I have recently started reading more about context-free parsing techniques, in particular LR parsing.
As I have read, LR state transition graph (or table(s)) used for finding handles in sentential form is created by first constructing NFA from grammar rules (with included position in the rule - dot and possibly lookahead terminal) and then by converting the NFA to DFA with powerset/subset algorithm to remove non-determinism.
LR(1) state transition graph is usually an order of magnitude larger than LR(0)/SLR(1)/LALR(1).
Is it worthy or even practically possible to use DFA minimization (either Hopcroft or Moore or Brzozowski) on LR(1) state transition graph to get a minimal LR(1) graph? I haven't found any literature mentioning this.
Also, is there an algorithm to convert NFA directly to minimal DFA? Perhaps by constructing NFA state subsets in some particular order?