Greetings,
I would like to inquire about a possible performance problem regarding combining multiple IDML / INDT files or copying pages via Indesign Server Scripting API.
Note that we are using Indesign Server CS6 (with latest 8.0.2 update).
Currently, we are using the following line to merge multiple indesign documents (IDML/INDT)
document.pages.everyItem().duplicate(LocationOptions.AFTER, baseDocument.pages[lastPageIndex])
Above line performs what is needed (textframes are threaded, etc), however there is a possible issue with its performance which degrades horribly especially after several merging operations and if there are several pages in the base document or the document to be copied (though the performance is more affected when the document to be copied has many pages)
Testing done:
#1 For the below test, Notice that the merging is not constant and degrades per minute (performance may possible degrade when using a larger document)
start | end | time elapsed for pages.everyItem.duplicate |
| operation done |
with a base of 42 page INDT document | ||||
12:13:33 | 12:15:28 | 0:01:55 |
| add 42 page INDT file |
12:15:29 | 12:18:35 | 0:03:06 |
| add another 42 page INDT file |
12:18:37 | 12:22:53 | 0:04:16 |
| add another 42 page INDT file |
12:22:54 | 12:28:15 | 0:05:21 |
| add another 42 page INDT file |
12:28:17 | 12:34:30 | 0:06:13 |
| add another 42 page INDT file |
|
| TOTAL |
|
|
|
| 0:20:51 |
|
|
with a base of 42 page IDML document | ||||
12:13:58 | 12:16:44 | 0:02:46 |
| add 42 page IDML file |
12:16:56 | 12:20:59 | 0:04:03 |
| add another 42 page IDML file |
12:21:11 | 12:26:21 | 0:05:10 |
| add another 42 page IDML file |
12:26:35 | 12:32:39 | 0:06:04 |
| add another 42 page IDML file |
12:32:50 | 12:40:06 | 0:07:16 |
| add another 42 page IDML file |
|
| TOTAL |
|
|
|
| 0:25:19 |
|
|
Time elapsed is 20 minutes for INDT and 25 minutes for IDML. it adds ~1 minute for each document added (for a 42 page, this duration may increase when no of pages increase).
#2 For below test, we noticed that INDT seems to perform faster than IDML (though it is larger by 10x and is a binary file)
|
| |||
with a base of 838 page IDML document | ||||
14:30:44 | 14:55:40 | 0:24:56 |
| add 42 page IDML file |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
with a base of 838 page INDT document | ||||
15:14:55 | 15:23:40 | 0:08:45 |
| add 42 page INDT file |
#3 For below test, notice that the merging degrades by several minutes even if you just increase the number of pages.
Notice that we added the documents according to increasing no of pages as we found out that it performs significantly faster than not (saved several hours)
I also incorporated the doc.save and gc calls but it still doesn't help reduce the whole merging process to several minutes. (still takes 11 hours just to merge 33 documents with total of 1046 pages)
Note that we also checked binary merging (merging small files first but the resulting time is much larger than above)
with a base of 1 page IDML document | ||||
15:58:45 | 15:58:52 | 0:00:07 |
| add 1 page IDML file |
15:58:53 | 15:59:00 | 0:00:07 |
| add 1 page IDML file |
15:59:01 | 15:59:08 | 0:00:07 |
| add 2 page IDML file |
15:59:09 | 15:59:18 | 0:00:09 |
| add 2 page IDML file |
15:59:19 | 15:59:29 | 0:00:10 |
| add 3 page IDML file |
|
|
|
| perform $.gc and doc.save into temp IDML |
15:59:35 | 15:59:42 | 0:00:07 |
| add 4 page IDML file |
15:59:44 | 15:59:52 | 0:00:08 |
| add 6 page IDML file |
15:59:54 | 16:00:05 | 0:00:11 |
| add 6 page IDML file |
16:00:08 | 16:00:21 | 0:00:13 |
| add 6 page IDML file |
16:00:23 | 16:00:49 | 0:00:26 |
| add 7 page IDML file |
|
|
|
| perform $.gc and doc.save into temp IDML |
16:00:53 | 16:01:03 | 0:00:10 |
| add 7 page IDML file |
16:01:05 | 16:01:19 | 0:00:14 |
| add 8 page IDML file |
16:01:22 | 16:02:18 | 0:00:56 |
| add 10 page IDML file |
16:02:22 | 16:04:12 | 0:01:50 |
| add 17 page IDML file |
16:04:17 | 16:06:41 | 0:02:24 |
| add 19 page IDML file |
|
|
|
| perform $.gc and doc.save into temp IDML |
16:06:50 | 16:09:14 | 0:02:24 |
| add 20 page IDML file |
16:09:19 | 16:12:31 | 0:03:12 |
| add 20 page IDML file |
16:12:37 | 16:15:53 | 0:03:16 |
| add 21 page IDML file |
16:15:59 | 16:21:00 | 0:05:01 |
| add 26 page IDML file |
16:21:07 | 16:27:25 | 0:06:18 |
| add 27 page IDML file |
|
|
|
| perform $.gc and doc.save into temp IDML |
16:27:40 | 16:38:28 | 0:10:48 |
| add 37 page IDML file |
16:38:38 | 16:50:42 | 0:12:04 |
| add 39 page IDML file |
16:50:55 | 17:08:09 | 0:17:14 |
| add 42 page IDML file |
17:08:21 | 17:28:39 | 0:20:18 |
| add 44 page IDML file |
17:28:55 | 17:58:32 | 0:29:37 |
| add 52 page IDML file |
|
|
|
| perform $.gc and doc.save into temp IDML |
17:58:58 | 18:26:26 | 0:27:28 |
| add 52 page IDML file |
18:26:42 | 19:11:57 | 0:45:15 |
| add 63 page IDML file |
19:12:16 | 20:08:49 | 0:56:33 |
| add 64 page IDML file |
20:09:09 | 21:13:22 | 1:04:13 |
| add 67 page IDML file |
21:13:59 | 22:39:28 | 1:25:29 |
| add 67 page IDML file |
|
|
|
| perform $.gc and doc.save into temp IDML |
22:40:15 | 0:35:17 | 1:55:02 |
| add 84 page IDML file |
0:35:48 | 3:30:53 | 2:55:05 |
| add 98 page IDML file |
|
| TOTAL |
|
|
|
| 11:26:36 |
|
|
Notice that I have already added $.gc and doc.save per 5 documents however the effect is lost/not significant around the 4th/5th time.
Please confirm if there is something that can be done to resolve above Indesign's performance for merging / copying pages from one document to another.
or suggest alternative code or some setting that we may have missed.