Indentation is slow in vimtex

Question

If you try to indent a moderate size .tex file (~ 3,000 words/500 lines) using the normal mode command gg=G, vimtex seems to take some time. However LaTeX-Box seems to indent faster. I didn't understand the files in the indent folders of vimtex or LaTeX-Box, could anyone please elaborate on why there's this delay for vimtex?

P.S.- vimtex's indent files have more lines compared to LaTeX-Box's indent files, I am guessing there's more to these files rather than just the difference in the number of lines.

Answer 1

Well, they are two different implementations, so obviously they will use different amounts of time. vimtex indentation does more, which makes it slower. But I've worked hard on making it fast, and as far as I know, it should not be unreasonable slow for daily use.

Note, indenting a whole ~500 line file with gg=G should not be a "daily" activity. Indentation is meant to be "automatic", and the indentation expressions work by assuming that the preceding lines are correctly indented. So, if you use vimtex, then indentation should be acceptably fast. And compared to LaTeX-Box, it should be somewhat more robust and have support for indenting more expressions.