Hi all,
My name is Randy Nielsen and I currently manage the Adobe Flex and ColdFusion doc groups. I (with a lot of help) wrote the first version of LiveDocs back in the Allaire days and have been closely involved with it ever since.
Here's the deal: After the Macromedia - Allaire merger, we got real developers to rewrite the infrastructure and then started posting Macromedia products on LiveDocs. However, we wanted them to be searchable and (as you correctly guessed) the quickest way to searchability was through WebWorks Publisher. Obviously this solution isn't scaling very well for large docsets.
We're working to remediate this problem. For starters, compare the Flex 2.0.1 search with the Flash 8 search: we now use the website's Google appliance, which is a lot faster. We're also looking into a completely new way to drive the TOC (still JavaScript, but a lot lighter) and hope to use that for all new products (and hopefully redo a few old ones, too).
I just wanted you to know that we realize the LiveDocs JavaScript circus is suboptimal, and that we're working to make it better.
Regards,
Randy Nielsen
Flex and ColdFusion Learning Resources Manager
Adobe Systems Incorporated