[Tex/LaTex] XeLaTeX runs slow on Windows machine

xetex

I am running TeXLive 2016 on a Windows 7 machine. In the past, when I ran XeLaTeX on a new file that used mathspec, the first compilation would take a long time, regardless of the length of the document. (For what it's worth, I am using the Calibri font.) Watching the Build Output scroll by (using TeXnicCenter), there would always be a pause on the line

xelatex> (c:/texlive/2016/texmf-dist/tex/latex/euenc/eu1enc.def)

which comes right before the line

xelatex> (c:/texlive/2016/texmf-dist/tex/latex/euenc/eu1lmr.fd).

After this first compilation, xelatex would run fast, comparable to pdflatex (if I didn't use mathspec).

Now it hangs at this spot all the time, adding 20+ seconds to each compilation. Is there something that I can do to speed this up?

EDIT: On the advice from the comment, I ran a process monitor and it seems that xelatex.exe is reading every font in my fonts directory. Is there a way to keep that from happening?

Best Answer

I've been wrestling with the same issue too after upgrading TeXLive from 2013 to 2016. Each compilation started to take over a minute and the process monitor showed a lot of font files being read.

Running fc-cache.exe from the LaTeX distribution's bin folder (as indicated by the comment above) fixed the issue without reinstalling TeXLive.

Please note that the distribution's texmf-var\fonts\cache folder needs to be writeable to the user running fc-cache.exe.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Producing PDF/X compliant document with XeLaTeX

You need to put some specific metadata inside resulting pdf with \special command, add some info with hyperref package and then compile with xelatex option -output-driver="xdvipdfmx -V 3". Look at example:

% !TeX program = xelatex 
%%%%Needs to be compiled with commandline: "xelatex.exe -output-driver="xdvipdfmx -V 3" %.tex" % as PDF 1.3 required by PDF/X
\documentclass{book}

%%%%%%%%% PDF-X stuff, IF USING xelatex %%%%%%%%%
%(mm size * 72)/25.4 = bp size
\usepackage{atbegshi}
\AtBeginShipout{% %A hook that is executed for every page (after first one)
    \special{pdf: put @thispage
      <<
        /TrimBox [0 0 210.990 162.086] %put here other numbers = size of page in bp
      >>
    }
}
\special{pdf: put @thispage
  <<
    /TrimBox [0 0 210.990 162.086] %put here other numbers = size of page in bp
  >>
}
\special{pdf:docinfo
  <<
    /GTS_PDFXVersion (PDF/X-1:2001)
    /GTS_PDFXConformance (PDF/X-1a:2001)
  >>
}

\special{pdf:put @catalog
<<
  /PageMode /UseNone
  /OutputIntents [
    <<
      /Info (none)
      /Type /OutputIntent
      /S /GTS_PDFX
      /OutputConditionIdentifier (Custom)
      /RegistryName (http://www.color.org/)
    >>
  ]
>>
}%

\usepackage{datetime} % for \pdfdate command

\usepackage{hyperref} % for \hypersetup

\hypersetup{% 
    pdftitle={DocTitle},% PDF/X document should have a title
    pdfinfo={% Setting some more PDF/X stuff for xelatex
        ModDate={D:\pdfdate},% PDF/X document should have a modification date
        Trapped={False},% PDF/X document should have Trapped tag set
    },
}


\begin{document}
Some text
\end{document}

Another example, compilable in lualatex, pdflatex and xelatex: http://gist.github.com/LSinev/98c0a40e94f4507922a8

[Tex/LaTex] problem with XeTeX font cacheing

By experiments, I found that the renaming,

cachefile.NEW --> cachefile

almost always fails if executed from the XeTeX binary even in a user's writable directory. Thus if you find a delay of time, run

fc-cache -v

If messages

invalid cache file: ...

are shown, run

fc-cache -v

once more. It seems that this is the solution, as Ulrike stated.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Producing PDF/X compliant document with XeLaTeX

[Tex/LaTex] problem with XeTeX font cacheing

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