UXP Table Scripting extremely slow

[Phil 815]

I'm posting this to note the slow performance of UXP versus CEP/Extendscript when creating and formatting tables. When running the same script on both, the UXP scropt takes over 1 minute to populate and format a medium sized table while it takes Extendscript ~20 seconds. I don't think 20 seconds is good, but over a minute is awful. I'm not sure if others have noticed this performance drop when switching, but it ultimately might discourage my company from adopting the new language. I hope Adobe is aware of this...

[m1b]

Hi @Phil 815, thanks for posting. It's good to collect real-world data on this stuff. You are right that manupulating tables is very slow, even with ExtendScript, so I would hope that that is on the list for Adobe to improve. I noticed your other post, which shows a video of populating a table. I've been waiting for a UXP expert to answer, but since there have been no answers yet, I'll hazard a guess that the enableRedraw = false isn't implemented yet. Only a guess. UXP for Indesign has a lot missing at this early stage. Please keep posting any other issues you find—it really is helpful.

- Mark

[RorohikoKris]

For another speed comparison: I've set up UXPScriptSparker to make it easy to run side-by-side comparisons between UXPScript and ExtendScript speeds. One example:

https://github.com/zwettemaan/UXPScriptSparker/wiki/InDesignBrot

There are a few more sample scripts embedded into UXPScriptSparker

[m1b]

Hey this is a great resource @RorohikoKris. Thank you for making it and sharing. Very interesting. Your rough estimate seems to be that UXP DOM manipulating takes about 3x the time compared to ExtendScript.

It would be fascinating to know the process of implementing UXP. I guess they are connecting to the existing scripting API via UXP, which may involve an intermediate layer (and the speed bump). What else would explain the lower performance?

- Mark

[erinferinferinf]

This is a known issue; accessing any InDesign DOM commands is slower in UXP currently.

An upcoming release of InDesign will fix this (the version number is not final yet), I'm hoping that at that point UXP will run considerably faster than ExtendScript.

[m1b]

Nice! Thanks Erin.

[Phil 815]

Thanks for the info @erinferinferinf ! Is there a target release date for that?

[ErinF]

Perhaps as early as August! Sometimes the dates get pushed around, and rollout tends to be by region, so it may not be in a release on August 1st exactly.

(Woops, posted with my other account...)

[Matthew38788609e0za]

Did you find a fix for this? I am also experiencing slow table rendering im UXP InDesign.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Did you find a fix for this? I am also experiencing slow table rendering im UXP InDesign.

By @Matthew38788609e0za

What do you mean by "rendering"? 

[Matthew38788609e0za]

Tables were just taking a long time to load. I had 2000 rows and it took about 20 seconds for them to display. I ended up finding a fix, here's my post in the UXP forum:
https://forums.creativeclouddeveloper.com/t/slow-table-rendering/8747

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Matthew38788609e0za

So you mean displaying tables in the UI of your UXP - not importing into InDesign?

[Matthew38788609e0za]

Yes, and now I realize I am in the wrong thread.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Yes, and now I realize I am in the wrong thread.

By @Matthew38788609e0za

Looks that way 😉