Re: [Bug-AUCTeX] rel-0-9-1; Two speed issues

[David Kastrup]

Ralf Stubner <address@hidden> writes:

> on my current setup preview-latex seems to be much slower than it
> used to be. I think I have found two possible reasons for this. I am
> attaching an example file and the output of 'C-c C-l' after the
> first preview run. I found the following issues:
>
> 1. No special format based on the preamble is used. This /might/ be
> related to the error that occured during creation of the format
> file, where natbib tried to redefine \makeindex. The format file is
> actually not written, although there is no indication of this in the
> log file. I don't have this problem if I don't use natbib.

The format file is written, but preview-latex decides not to use it
since an error occured when writing it.  So it gets removed again.  We
won't change that: dumping the preamble using mylatex.ltx can cause
errors even when the document would compile without it, so with an
error, we should not use it, period.  You can easily avoid the error
by using
\newcommand{\makeindex}{}
before loading natbib.sty, and obviously you should complain to the
author of natbib about this asinine behavior.

> 2. Things like the pagesize option of the KOMA-Script classes or
>     hyperref insert specials into the DVI file. These seem to cause
>     dvipng to call GhostScript when the options '--picky --noghostscript'
>     (default in preview-latex) are used. This is much slower and IMO
>     unnecessary in this case. At the moment I am not using these two
>     options which helps a bit, though eg the embeded MetaPost file is not
>     displayed then.

That is actually a wishlist item for dvipng.  Jan-Åke should be able
to answer that.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum