I've created the .compose-cache but I guess I'm not sure what exactly it does. Does anyone know? Which apps are currently utilizing this? I only see two small cache files (>1MB) in the folder and I don't exactly understand what's being cached.
libX11 now caches the compose tables. These are typically large for UTF8 locales. Compose tables are used for DeadKeys (like '`~ on European keyboard layouts) and for the Compose mechanism (most users don't even know it exists). But the tables had to be parsed for each X application on startup time.
I would also like to understand what exactly is being cached and how it is affecting performance.
Approx. 40-200ms decreased startup time for every X application, depending on your processor. Approx. 240KB saved memory per X application. These numbers are only valid for UTF8 locales. They would be much smaller for other locales or personal (small) .XCompose files.
I also get warnings such as following when I start any X-based program Ignoring broken XimCache /home/oshogg/.XCompose
Wow. That might be a bug. Can you mail me your .XCompose file and a 'ls -al ~/.compose-cache'? There should be an easy fix for that, but I'd like to know what happens here. You should be able to nuke this message by just moving all files from ~/.compose-cache to a different location (for later examination).
Any idea what this means? Is .XCompose supposed to be a file or directory? what should it contain?
That comment implies to me that you did not create this file by intention. Hm. That's strange... You'll find a typical compose file e.g. in /usr/lib/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose Though personal compose files would be *much* smaller... Thanks Matthias -- Matthias Hopf <mhopf@suse.de> __ __ __ Maxfeldstr. 5 / 90409 Nuernberg (_ | | (_ |__ mat@mshopf.de Phone +49-911-74053-715 __) |_| __) |__ labs www.mshopf.de