Re: Handling large files with Emacs

[Tom <adatgyujto@gmail.com>]

Jambunathan K <kjambunathan <at> gmail.com> writes:
> >
> > I think it's because syntax highlight or something. When I try opening
> > SQL dumps (say, 200MB) then Emacs grinds to a halt for a minute or
> > so, and moving in the file is very slow even after that.
> 
> Have you experimented with `font-lock-maximum-size' together with
> `font-lock-support-mode'?
> 

Not yet, because I rarely need this and if I do then it's simpler to open
the file in fundamental mode.

But the real question is if font locking is really  the cuplrit then why
do we need to resort such special settings? We have fast enough computers
and AFAIK jit font-lock is the default, so it should not be a problem.
Even if lisp perfomance cannot be improved much, font lock should be
clever enough to stay in the background and do stealth fontification
on remote parts of the large buffer only if the user is idle and only
in chunks, so it can yield to user input. Isn't this what JIT font-lock
is supposed to do in the first place?