I finished the analysis required to determine why using the 'recompute' button on manage authors was (or could be) very slow.
On my 5,000 book test library, I changed the tweak and went through the manage authors process. After 30 minutes I gave up, but now with information about what was slow. The answers were transaction handling (I expected that) and screen refresh (I didn't expect that). The continuous screen refresh alone took 11 minutes.
After changing the code to do better things with both, the operation on my 5,000 book library now completes in 4 seconds.
It wouldn't surprise me if the refresh change doesn't improve some other things, although at this point I can't predict which.
This improvement should be in the next release, as long as Kovid-review-cycles are available.
