Performance at 100+ pages

[CaseyBeck]

Hi there,

Firstly, thank you for releasing a solution to a niche, yet difficult, issue that still plagues web-based text editors!

Have you tested this for cases in which the document reaches 100+ pages? How does the editor perform?

[adityayaduvanshi]

@CaseyBeck No I haven't tested with 100+ pages but i will test it today and will let you know about the performance

[CaseyBeck]

Hey @adityayaduvanshi, did you manage to test with 100+ pages?

[adityayaduvanshi]

Hi @CaseyBeck ,
Yes, I've tested with 100+ page documents, and the current version handles them successfully! Performance remains good up to about 150 pages with smooth scrolling and responsiveness.
For extremely large documents (200+ pages), there can be some initial calculation delay and occasional brief UI hesitations when editing far down in the document.
I'm planning additional optimizations in the next release (v1.0.4) that will further improve performance for extra-large documents, including better height caching, true content virtualization, and off-thread calculations.
The current version is perfectly usable for 100+ page documents, but these upcoming improvements will make it even better for massive documents.

[CaseyBeck]

Hi again @adityayaduvanshi

Thanks for taking a look into that. Funnily enough, I've been working on a very similar implementation - by using decoration widgets. Your solution is far superior to mine - but I think I could have a crack at improving some of the rendering of the breaks if you're happy with that?

I'd love to collaborate with somebody on this feature, given how badly we all need a decent pagination option for web editors!

[adityayaduvanshi]

Sure @CaseyBeck ,
I'd absolutely welcome collaboration on this! It's great to hear you've been working on something similar - these pagination challenges definitely benefit from multiple perspectives.
If you have ideas for improving the rendering of page breaks, I'd be very interested to see them. The current implementation works well functionally, but I'm sure the visual presentation and performance could be enhanced further.
Feel free to submit a PR with your improvements or we could discuss your approach in more detail. You're right that the web editor ecosystem needs better pagination solutions, so joining forces makes a lot of sense.
Looking forward to seeing what you have in mind!
Feel free to connect on LinkedIn as well if you'd like to discuss further: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theaditya-yaduvanshi-/

[CaseyBeck]

Hey @adityayaduvanshi, hope you're all good!

I've been looking further into this solution - and I'm coming towards the conclusion that handling pagination solely within a prosemirror/tiptap plugin is not the best way forward, given the weight of calculations required to insert, and repaint page break decorations.

I've been working on an implementation inspired by Igor Maderia's (seemingly discontinued) Badon Writer, which he discusses here: Badon Writer Prosemirror

This way, pagination positioning is pushed to the browser, with minimal javascript logic being required in the form of a plugin to iron out some quirks and keep the caret positioned correctly.

I should have a working demo in the next few days - and I'd love to open source with you if you're interested? I've seen a few people working on a similar implementation recently, but they seem to be IP for different companies so I'm not sure whether any will release it