[tantric]

I'm not being snotty here, just curious - why is GCA so slow? It is a true monster. My laptop is ancient, admittedly, but it can't have GCA open with several PDF's at the same time, and it takes longer to open GCA than it does to boot WinXP. My mindless perl script that opens the PDF, takes a page, opens the GCA data files, reads all the advantages then writes both the PDF page and all the advantages to a txt file takes half a second.

Believe me, I've worked extensively with the data files, and the whole thing is a nightmare. Whatever bizarre data structure the program uses to represents a GURPS character is beyond my ken. But just slugging around text?

And, for my money, opening the PDF in NOT a solution. PDF's are a way to present books on computers. They are a MISERABLE way to present *information* on a computer. Consider the Dead Sea Scrolls - you can, in fact, make facsimiles of them on paper, which takes lots of paper and effort. Or you can convert them to simple text with an index. If you actually have to work with the info, which do you want?

It just that the idea of GCA spawning legions of Acrobats makes my laptop's chips ache.