Re: Optimize script for generating LinuxManBook.pdf

Deri
2023-11-23T18:42:05Z

On Wednesday, 22 November 2023 14:58:56 GMT Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> Hi Deri,
>
> I've optimized from 18.5 s down to 16.3 s the script, by splitting the
> pipeline with this wrapper (and slightly reducing the perl script to
> just print the pages to stdout). BTW, now it can be run from any
> directory. And every step can be debugged by just introducing
>
> | tee /dev/tty \
>
> wherever you want to debug. It's all pushed to master.
>
> The PDF is now printed to stdout, to avoid hard-coding file names.
>
> I still need to split a bit more and reduce the longest lines. How does
> this script look to you?
>
> Cheers,
> Alex :-)
>

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

--- 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