XSL-FO to PDF conversion speed

Hi List

I'm wondering why my FOP 1.0 conversion to a PDF file of just 2 pages
is so slow. We are talking about 5 seconds.

When I turn off the FOP step and only do the XSLT part, speed is
reduced to a small fraction of a second.

Why is the XSL-FO to PDF step so slow!

We are talking about only two pages of PDF output. I must admit that
those two pages contain a hell of a lot of complex tables. Is that the
problem?

Is there any way to speed up to XSL-FO to PDF step?

1)      Would a commercial FO-processor help me out?

2)      Is there any tutorial around for how to optimize the FO
conversion speed?

Regards
Jesper