rstudio / rstudio/tinytex

Potential feature - accelerated compilation

Open
#214 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

help wanted
Dominant language
R
Stars
1.2k
Forks
127
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

I recently came across this question on SE, where someone has managed to make pdflatex much faster (particularly for large documents) by "pre-compiling" the preamble. The accepted answer mentions that there's a package mylatexformat that can assist in this process. I was wondering if you thought it might be a feature worth introducing to tinytex? I wonder, also, if a similar approach might work with xelatex, as that compiles noticeably slower than pdflatex, although I don't really know why so maybe this won't help.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reviewing the linked TeX Stack Exchange discussion and the mylatexformat package, then investigate how pdflatex and xelatex compilation are invoked in tinytex. Determine whether pre-compiling the preamble is feasible for both engines and define a measurable acceleration target before proposing the feature.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
latex
Domain
build-system, performance
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
18/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.