This sounds like it could be an excellent idea--a
PropertyRepository (extending, of course, a
DelmelleRepository (tm) ;) ) could be a very useful
tool for FO Tree Building. Prior to creating any
Property instance for any FO's array, we send the
specs of the needed property to the
PropertyRepository, and it gives us either (1) a
brand-new property instance, or (2) a reference to an
already-created one. So, indeed, only one instance of
that font-size = "12pt" would need to be created.
The amount to be saved will of course depend on the input, but for "DocBook: The Definite Guide", the amount is quite small. So small that I didn't bothered to do it when I made the performance patch.
Here is a break down on the string values that are parsed into properties. It is the output from "sort | uniq -c | sort" so in the first column is the number of times that a value occurs.
http://bckfnn-modules.sf.net/property-value-breakdown.txt
The properties that starts with a '.' are the default values for subproperties and they can all be reduced to one occurrence if the default value for subproperties was cached.
'start-ident' and 'line-height=1.2em' both depend on other properties and therefore can't be (easily) cached.
regards, finn
