[cairo] 1.1.6 to 1.2.0 performance

[Murray Cumming]

[snip]
> I don't believe any other OS would do better with fonts spread out
> over 900+ directories.
>
> I suppose what we really need is a nice font management system that
> would make it easy to only have the fonts you actually need at any
> given time in the search path.

This has always seemed like a workaround to me. A solution to the
performance problem seems much more desirable, though I don't personally
know what that solution is.

>  If, say, Adobe's FontFolio were
> installed on a box, having just a few families vs the whole CD in
> the search path makes a HUGE difference.
>
> This is not to say there isn't any room for improvement, but lots of
> fonts means either lots of RAM or lots of wait....

Maybe less information could be cached when there is less RAM available.
The main thing is to know what directory a font is in to avoid looking at
all those directories. Re-reading from one directory is still preferrable
to reading 900 directories, even if it isn't as good as just reading from
memory.



Murray Cumming
murrayc at murrayc.com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com