The tex-conceal.vim problem

[oblitum]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe it.

tex-conceal.vim is a nice plugin that offers a good set of concealed elements which makes for much improved LaTeX preview. It seems it used to work fine together with vimtex, but today vimtex blocks most of it from working.

Describe the solution you'd like

I wished they were compatible or that vimtex merged such feature.

Describe alternatives you've considered

I didn't yet analyze it well, but I'm checking whether disabling parts of vimtex through its flags may allow the two work together, even though missing some vimtex feature, which actually I didn't want to, but such concealing is such a killer feature for me...

[AnglyPascal]

I have modified the code.vim file to add the conceal support from that plugin, i can upload it if you'd like. I am new to git so i am not very confident about making commits or pull requests

[oblitum]

@AnglyPascal you can share it in a gist for the moment. A diff/patch, or the whole file as-is.

[AnglyPascal]

https://gist.github.com/AnglyPascal/fe8a92f37c2abd1a08ebdc9eb4b4bdd3 Here you go

[lervag]

tex-conceal.vim is a nice plugin that offers a good set of concealed elements which makes for much improved LaTeX preview. It seems it used to work fine together with vimtex, but today vimtex blocks most of it from working.

Just to put things straight: Vimtex does not block anything. However, with version 2, Vimtex bundles its own, new syntax plugin. It has different syntax group names. This is why tex-conceal no longer works, because tex-conceal is based on the internal plugin and those group names.

Describe the solution you'd like

I wished they were compatible or that vimtex merged such feature.

Compatibility needs to be implemented on the tex-conceal side of things.

However, I can consider to implement more conceal features as long as it does not disrupt or break any important/core features.

[lervag]

I've added most of the conceals from @AnglyPascal now. Thanks for sharing!

[oblitum]

I'm sorry @lervag, but what was added didn't help much for me, see tex-conceal.vim test.

This is what I get with vimtex only:

This is what I get with tex-conceal only (sole conf is let g:tex_conceal = 'abdmg' and let g:tex_conceal_frac=1):

[lervag]

Ok. This is a feature I really don't care that much about (sorry), but I don't mind adding things. However, it would be a great help to get a list of what is missing. E.g. something like this:

1. \bm{x} -> x
2. \mathrm{x} -> x

and so on. This would make it much easier for me to work on it when I get time. Also, anyone who finds this important should feel free to submit a PR.

[oblitum]

I rather preferred that vimtex wasn't taking the route of LaTeX-Suite, reverse of to do one thing and do it well and be easy to mix and match with other plugins without a lot of overlapping that I see happening. I have this criticism, please don't take offense, as I think a project should be open either to praising as well as valid criticism. I think it's time for me to stop using vimtex because:

• I already have coc-texlab that does a great job at linting/completion through LSP, it has SyncTeX support for document synchronization with live preview.
• I already have coc-diagnostic configured with textidote for grammar checking both latex and markdown. I just learned another day that vimtex also had an option for this.
• I already have tex-conceal that does better conceal than vimtex, and tex-conceal has recent activity in the area, and there's outstanding PR to add more conceal. The fact that it's a separate plugin focused on that feature alone makes it evolve that feature faster, making it easier for interested people to find that feature and contribute to it.
• No more let g:matchup_override_vimtex = 1, etc.

[lervag]

I rather preferred that vimtex wasn't taking the route of LaTeX-Suite, reverse of to do one thing and do it well and be easy to mix and match with other plugins without a lot of overlapping that I see happening.

IMHO, Vimtex is not taking the route of LaTeX-Suite. I understand the comment, though, seeing that Vimtex is expanding its features. When I say I disagree, my point is that Vimtex is expanding while ensuring that the inherent "simplicity" is not broken. What I mean by that, is that the code base is still maintainable and modular. There is not (much) bloated code that adds features no one wants and that adds inefficiencys. It is possible to disable features you don't want. And Vimtex attempts to behave "as expected" as a general rule.

I have this criticism, please don't take offense, as I think a project should be open either to praising as well as valid criticism.

No offense taken. And I mean no offense when I say that I could not care less about your preferences in this matter. I don't mind there being good alternatives to Vimtex and that there is a community that is working on alternative solutions.

I think it's time for me to stop using vimtex because:

• I already have coc-texlab that does a great job at linting/completion through LSP, it has SyncTeX support for document synchronization with live preview.

I'm glad to hear that coc-texlab is working well for you.

• I already have coc-diagnostic configured with textidote for grammar checking both latex and markdown. I just learned another day that vimtex also had an option for this.

Yes, there are compiler backends for textidote in Vimtex. But I can see that the coupling with coc can be nice here.

• I already have tex-conceal that does better conceal than vimtex, and tex-conceal has recent activity in the area, and there's outstanding PR to add more conceal. The fact that it's a separate plugin focused on that feature alone makes it evolve that feature faster, making it easier for interested people to find that feature and contribute to it.

IMHO, the internal syntax plugin for TeX was not so good. The syntax groups were not consistent, there was unnecessary features and unnecessary complications. I find the version that ships with Vimtex v2 to be a significant improvement which makes it much easier to further improve syntax support for e.g. custom packages and similar. It will also be quite easy to improve the conceal support, either within Vimtex or by adapting e.g. tex-conceal into something like vimtex-conceal.

[AnglyPascal]

I think a possible approach could be adding a separate syntax file storing all the conceal related stuff that will be turned off by default but if someone wants to add that they can toggle it with a command.

That would also be easy for people who like the conceal part to contribute to it.

[Konfekt]

However, with version 2, Vimtex bundles its own, new syntax plugin. It has different syntax group names.

Could texMathRegionX (and its likes) be renamed to texMathZoneX (and similar,say texMathRegionEnvStarred to texMathZoneES) to restore some compatibility?