Quote:
Originally Posted by netseeker
Agreed, storing rendered versions of a file would be the wrong way.
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Let me be clear that I would never suggest storing rendered versions - that was a misunderstanding on kovid's part. My point was that files can be pre-parsed and indexed to support efficient rendering. At the base level, indexing can involve both flattening the parse tree (eliminating those pesky CSS selectors) and providing efficient search spaces for locating document parts.
Page indexing be done separately and needn't be expensive - consider that you're talking about a few hundred indices for most books - so even if you allow for (say) a couple of dozen most likely combinations of font sizes, line spacing and margin settings your document index need not be more than a few kilobytes in size. That's hardly a high price in return for instant page turns and accurate next/previous page behaviour.