[OS X TeX] Re: The microtype mystery

Fri Aug 20 11:24:38 EDT 2010

Oh gosh, I do not think they are really the types for microtype. 

Now, that was a bad joke. I should really go home and cook dinner.

Cheers,

On Aug 20, 2010, at 17:17 , George Gratzer wrote:

> By the way, Martin, off topic, I am really impressed by your fellow Swede, 
> the journalist Blomkvist. He would have had the courage and tenacity
> to solve this mystery, especially, if helped by Lisbeth.
> 
> GG
> 
> 
> On 2010-08-20, at 10:06 AM, Martin Berggren wrote:
> 
>> But the really interesting problem for us outsiders is why this happens...
>> 
>> On Aug 20, 2010, at 17:02 , George Gratzer wrote:
>> 
>>> I just woke up that my problem is solved!
>>> 
>>>> Interestingly, the amssymb package---which loads the amsfonts package---appears to have all the symbols that latexsym contains so there is no need for the duplication and the speed difference is obvious. Am I wrong here?
>>> 
>>> First, Herb you are wrong. My recollection is that latexsym defines about a dozen symbols
>>> that amsfonts does not. It seems, however, that I do not need any one of them. So I commented out
>>> 
>>> \RequirePackage{latexsym}
>>> 
>>> in the sty file and here are the results:
>>> 
>>> without microtype:
>>> 
>>> real	0m2.604s
>>> user	0m2.534s
>>> sys	0m0.067s
>>> 
>>> with microtype:
>>> 
>>> real	0m7.172s
>>> user	0m7.103s
>>> sys	0m0.062s
>>> 
>>> PERFECT!
>>> 
>>> I am really grateful for your help Martin and Herb. Ido not know how you came up
>>> with the idea that latexsym could be a factor. To me it was only a definition
>>> of a dozen commands...
>>> 
>>> I will report soon what these times are like with the new iMac.
>>> 
>>> GG
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 2010-08-20, at 7:41 AM, Herbert Schulz wrote:
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Aug 20, 2010, at 4:56 AM, Martin Costabel wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Josep Maria Font wrote:
>>>>> []
>>>>>> Again, a very large increase factor! The preamble of the document is:
>>>>>> \documentclass[a4paper]{article}
>>>>>> \usepackage{fixltx2e}
>>>>>> \usepackage{amssymb,latexsym}                         \usepackage{amsmath,amsthm}
>>>>>> \usepackage{bm}                 \usepackage{enumerate}
>>>>>> \usepackage{mathtools}
>>>>>> \usepackage{url}
>>>>>> I will e-mail the files privately to Robert. 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Here is another data point, obtained by playing with your preamble.
>>>>> 
>>>>> From my own experiment, I would suspect the interaction of microtype with the latexsym or similar packages:
>>>>> 
>>>>> I took some random article of mine (46 pages; if others want to repeat this experiment, the latex sources, two files, are publicly available here: <http://arxiv.org/format/1002.1772v1>). Then I inserted after the \documentclass line
>>>>> 
>>>>> \usepackage{microtype}
>>>>> 
>>>>> and then \usepackage{latexsym}, or alternatively just the following two lines from latexsym.sty:
>>>>> 
>>>>> \DeclareSymbolFont{lasy}{U}{lasy}{m}{n}
>>>>> \SetSymbolFont{lasy}{bold}{U}{lasy}{b}{n}
>>>>> 
>>>>> These two lines do absolutely nothing visible, as far as I can tell. But here are the timings from
>>>>> 
>>>>> time pdflatex CoDaNi_2010_art1
>>>>> 
>>>>> on my MbookPro core2duo:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Original file:
>>>>> user	0m1.835s
>>>>> 
>>>>> With just the two lines from latexsym.sty:
>>>>> user	0m1.909s
>>>>> 
>>>>> With \usepackage{microtype} alone:
>>>>> user	0m8.591s
>>>>> 
>>>>> With \usepackage{microtype} plus the two lines from latexsym.sty:
>>>>> user	0m49.910s
>>>>> 
>>>>> This is a factor of roughly 5 for microtype alone, and of 25 for microtype+latexsym. The extra time is spent in raw computing cpu time, no system calls or disk activity.
>>>>> 
>>>>> -- 
>>>>> Martin
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Howdy,
>>>> 
>>>> Interestingly, the amssymb package---which loads the amsfonts package---appears to have all the symbols that latexsym contains so there is no need for the duplication and the speed difference is obvious. Am I wrong here?
>>>> 
>>>> Good Luck,
>>>> 
>>>> Herb Schulz
>>>> (herbs at wideopenwest dot com)
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
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>>> 
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>> 
>> Martin Berggren
>> 
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Department of Computing Science, Umeå Universitet
>> S-901 87 Umeå, Sweden. http://www.cs.umu.se/~martinb,
>> Martin.Berggren at cs.umu.se, Ph: +46-90-786 6307, +46-70-732 8111 (cell)
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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>> 
> 
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Martin Berggren

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Department of Computing Science, Umeå Universitet
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Martin.Berggren at cs.umu.se, Ph: +46-90-786 6307, +46-70-732 8111 (cell)