[OS X TeX] Large Figure in Document? (and slow response of TeXShop)

[Bernhard Barkow]

(This is a re-post, sorry, I had some troubles with formatting this  
message)

On 13.11.2005, at 00:47, Jung-Tsung Shen wrote:
> I am writing a paper with a large figure of 25 MB in eps format. After
> compiling, the viewer of TeXShop took a long long long time to draw
> the figure on the screen. After several runs of compilation (the paper
> is still in writing), TeXShop essentially becomes unresponsive, and I
> have to force quit from Dock.
>
> Is there anyway to improve the situation?
>
> My system is 10.4.3, with 512 MB memory.
>
> I also tried the same document in WinEdt on Windows, the performance
> actually is way better ... (The window machine tested has 1GB memory.
> Not sure if this makes difference.)
>
> I appreciate any suggestions in advance.
>
> JT
>
> PS. The eps figure is merely several simple black and white curves
> consisting of a huge amount of data points. I wonder if there's anyway
> to compress the figure?

Well, considering that a b/w Bitmap for a whole A4 page (21 x 29.7cm)  
at 300dpi equals about 1 MB of raw data, there is definitely space  
for improvements. If it isn't possible to reduce the number of  
datapoints in the curves, I'd suggest you just create a TIFF (or PNG;  
rather no JPEG) from the EPS once in the proper size and use this;  
even if you use a grayscale or 24bit color bitmap, I bet you would  
still see a significant improvement, since the (PDF or PS) renderer  
wouldn't have to render every single datapoint, but just include the  
bitmap.

I doubt that it is really a memory issue; OSX needs lots of memory,  
but it also allocates whatever memory is available (and uses it for  
caching etc.), so if high numbers are showing up as "used memory",  
this doesn't necessarily mean that you are runnning out of memory.

Hope that helps,
Bernhard


____________________________________________________
_________________________________ Bernhard Barkow __
___________________ gpg key ID _ A89F09C45921020D __




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