Let it run

[Daniel]

On 2020-05-01 21:18, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Fri, 1 May 2020 12:12:39 +0200
> Daniel <xracoonx at gmx.de> wrote:
> 
>> On 2020-05-01 09:10, Steve Litt wrote:
>>> On Thu, 30 Apr 2020 22:29:04 +0200
>>> Daniel <xracoonx at gmx.de> wrote:
>>>    
>>>> Hi
>>>>
>>>> I have a large document that takes more than 10 minutes to compile.
>>>> In between LyX seems to stop the process to ask me whether I want
>>>> to "Let it run" or "Stop it". Is there a way to turn this dialog
>>>> off? Otherwise, I always have to attend to LyX while waiting for
>>>> the typesetting to finish.
>>>
>>> When you say "large" document, what do you mean? How large is large?
>>> Are you doing graphical conversions on huge graphical files? Is this
>>> thing the size of the Encyclopedia Britannica?
>>>
>>> I have a LyX source document for a 309 page book that compiles to
>>> PDF in ten seconds. The source file is 1.23MB. Here are my
>>> computer's stats:
>>>
>>> 2 core, 65 watt AMD A6-6400K 2core that runs at about 3Ghz, 16GB
>>> RAM, lots and lots and lots of disk space, with /usr being an SSD,
>>> about 5 years old now. Void Linux. Not an ancient cripple, but by
>>> no means state of the art.
>>>
>>> I think your first question isn't "how can I turn off the dialog",
>>> but "why does this compile take so long, and what can I do about
>>> it?"
>>> SteveT
>>>
>>> Steve Litt
>>> March 2020 featured book: Troubleshooting: Why Bother?
>>> http://www.troubleshooters.com/twb
>>>    
>>
>> It's 250 pages. A lot of inkscape graphics, tables, a huge amount of
>> cross references, biblatex/biber references. 2.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel
>> Core i7, 16 GB ram, 15 GB disk space. I thought about bisecting the
>> document but didn't have the time yet because compiling the
>> bisections takes so long. I compile it rather rarely these days and
>> work mainly just in LyX.
>>
>> Daniel
>>
> 
> Now we're getting somewhere. LyX can't use .svg (Inkscape) directly, so
> it must convert them on compile. I'd define the graphics as something
> LyX *can* deal with directly, like .pdf and others, and just do .svg
> conversions when an inkscape file changes.

It's very simple graphics and it doesn't look like Inkscape takes a lot 
of time for the conversion. So, I'd be a bit surprised if that was the 
main culprit.

> The fact that it's 2.2GHz in this day and age tells me it's probably a
> laptop. Are you by any chance running Windows? If so, you need to speed
> up your software by removing all that krap your hardware vendor
> "helpfully" placed on the computer at time of sale. You probably need
> to trim down and optimize the registry. Defrag frequently, optimize
> your virtual memory, and use the Windows equivalent of fstrim if you
> have a SSD drive.

It's a MacBook Pro not a Windows device.

> If doing all these things doesn't bring it down to under a minute, try
> to eyeball where in the compile it slows down, and investigate that.

How can I "eyeball" it?

> If you do all this and it still takes several minutes, you might do
> better to split the book into chapters, and have the Windows equivalent
> of the make utility compile only what has had its dependencies change.
> 
> If you have a friend running Linux on a fairly new and robust DESKtop
> computer, try compiling it there. If it's 10 seconds on your friend's
> comptuter, and ten minutes on yours, then a few hardware or software
> tweaks can probably fix your problem.
> 
> SteveT
> 
> Steve Litt
> March 2020 featured book: Troubleshooting: Why Bother?
> http://www.troubleshooters.com/twb
> 

Daniel