Re: Org mode and Emacs

[David Engster]

> On my system, using Emacs 28 and latest Org, exporting org-manual +
> org-guide takes 18.8 sec. This time includes genering the .texi files
> and running texinfo. From that 18.8 sec, texinfo takes 3.4 sec to run.

On my system, generating org.texi from org.org takes 21s, makeinfo
org.texi takes 2.7s. But it's nice to see that it has become much faster
compared to 2014.

> org export takes: 15.4 sec, which is 4.5 x texinfo time.
> Considering that Org export is more sofisticated compared to texinfo and
> that Org export is written in Elisp, I see this performance as
> acceptable for a documentation system.

Why does the implementation language matter whether a documentation
system is acceptable? And while sophisticated, Org is actually still
missing features (like a proper index) to be a suitable replacement.

Org is about 1/16th of the whole Emacs documentation, so we're looking
at over 5min if everything was written in Org, give or take. People were
already up in arms when the switch from Texinfo v4 to v5 was done (which
switched to a Perl implementation). When documentation generation takes
a long time, writing it becomes more painful, as you cannot quickly
check the resulting output. And I think you underestimate how important
a quick build process is. Apart from developer annoyance, you need less
resources for CI, for instance.

-David