QTextEdit extremely slow with links

I am trying to use a QTextEdit/QTextBrowser widget to display a tagged source file produced by Doxygen or Grok. Such files contain a large number of anchors and links. It seems that QTextEdit completely chokes on such data: a ~3000 line file with roughly this number of links and anchors takes ages to load and the widget is highly unresponsive.
I have tried both Qt3 and Qt4, both display the same behaviour. I am using the setHtml() method to add the entire contents of the file at a single shot.
Am I missing something or is QTextEdit simple inadequate?

Elad

I think Qt Assistant also uses QTextBrowser only and it loads pages pretty fast.

My sample application handles Qt documentation files (like the ones displayed by Qt assistant) quite easily. However, I believe that the number of links/anchors is considerably smaller (even in files such as "Qt Classes").

Elad