Server boot time - font init

[Richard Gaskin]

Looking for ways to streamline CGI performance I made this simple script 
to measure boot time:

#!livecode-server
put "Howdy!"
quit

...and then ran it with strace to see the system calls it makes:

strace -v -o lctrace.txt  ./test.lc

Looking at the resulting output file I was surprised to find that more 
than 3/4 of all system calls during boot of the SERVER engine are 
related to FONT management.

I realize that LC Server now also provides graphics handling, so I can 
appreciate the need for the lengthy font init.  But for apps where fonts 
will never be used, should there be a way to turn that off?  Maybe with 
a flag in the command line?

3/4 of boot instructions seems worth trimming if we can.

Should I submit a request for an optional -f flag for LC Server to turn 
off font init?

Or would it be more helpful to turn off all graphics initialization with 
something like -g?



Also, for Mark Weider or anyone else familiar with Linux enough to help 
with this:

I see a lot of lines in the strace output like this:

access("/etc/ld.so.nohwcap", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or 
directory)

What is nohwcap, and why would the engine keep looking for it over and 
over after it's already been told it isn't there?

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
  Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/FourthWorldSys