[WWdevel] SetMaker is slow!

[Sam H. <sh...@ma...>]

Hey,

Does it bother anyone else how slow SetMaker is? It's not that  
module's fault, it just takes a long time to render problems, and  
rendering 20 of them gets pretty insane.

I was thinking that a solution to this would be to cache the entire  
output of the problem processor. For non-interactive situations like  
SetMaker, the only thing we'd need to cache on is the problem seed --  
other data (like num_correct, num_incorrect, etc.) are always the same.

The cache could simply be a file containing the problem TEXT, named  
based on the source file name and the problem seed, or we could get a  
little more complex and also store the names of any temporary files  
that the problem depends on. That way, deleting, say, a generated  
graph would invalidate the cache and cause the problem to be re- 
rendered.

This would speed up problem browsing TREMENDOUSLY, since PG wouldn't  
even run once ANYONE had browsed a problem set. This might even be a  
good candidate for pre-caching -- run through the problem library  
once with seed 1234 to save a lot of instructor time down the road.

Any thoughts?
-sam