Re: w32-find-bdf-fonts does not close file handles of files examined

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2007 14:22:20 +0100
> From: Jason Rumney <jasonr@gnu.org>
> Cc: bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> 
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Btw, why are we using memory-mapped files for this functionality?
> >   
> 
> It predates the inclusion of w32bdf.c in Emacs (the implementation is
> based on mw32bdf.c from Meadow, a Japanese fork of Emacs 20), but I
> think the reason for using memory mapping is that some East Asian fonts
> are very large, and ten years ago when this code was written, the
> difference between reading a file into memory and mapping it mattered a
> lot more. I can see that in this particular function where the file is
> closed again immediately, it offers no advantage, and is actually a loss
> on Windows 9X, which doesn't support swapping directly from
> memory-mapped files, but the new font backend in Emacs 23 will
> eventually replace this code anyway, so there is not much point in
> making major changes now.

Thanks for the explanation.  I wondered about this precisely because
we close the file immediately.