How fast is TaskPaper when working with big files?

TaskPaper should be relatively fast when working with big files. Not programmers text editor fast (TaskPaper does more work), but still fast. Here are some tests to give you an idea of the performance:

Test operations:

  1. Typing speed.
  2. Document open time.
  3. Time to rebuild text display to show all outline content. Such as when you “Go Home”.
  4. Time to update all items in the outline, such as select all and tag with @done.

Document sizes:

  • 100 lines, ~5KB

    • All operations are instant.
  • 1,000 lines, ~70KB

    • Typing feels instant.
    • Document open feels instant.
    • Rebuild text display feels like half a second.
    • Update all items feels like half a second.
  • 10,000 lines, ~600KB

    • Typing feels instant.
    • Open document feels like a second.
    • Rebuild text display feels like half a second.
    • Update all items feels like a few seconds (maybe 3)
  • 100,000 lines, ~6.2MB

    • Typing feels instant.
    • Open document feels around 4 seconds.
    • Rebuild text display feels like 0.75 seconds
    • Update all items is around 1 minute (hummm… don’t do that!)

Notes:

I’m on a new (as of 2015) iMac. Your document structure and other factors can also effect performance, so your millage may vary. If you do notice some case where your document feels slow please let me know. Many specific cases can be optimized once I know about them.

All of these tests are worst case for the above document sizes. TaskPaper performance is generally bound by how much text is displayed in the text view. And in the above tests all document text is being displayed. If you instead fold, focus, or filter to show only some of your document that can speed things up significantly.