Re: xelatex running maketextfm far too often

Hi Norbert,

    with a simple document that tries to load a non-existing font,
    xelatex tries to run mktextfm faaaar too many times ...

I surmise fontspec is trying to load the WhateverUnknownFont multiple
times. If it remembered the failed result, at least mktextfm would only
be called once. I don't think it makes sense for mktextfm itself to try
to remember this, though I suppose it could.

    Is it possible to turn this off or change the behaviour?

Anything's possible, you know that :). Untested, off the top of my head:
1) xelatex --no-mktex=tfm
2) set envvar MKTEXTFM_xelatex=0, or MKTEXTFM in general.
3) set MKTEXTFM.xelatex=0 in a texmf.cnf.

We could/should? do this in the default texmf.cnf.  But if someone tries
to use the good old larm* etc. Cyrillic fonts, it will be awfully
painful without it. That's the case I've seen still come up in practive,
though not so much with XeTeX/LuaTeX. -k