[annotator-dev] Problem with 1.2.x performance on long documents

[Michael Widner]

Thanks to a similar issue in the 2.x branch that's already been fixed 
and Randall's guidance, I was able back-port the fix to the 1.2.x branch:

https://github.com/openannotation/annotator/pull/577

My testing shows that these changes made a massive difference in 
performance.

Best,

Mike

On 11/16/15 4:27 PM, Michael Widner wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've discovered that when loading annotations on a long document 
> (think: a novel), the performance degrades so severely that it becomes 
> unusable for many people. For me, the test I'm looking at takes 16 
> full seconds to finish setting up annotations. The offending call 
> happens at from Util.getTextNodes().
>
> The problem, if I'm understanding it correctly, is that it's having to 
> walk the entire, very large DOM searching for all the text nodes. Has 
> anyone else tried running Annotator on a long text? If so, did you 
> find any work-arounds for the performance problem? Without rewriting 
> the involved routines, the only solution I can think of is to only 
> load annotations on the visible screen, but that's also a significant 
> change.
>
> I'd very much appreciate any ideas or help.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mike
>