Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!henry.jpl.nasa.gov!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!pacbell!att!dptg!ulysses!andante!alice!wilber From: wilber@alice.UUCP (Bob Wilber) Newsgroups: comp.emacs Subject: Re: speeding up describe-mode Keywords: gnus calendar Message-ID: <10316@alice.UUCP> Date: 8 Jan 90 02:00:01 GMT References: Reply-To: wilber@alice.UUCP () Distribution: comp Organization: AT&T, Bell Labs Lines: 11 I looked at the C code for that a while back. The problem is that it's using a quadratic time algorithm for something that could be done in linear time (buffers are constantly being resized). However, to do this in linear time requires having a way to precompute how long each piece of text is going to be after all substitutions have been done (in a recursive fashion). It looks like a fair amount of work to speed it up. (Yes, it was describe-mode for calendar.el that inspired me to look into this. It took so long I thought my machine had gone down.) Bob Wilber wilber@homxb.att.com