Speed improvements for troff? HELP!

[phil%rice at sri-unix.UUCP]

From:  William LeFebvre <phil at rice>

This quote seems to fit in rather well:

	Efficiency is always a problem, and is likely to be so forever,
	especially with the proliferation of preprocessors generating
	ever more complicated input.  Small improvements (perhaps 10
	percent) can be had from artifices like better table searching.
	Placing the temporary file upon which TROFF stores macro
	definitions in memory is good for another 10-20 percent on
	machines like the VAX that have enough memory.  But no
	order-of-magnitude speedup is likely without a gross revision
	of the basic design.

				--"A Typesetter-independent TROFF"
				   Brian W. Kernighan

Looks like you're stuck with "TROFF the resource hog" for a while
(unless someone cares to revise the basic design or just plain rewrite
the thing).

                                William LeFebvre
				Department of Mathematical Sciences
				Rice University
                                <phil at rice>