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As discussed in this post and also this post, pdftex has the ability of copying PNG files as-is if they are in the right format. This is very useful for me (I’m experimenting with 1024×786px background images for my beamer slides).

My files are in the right format, because compiling with pdflatex, I see 

</home/jojo/texmf/tex/latex/substrate-beamer/substrate0.png (PNG copy)>

in the .log file.

But compiling the same file with xelatex (which I’d like to use for the proper font), compilation takes a lot of extra time (and does so only if I include the pictures), and there are no indication in the .log that the PNGs are copied. So I assume that they are extracted and recompressed, which explains the long wait.

Does xelatex have different requirements for PNG files to be copied? Or does it simply not support this feature?

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Joachim Breitner
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  • I made a test with a 'huge' png file from OpenClipart.org and indeed, xelatex takes about twice as long as pdflatex, but lualatex is as fast as pdflatex. Perhaps that's a way to bypass the bottleneck and being able to use the other fonts as well –  Aug 29 '16 at 13:31
  • I never really got into the pdftex vs. luatex vs. xetex issue… it seems that luatex likes my file, and indeed is much faster. Thanks! – Joachim Breitner Aug 29 '16 at 13:33
  • I basically never use xelatex or lualatex, so I can't provide a reason why xelatex enters a Windows idle-loop there ;-) –  Aug 29 '16 at 13:35

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