Vim has some default fold methods, one of which is indentation based. However, it folds an indented block into a single line instead of folding it into the line right before the block. Consider this markdown list: - Item 1 - Item 1.1 - Item 1.2 Vim's indent folding turnes this into: - Item 1 +-- 2 lines: - Item 1.1------------------------------------------------- The plugin instead turns this into: - Item 1----------------------------------------------------------------- This approach is inspired by http://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com/chapters/49.html Unfortunately, the performance of this approach is pretty bad. To mitigate this, the foldmethod is kept at `manual` by default and only switches to `expr` when the folds are actually used (e.g. when pressing `za`).