Re: [MiKTeX] Refresh FNDB database?

[George N. W. I. <gn...@gm...>]

On 4/11/07, Matthias Brennwald (bwm) <mat...@na...> wrote:

> To make a long story short: I don't see the point of the FNDB thing. As
> far as I understand MikTeX knows the paths where the TeX stuff is (the
> 'roots' in the MikTeX settings). However, for some reason it does not
> automatically look for files there. It rather uses the FNDB thing, which
> I find cumbersome.

The point of the FNDB (MikTeX) or ls-R files (web2c implementations)
is to manage the cost of searching the texmf trees for the file you
need.   Some filesystems are pretty good at caching directories, so
repeating the same search is pretty fast.  This means many systems
would be useable for typical work where you edit a document and run
tex multiple times, always using the input files, but TeX needs to
work on lots of different systems, network drives, etc. and for jobs
(such as creating .fmt files) that aren't repetitive as well as cases
where other jobs may me searching for files so caching doesn't help.

Some people may have usage patterns where the bother of maintaining
FNDB outweighs the benefits, but those same people benefit from the
efforts of the people who develop and test the tools.  That work
requires very different usage patterns from those of typical users.
Those people certainly do need FNDB badly enough that they put a lot
of programming effort into creating it.

-- 
George N. White III <aa...@ch...>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia