ikiwiki/doc/todo/Improve_markdown_speed.mdwn

I'm not sure where the bottleneck is for running ikiwiki over a site like
my blog
[Natalian](http://source.natalian-org.branchable.com/?p=source.git;),
though I like to think the markdown processing could be speeded up by the
support of the C implementation of Markdown called
[Sundown](https://github.com/tanoku/sundown).

>> Sundown doesn't appear to have Perl bindings, so the cost of calling a
>> separate process could wipe out some or all of the speed gain.  It might
>> be worth looking into Text::Upskirt instead, which uses the Upskirt
>> library which Sundown appears to be derived from. -- [[KathrynAndersen]]

>>> It would be fairly easy to write a perl binding for sundown. For that
>>> matter, Text::Upskirt could be adapted to it. I am waiting for any of
>>> upskirt, sundown and perl bindings to get into Debian, then I will 
>>> see about making ikiwiki use them.
>>> 
>>> For now, I have added discount support to ikiwiki. This does speed up
>>> markdown rendering by up to 40x, although when building a site ikiwiki
>>> in practice does other work, so the gains are less impressive. Building
>>> the ikiwiki doc wiki went from 62 to 45 seconds. The lack of a Debian 
>>> package of Text::Markdown::Discount means this is not used by default
>>> yet.
>>> 
>>> (Upskirt, discount... Who comes up with these names? Discount also 
>>> features a "NOPANTS" option.) --[[Joey]]

>>>> Thanks for doing this; it's given a well-needed speedup to my huge site.
>>>>
>>>> (At least "Discount" is related to "Mark Down" but I don't fathom "Upskirt" either.)
>>>> --[[KathrynAndersen]]

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