Re: Ghostrscript/GhostPDL 9.18 Release Candidate 1

Hello,

On Sep 24 16:29 Chris Liddell wrote (excerpt):
> Basically, compile inits builds all the initialization, resource and font
> files (and ICC profiles) into a ROM filesystem, and links that into the
> executable.

Yes, this is what I know from
ghostscript-9.18rc1/doc/Make.htm#Precompiled_data

I.e. I know the technical facts but I do not know
the reasoning behind.
For example I was wondering why "--disable-compile-inits" exists
at all regardless that according to this document it seems
that not using "--disable-compile-inits" has only advantages.

But what this document does not tell is the following:

> The benefit is that the exectuable is essentially self contained,
> and can always find the resources it needs.
>
> The down side is that the executable is considerably bigger,
> and installer/user customisations are harder.
>
> Most distributions opt to disable it because of the exe size,
> and to allow easier customisation of font substitutions and so on.

I would appreciate it if you could add those pros and cons to
doc/Make.htm#Precompiled_data


Now I can make a (hopefully) informed decision for SUSE/openSUSE:

I will - at least as a test - no longer use "--disable-compile-inits"
and see how many complaints I get (I have a personal estimation
but I don't dare to tell that right now ;-)

My current reasoning is:

I think the benefit of a self contained exectuable that always
has all its resources (which avoids possible issues)
outweights
the drwaback that customisations are no longer easily possible.

I think the considerably bigger executable is meaningless
because the smaller executable has to load its resources
one by one from the disk into memory (probably slower)
so that the overall memory usage when Ghostscript runs
should be basically the same.


Kind Regards
Johannes Meixner
-- 
SUSE LINUX GmbH - GF: Felix Imendoerffer, Jane Smithard,
Graham Norton - HRB 21284 (AG Nuernberg)