Comment 7 for bug 444940

Loading the file with Inkscape 0.46+devel r22413 on OS X 10.5.8 (2MB RAM, 2.4 GHz C2D) took about 5 minutes CPU time, but Inkscape didn't crash. Ungrouping the two main groups again took several minutes but no crash. After saving the file as Inkscape SVG (blows up to 37.5 MB) it opens much faster but still with heavy memory needs and performance issues.

Looking at the structure of the two contained drawings (2 color variations of the same theme), I think Inkscape and SVG are not (yet) the adequate tools to handle such files and should not be advertised to be so - as long as there are no gradient meshes or diffusion curves in the SVG spec. At least it is my understanding that the complexity of the imported PDF is caused by 'translating' any gradients into simulated SVG meshes compounded by hundreds of paths for each shade, grouped and clipped several times, with different levels of opacity(!) applied to groups and/or paths. Looking at the wireframe drawing there seems to be hardly an element that doesn't have at least one clipping mask - which multiplies the complexity, rendering time and file size of the highly detailed drawing.