Very long startup time, high CPU load

[Yves Goergen]

What does Inkscape do with a full CPU core during the first minute or so before the window finally appears?

Windows 7 and 10
Inkscape 0.91 (and before)

[Mc (mc...)]

on the first launch ? caching fonts.

[Yves Goergen (ygoe)]

Hm, I just started it again and it was there fast (just a few seconds). I use it so rarely that I have the impression it has that long delay every time. I did start it before, at least when I installed it, and yet today it took so long again.

At least it should be telling me that it's there and I just need to wait. (And maybe even what it's doing that takes ages, together with a progress bar.) But now I get nothing at all. I even tried a second or third time in the past, ending up with two or three running instances after the same long time. I have a CPU monitor in my taskbar so I can guess something's going on, but most people do not and are left clueless as to why Inkscape doesn't start. People shouldn't need to open a bug to get to know that.

Maybe the process can be parallelised so it doesn't take a minute but only a few seconds.

[Larzan (larzans)]

I concur, at the very least there has to be some visual feedback for the user, this is very irritating.
I understand it only happens rarely, but a splashscreen should be the first thing on the todo list when starting the program.
Are there some problems making this difficult?

[deet (deet)]

Having the same issue.

Awaiting now for 20 mins for gui to load,
and no feedback during that time

[deet (deet)]

Sorry my system:

Windows 7
Inkscape 0.91

[Patrick Storz (ede123)]

The issue is mitigated in Inkscape 0.92 by using a fixed (non-temporary) path for the fontconfig cache, see bug #1196373.

With respect to the lack of progress indicator this is a duplicate of bug #1528629.