vimtex imap not working

Question

I'm having a problem with using imaps with vimtex (i.e they don't work).

To test the issue I went to .vim/plugged/vimtex/test/examples/minimal and started vim -u minivimrc.

Typing `a (which is a AltGr-7 and the "a" key, since I have a Hungarian keyboard) doesn't do anything.

If I manually set this:

:imap `a \alpha

then typing `a expands to \alpha, so I am really unsure what I am doing wrong. I quite new to vim, so maybe I just totall misunderstood how I should be using it.

edit I didn't know how to capture the output, so I made a screenshot of the output of :imap `a

Answer 1

Please note that the `a mapping is using vimtex#imaps#wrap_math(), which only expands to the right hand side when typed in a math context. (See the code in vimtex.)

So, this mapping will only expand to \alpha if typed in a math context, such as within $...$, inside a \begin{equation}...\end{equation} block, or in a similar context that is considered to be a "math" context.

(vimtex uses the syntax engine to determine what is a "math" context, see definition of is_math(). In particular, that means you need to have syntax enable to be able to use that, since otherwise it won't recognize the "math" blocks correctly and will never apply the expansion.)