On 12/20/2023 3:48 PM, Axel Kittenberger wrote:
On Wed, Dec 20, 2023 at 2:31 PM Hans Hagen <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
in practice one can neglect the performance drop because computers
likely have become (more than) 3 times faster since 2005, when luatex
showed up, and at that time pdftex performance was considered okay
Sorry, but I have to disagree here, for me the performance differences
were indeed a dealbreaker for me to push lualatex as a general
purpose replacement in my department. (remember the discussion with one
patch https://tug.org/pipermail/luatex/2023-June/007824.html
<https://tug.org/pipermail/luatex/2023-June/007824.html> but with my
general impetus to improve runtime performance I was eventually told to
stop when profiling into the Lua part proofed hard).
I don't consider these ipsum test real tests. Who knows how much cpu
cache is used for a test that does basically nothing. If zip impact is
an issue, then you can run comprelevel 0. You can also disable synctex
if enabled.
A useless test with context:
\null / \dorecurse{1000}{\tufte\par} % 233 pages
0.6 / 1.1 seconds pdftex
0.7 / 2.7 seconds luatex
0.5 / 2.6 seconds luametatex
0.8 / 5.5 seconds xetex
the time includes the runner script (so for instance for luametatex the
real run has < .5 sec startup time). xetex migh tbe slow because of the
binary (not sure how optimized it is).
In documents of average complexity i normally get 30 page/second
performance. On more complex documents pdftex can be slower. I have a
2017 laptop so more modern hardware will gove lower numbers
(I'i do regular perfrmance tests so by now i know pretty well where
bottlenecks in tex can be)
Why it may be true, that lualatex may run now in less time on the same
document than pdflatex ran 20 years ago, it's still a tall ask for
someone to switch from a compiler that uses 150s for a complicated
document to one that uses 210s, in this case just for
compatibility/simplicity reasons, having to wait a minute longer? Sorry
deal breaker. That's why I stuck to pdflatex as default and use lualatex
only when one of its more advanced features is absolutely necessary, and
to my impression this seems to be a widespread notion.
i can't remember the last time when i needed 150 sec for a run, and can
live with 10 sec for a 350 page document (if that becomes an issue i
have to upgrade hardware)
So in this sense, yes you are right, when you need one of lualatex
advanced features it's to be considered okay, as in pdflatex was okay 20
years ago, if you do not specifically need it though, then no, stick
with pdflatex.
indeed. i suppose that most latex users can just use pdftex, because
after all the selling point is often 'articles' and such and those
styles are (i assume ) pretty stable and when the language is english
there is little to gain from luatex (even 8 bit fonts are okay then)
just use what works best (pdftex will be around for ages); i assume
latex will become faster over time so maybe in a few years your users
won't notice a move to luatex
Hans
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Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
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