Let it run

[Steve Litt]

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.

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.

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.

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