[Texmacs-dev] Re: [TeXmacs] Re: TeXmacs on CygWin

[David Allouche]

On Mon, 2005-12-19 at 11:02 +0100, Joris van der Hoeven wrote:
> After installing extra fonts in ~/.TeXmacs, you have to restart TeXmacs using
> 
>       texmacs --delete-font-cache
> 
> or
> 
>       texmacs --delete-cache

Requiring the user to pass magic command-line arguments to let TeXmacs
do the right thing (when adding fonts, plugins, changing style files,
etc.) because it is using caches that do not have invalidation semantics
is just broken.

There are efficient ways to detect that cached data is still valid (with
reasonable confidence), for example using stat signatures and directory
listings as a fast check.

In the case of fonts, failure to compile a font should maybe not be
cached on disk. A failed font compilation is fast (isn't it?), the value
of the cache is in preventing multiple successful (slow) compilations of
the same font. Also, failed font compilations cause a document to be
displayed incorrectly, so the common case _should_ be _no_ failure.

Explicit cache purging in the default configuration should only ever be
necessary if the cache invalidation logic is buggy, and as a debugging
and diagnostic aid. Requiring users to explicitly purge caches in normal
operation is wrong.
-- 
                                                            -- ddaa

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