Re: Optimize script for generating LinuxManBook.pdf

Alejandro Colomar
2023-11-23T22:12:49Z

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Hi Deri,

On Thu, Nov 23, 2023 at 06:41:14PM +0000, Deri wrote:
> Hi Alex,
>
> It looks fine, although you have to run the code in
> "prepare_linux_man_book.pl" twice (to avoid using a temporary file).

Yep. I was wondering if we could change something in the design of
prepare_linux_man_book.pl so that it could be run once without needing
a temporary file. Maybe if it could insert something in the pages that
the latter troff(1) would process in one take, without having to put all
the bookmarks at the start of the file. That would be an important
simplification of the scripts, and probably also an optimization.

> If you
> are going to run preconv it is best to run it first - stops pic spitting out
> loads of warnings.

Thanks! Makes sense.

> You also dropped one stage in second pass, no pic in the
> pipeline. This may explain part of the speedup you observed. I don't know if
> any of your man pages require pic but they could in the future. The changes I
> would advise are:-

Thanks! I've applied those changes; will push in a moment. The speedup
is still the same; probably because pic(1)'s throughput is faster than
the consumers of its output, and its latency is negligible. Since it
doesn't slow down, I've added it, just in case we want to use pic(1) in
some page in the future, as you say.

Cheers,
Alex

>
> --- a/scripts/LinuxManBook/build_linux_man_book.sh
> +++ b/scripts/LinuxManBook/build_linux_man_book.sh
> @@ -4,8 +4,8 @@
>
> (
> "$(dirname "$0")"/prepare_linux_man_book.pl "$1" \
> - | pic \
> | preconv \
> + | pic \
> | tbl \
> | eqn -Tpdf \
> | troff -Tpdf -dPDF.EXPORT=1 -dLABEL.REFS=1 -dpaper=a4 \
> @@ -16,6 +16,7 @@
> "$(dirname "$0")"/prepare_linux_man_book.pl "$1";
> ) \
> | preconv \
> +| pic \
> | tbl \
> | eqn -Tpdf \
> | (
>
> Cheers
>
> Deri