [texhax] Throughput

[Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

Peter Davis wrote:

> 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.

Even this :

     \loop
     \ifnum \count 0 < 34001
         \topglue 0 pt
         \eject
     \repeat
     \end

takes 1 minute on my 3.6GHz P4, so "a matter of minutes" might
be a little on the optimistic side (although ten hours does seem
a tad excessive ...).

Philip Taylor