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

[Joris van der Hoeven]

On Fri, Dec 30, 2005 at 04:15:43PM +0100, David Allouche wrote:
> 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.

Do unix directories not simply maintain the date of
a last modification in one of the files in a directory?

Anyway, if someone wants to improve the caching system, please feel free.
I don't have time for this now, but I agree that this would be nice.
The caching system is quite independent from the rest of TeXmacs,
so this should not be too hard for someone else than me.

> 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?)

No, it can be even slower than a successful compilation.

> Requiring users to explicitly purge caches in normal operation is wrong.

Replace "users" by "developers" though. In case of correct
installation of TeXmacs, it should never be necessary to
explictly purge the cache.