On 6/27/06, David Arnold wrote:
OK,
I've updated to the latest context via Gerben's i-installer on my mac osx 10.4.6.
I have no idea what texmfstart is nor do I understand its purpose.
I imagine the first thing I have to do is configure, because it is certainly not found on my system.
...
For example:
tmp $ texexec --version
TeXExec 5.4.3 - ConTeXt / PRAGMA ADE 1997-2005
texexec : TeXExec 5.4.3 - ConTeXt / PRAGMA ADE 1997-2005 texutil : TeXUtil 9.0.1 - ConTeXt / PRAGMA ADE 1992-2006 tex : pdfeTeX, 3.141592-1.30.4-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.5) context : ver: 2006.06.23 20:39 cont-en : ver: 2006.06.23 20:39 fmt: 2006.6.27 mes: english cont-nl : ver: 2006.06.23 20:39 fmt: 2006.6.27 mes: dutch
total run time : 3 seconds
warning : use 'texmfstart texexec' instead
Now for questions:
1. How do I configure my system to use texmstart?
Under windows it comes as an executable, under linux I sometimes created an executable file named texexec (in the bin folder of course) with the content ruby path-to-context-ruby-scripts/texmfstart.rb Here's a citation from a mac user: On 5/25/06, Hans van der Meer wrote:
I did some digging in the .../context/ruby script directory and found a small problem with the script, at least for some users.
On my MacOSX system the script file(s) needed the execute bits set, so I did: cd ..../context/ruby (sudo) chmod -R a+x *.rb
And of course an alias "texmfstart=texmfstart.rb" comes in handy.
I hope this helps others who might be struggling to get texmfstart running.
Hans van der Meer
Something should be automated here I suppose. The MikTeX guy wasn't extremely responsive to it, tetex isn't maintained any more, perhaps at least you Mac guys could/should do something about it. Can someone write a note to the contextgarden about how to do configure the texmfstart properly?
2. What are some of the usual uses I should be employing of texmfstart?
As a regular user you shouldn't note it's presence once you set it up properly. But generally you can use it to run stuff such as "texmfstart mptopdf" without having to worry whether mptopdf is a perl or ruby program, you can use it to edit config files, open documentation and so on, but the list is way to long (and I don't know it all/don't know how to use all its features) ... Most notable the modern modules which call external programs are written in such a way that they execute "texmfstart name-of-the-script", for example "texmfstart pstopdf some-ps-file" instead of "pstopdf some-ps-file". This means that the user doesn't need "pstopdf" to be present on the system as an executable command and means better portability.
How will it improve performance?
Just as George N. White said: performance in terms of how-many-seconds-per-run is not really the question, but I guess that it might improve performance since it might use more clever methods to execute things. I know that Hans has somehow rewritten the kapathsea and mpto, but I don't really know which scripts are responsible for calling them and for faster execution. However: you don't need to worry about performance. Hans does. If you care about performance in mp labels, you can improve it considerable by using texexec.rb (and texmfstart to start it) an by switching from btex ... etex to textext("...") and \sometxt (aproximately ten times faster on my examples and able to do some crazy things that have never been possible with btex ... etex or textext). But well ... the presence of texmfstart is essential in this case.
How will it simplify my work? Etc? I.e what are the advantages?
Portability. Support: sooner or later you'll figure out that the old texexec.pl doesn't do what it's supposed to do (mp labels being one of the problems for example). Hans is willing to work on improving the texexec.rb, but not on fixing the old stuff that will become obsolete one day anyway. Mojca