MadCap Software Forums

Hello everyone
I have read a few topics on how to improve compilation time on Flare v4 and have been doing some testing on one of my projects.
As suggested in these forums, I have disabled IntelliSense (I do not seem to be able to re-enable it though as the option to re-enable it is always grayed out?) and disabled Collecting Phrases in Analyzer options. I have not done anything to Page Layouts or GDI+ text rendering as I do not really understand what these mean.
I have tried my project with snippets instead of master pages (in fact, this is my original project) and my project with a master page instead of snippets inserted in every topic (I removed all occurences of the snippets in all topics and associated a master page to my target) and there does not seem to be any differences in the compilation time.
In Flare 3.1, I had noticed that having a master page considerably increased compilation time. As there is extensive scanning ("normal" scanning and "adcanced" scanning) in Flare v4, I am not sure if what I see (compilation time does not seem to depend on snippets or master pages) is genuine as I have noticed that the scanning goes quicker after the first scan.
No sure what I say does make sense (I am still in holiday mode) but I was wondering if there are some known things that have a significant impact on compilation time.
Thank you in advance.

The GDI+ text rendering refers to how the font is displayed in the XML Editor. Don't remember if it affects output or not. Leave it disabled (no checkmark) if you have no problems viewing the font in the XML Editor.

Masterpages and snippets aren't really analogous. Masterpages are more for setting up a framework, so to speak, of how the output looks. It can be used to repeat content on every page -- such as the help output's title or version number -- but it's not really intended as a replacement for snippets or vice versa. Both masterpages and snippets are inserted into topics at build time, so if you have snippets on every page then you're not saving compile time because it still has to insert the snippet into each topic as real text, the same way it would with the content of the masterpage. And, yes, having masterpages or page layouts will increase how long it takes to build the output.

Hi Lisa
Thanks for your input. I understand that snippets and master pages are not really analogous (really, as I had snippets inserted into every topic, I should rather use a master page for that) and I understand now why compilation time is the same whether I use one or the other as these have seem to be inserted into every page in a similar way. I thought that the analysing had an impact on compilation time (need to investigate more about what Analyzer exactly does). Could you let me know where to find the GDI+ rendering option in Flare? (cannot find it )

MC Hammer wrote:I thought that the analysing had an impact on compilation time

The Analyzer (Project Analysis) scanning isn't part of the compilation process, so it won't affect your compile times. It will only slow down the compile time if the scan is actually running in the background when you start your build (e.g. the initial scan when you've just opened a project).

I find that using my PC to do other things during the build affects the compile time quite a lot though (which is to be expected), it can take twice as long sometimes.

MC Hammer wrote:Could you let me know where to find the GDI+ rendering option in Flare? (cannot find it :oops: )

It's in the menu View > Show > ... ; it just affects the display speed when working in the editor though, it won't affect compile times.

Hi Dave
Thanks for your reply. As you, I have noticed that compile time does depend on what else you are doing on the PC (CPU usage).
I have understood that the GDI option does not affect compilation time but I was not able to find it in View | Show ( ). I am using Flare v4 (and not v4.1) to investigate compilation times compared to v3.1...Do I need new glasses?

I thought the GDI option was added in 4.1 after some users ran into a performance hit during editing while using 4.0? So I don't think new glasses will help you see it

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh, that would explain why I cannot see it (I was worried about my eyesight )

Masterpages can slow down your compliation time aswell as its adding to every page the masterpage during compitation. I have a guide on the top page that should help you, sadly most of the time your bottleneck will be the hard disk.

wijnand wrote:Masterpages can slow down your compliation time aswell as its adding to every page the masterpage during compitation. I have a guide on the top page that should help you, sadly most of the time your bottleneck will be the hard disk.

Yes, it seems that the best way to improve compile performance is to ensure that you have a fast hard disk, and that you minimize anything else that might be using your hard disk during compilation (turn off virus scanners, disable the "on-access" scan for your project folders, don't use any disk-intensive applications while compiling, etc.).

Hi wijnand and Andrew
Thank you for your contributions. I shall have a look at the topic you referred to.

Hi MCHammer,
my problem is solved now - could be Flare V 4.2 ... have you tried yet?