Re: [xep-support] XEP 371 multi-threading

From: Nikolai Grigoriev (grig@renderx.com)
Date: Mon Mar 08 2004 - 00:32:04 PST

  • Next message: Alexander Peshkov: "Re[2]: [xep-support] XEP 371 multi-threading"

    David,

    > I use xep to transform an xml file to xsl-fo and then render the pdf,
    > so i use xep to perform 2 steps. I was wondering if performance
    > gains could be achieved by separating out the transform step?

    For XEP 3.7.x, there is a chance to increase performance
    if you do the transformation in a slightly different manner:

    - make your transformer an XMLReader (e.g. by using
      SAXTransformerFactory.newTransformerHandler(...);
    - specify it as parser to create a SAXSource, and then pass
      the result to FormatterImpl.render().

    (This advice is applicable only to 3.7: we expect that XEP 3.8
    will have the identical performance when called either way).

    Additional tips:

    1. Try not to call cleanup() too often. This method cleans up
    internal caches for fonts and images, and subsequent calls
    to the formatter will have to re-parse the fonts (which actually
    takes quite a bit of time). If you are using a closed set of
    images and fonts, than it is advisable to call cleanup()
    only once, when the FormatterImpl object is disposed of.

    2. FormatterImpl is a costly object, but it's thread safe.
    Unless you need several different configurations simultaneously,
    you can consider creating a single static instance, and access it from
    several threads. You can easily create many FOTransformer
    objects from a single Formatter: they don't interfere with each other.

    (Please note that FOTransformer is reusable but _not_ thread safe:
    it can transform several documents in sequence, but not in
    parallel. This limitation is due to JAXP, and is outside our control).

    > Perhaps I could use Xalan or Saxon to do the transform and
    > pass xep the xslfo to render? I beleive xep uses JAXP...and
    > maybe using another transformation engine (with freedom
    > to optimise the engine) woudl help.

    JAXP is just an interface, implemented by both Saxon and Xalan.
    You can control which engine is picked by setting a system
    property, javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory, to the
    class name of the desired implementation. Please also note
    that FOTransformer can be constructed from a JAXP Transformer
    object; you can pass an explicitly created Xalan or Saxon
    implementation there.

    Regards,
    Nikolai Grigoriev
    RenderX

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