On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 12:46:51PM +0200, Jesper Tverskov scripsit:
> Why is the XSL-FO to PDF step so slow!

Layout is a hard problem.

> We are talking about only two pages of PDF output. I must admit that
> those two pages contain a hell of a lot of complex tables. Is that the
> problem?
> 
> Is there any way to speed up to XSL-FO to PDF step?
> 
> 1)      Would a commercial FO-processor help me out?
> 
> 2)      Is there any tutorial around for how to optimize the FO
> conversion speed?

So far as I know, the only rule is "don't specify anything you don't
have to specify".  It's otherwise difficult to optimize FO processing --
the actual layout step -- because there may be only one way to express
what you want to see, and the whole point is a particular layout.

Commercial FO-processors are faster, but not eye-blink fast.  Layout,
especially of complex tables, goes off into the land of seriously
polynomial time very easily.  I used to treat a second per page as an
 acceptable number when dealing with substantial index documents.

-- 
Graydon Saunders        XML tools and processes for information delivery.
graydon@xxxxxxxxxxxx