DOCBOOK-APPS: Chunking performance

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

I've been experimenting with improving the performance of the chunking
stylesheets. The primary goal of my experiments was to get rid of the
hairy (and probably expensive) recalculation of prev/next for each
chunk.

If you're curious, please give

  http://nwalsh.com/chunk.xsl

and

  http://nwalsh.com/chunkfast.xsl

a try. Try using chunk.xsl with chunk.fast=0 and chunk.fast=1, the
output should be the same, but the "fast" version should be faster.
Using fast chunking requires support for the exsl:node-set() function
(which Saxon and xsltproc provide). Without it, there won't be any
difference.

The chunkfast.xsl stylesheet may be marginally faster than even the
fast version of chunk.xsl. It avoids calling exsl:node-set()
repeatedly, but will crash and burn if that function isn't supported.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | It is as easy for the strong man
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | to be strong, as it is for the
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee | weak to be weak.--Emerson