Antonio Gervasoni <agervasoni <at> gmail.com> writes: > I've been using Lilypond for over a year and I've always noticed it requires > a lot of CPU resources to engrave a score. This is especially noticeable > when working on big orchestral scores. I use a Macbook Pro and one single > engraving of an orchestral score, speeds up the fan and the left-hand corner > of the machine gets very hot. This doesn't happen when I process a single > instrument part; although, if I make changes and process the part several > times in quick succession, the machine gets equally hot.
This is normal for any large and complex job of compiling from source code. The compiler is supposed to read the code and convert it to something else (another kind of code, or here, PDF) as fast as possible. Often that means maxing out at least one CPU core for as long as the job is running. Another example: I've been using LaTeX beamer documents for presentations (by way of org-mode export, but that's not strictly relevant). These are shorter documents (20-30 "pages") and there's a lot less visual information on each page than there would be in a full orchestral score, but still, the CPU meter reports that one core is working full speed for 5 seconds or so. I also see full CPU use for several minutes when I rebuild SuperCollider from source (especially after a header file changed, which forces all dependent files to be recompiled). It's inherent in the write-compile-edit-recompile workflow. This architecture gives lilypond some distinct advantages in the marketplace, but it does have the disadvantage that even a small change requires redoing all of the typesetting work from scratch. I don't think anyone would say that this is not a disadvantage of lilypond -- but, for my uses at least, lilypond's advantages more than compensate. Computers are supposed to be designed to handle intensive demands. That's why your fan spins up -- it's the hardware doing what it's supposed to do to keep everything working while the computer has a harder job to finish. hjh _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
