Re: w32-find-bdf-fonts does not close file handles of files examined

[Jason Rumney <jasonr@gnu.org>]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> Btw, why are we using memory-mapped files for this functionality?
>   

It predates the inclusion of w32bdf.c in Emacs (the implementation is
based on mw32bdf.c from Meadow, a Japanese fork of Emacs 20), but I
think the reason for using memory mapping is that some East Asian fonts
are very large, and ten years ago when this code was written, the
difference between reading a file into memory and mapping it mattered a
lot more. I can see that in this particular function where the file is
closed again immediately, it offers no advantage, and is actually a loss
on Windows 9X, which doesn't support swapping directly from
memory-mapped files, but the new font backend in Emacs 23 will
eventually replace this code anyway, so there is not much point in
making major changes now.