Sublime Forum

**stax76** · March 30, 2019, 5:50pm

Hello everybody,

on my PC (not he fastest) a 4 KB markdown file takes 2-3 seconds to load.

Is there anything I can do to make it load faster? Like disabling dedicated markdown support to make Sublime Text handling it like plain text. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

My markdown file can be seen here:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stax76/mpv.net/master/README.md

Please forgive me that I’m not very experienced with Sublime Text, I use two other editors/IDE’s besides Sublime Text.

Thanks

**jfcherng** · March 30, 2019, 6:23pm

I open it instantly. But I can’t figure out what’s probably wrong on you side.

Are you using the built-in markdown syntax?
Does this happen even with a clean portable Sublime Text build?

**stax76** · March 30, 2019, 6:40pm

Thanks helping me on this. I don’t know if I’m using the built-in markdown, probably yes because I don’t recall having installed anything lately. I recall starting fresh some weeks ago, I don’t think I’ve installed anything, I’m gonna check right now. Is your system pretty fast, mine isn’t, CPU is i3-3220.

**ThomSmith** · March 30, 2019, 7:34pm

What packages do you have installed?

Markdown is the most extensive and complicated core syntax because it embeds a bunch of other syntaxes for handling code blocks. If there is a problem with any of those syntaxes, then Markdown may exhibit the symptoms even if it’s not the root cause.

**stax76** · March 30, 2019, 8:15pm

I checked and found out that I’ve not installed any packages. Maybe something is broke on my side but I cannot see it. One other app I had a major performance issue as well is Firefox, 2-3 seconds for tab switching and nothing helped until I finally replaced it with Chrome which runs absolutely smooth.

**jfcherng** · March 30, 2019, 8:26pm

Could you check which application is using your CPU?

**stax76** · March 30, 2019, 8:33pm

The task manager don’t show that there is an application which is draining CPU time.

Is there a way I can disable markdown syntax? I’ve researched it but couldn’t find a way.

**jfcherng** · March 30, 2019, 8:44pm

Maybe change .md extension to be opened as said plain text before your issue is addressed.

**jfcherng** · March 30, 2019, 8:55pm

You may provide the list of plugins that you are using.

**stax76** · March 30, 2019, 10:02pm

Under Package Control > Settings - User I have:

{
“bootstrapped”: true
}

I don’t know what it means but since I know now how to open md as plain text I’m good, thank you.

**deathaxe** · March 31, 2019, 9:04am

I can confirm @stax76’s issue about Markown. At least the first markdown file being opened in Sublime Text takes 2-5s to load and causes the RAM usage to increase by at least 60MB on Windows. The size of the file or the content doesn’t matter.

The reason seems to be the bunch of syntaxes mensioned by @ThomSmith. All embedded syntaxes and markdown are parsed and loaded to RAM. Even ST’s syntax caching system seems to hit its limits in manner of performance here.

My ST runs on a Core i5 and is installed on a SATA-SSD. Not the fastest but not the slowest hardware.

The heavy delay is just caused because ST loads dozens of embedded syntaxes, which might never be used in a single markdown file at a time.

Already filed an issue about it at

**ThomSmith** · March 31, 2019, 4:51pm

@stax76 Does the delay occur only for the first Markdown file?

**stax76** · March 31, 2019, 6:14pm

Yes, the delay happens only opening the first markdown file.

**djspiewak** · April 1, 2019, 1:35pm

It’s definitely the syntax compilation issue then. There’s not much that can be done about it right now given Sublime’s architecture, but the good news is that it’s only a one-time hit, and you won’t see that hit again unless the underlying syntaxes are updated (and even then, the hit would only be proportional to the number of syntaxes modified).

**stax76** · April 1, 2019, 1:48pm

I open markdown as plain text now, it’s OK because I don’t edit much markdown.

**djspiewak** · April 1, 2019, 2:08pm

I mean, now that it’s been compiled, you can load it as markdown and you’ll have no trouble. Like I said, it’s a one-time hit. You shouldn’t see it at all from now on.

**stax76** · April 1, 2019, 2:30pm

I cannot follow you here, how do I enable it?

**djspiewak** · April 1, 2019, 2:34pm

Follow the steps that @jfcherng described above to change markdown files to open with the Markdown mode once again. The compilation hit has already taken place, so you shouldn’t see it ever again. In other words, loading markdown files should be basically just as fast with the markdown mode as with the plain text mode.

**stax76** · April 1, 2019, 2:55pm

I changed it back to open markdown files with markdown syntax by default and it is slow again everytime the sublime text application is starting to open a markdown file.

Please excuse when I cannot follow you, I don’t have a lot of experience with sublime text.

**djspiewak** · April 1, 2019, 2:55pm

Every time you open a file? I wonder if this isn’t just a compilation issue then…

Markdown loads very slow