Whenever I have longer text documents with multiple columns I want to use "Balance Columns" to make it, well, better.

However, whenever I start using Balance Columns in my documents I always run into severe performance issues.

Example: Right now I have a document of ~100 pages (one text flow). I have not enabled "Balance Columns" on all pages due to performance (and the fact that another bug prevents you from doing this from the master page), so I have manually enabled it on a page-by-page basis for pages I feel need it (I'd much rather just turn it on for the whole flow).

On many of the pages where the frame is using "balance columns" it is literally laggy to type text into the text box - even if the changes are so minor it shouldn't make other pages reflow, yet it feels like it's reflowing all 100 pages for each letter i type... Temporarily turning off "balance columns" while making text changes makes it responsive (but then I don't see the end result).

Attempting to import PDF comments, and just clicking "accept" on simple single-word replacements were so slow on "balance column" pages that it the PDF comments panel literally started to bug out (not correctly updating comments to "accepted" after accepting). Again, even if the changes are so small they should not affect any other pages. And balancing two columns on one page should effectively be instant, not take several seconds for every text edit.

There is something bad going on with "balance columns" performance-wise (at least for longer documents) and you need to have a closer look at it. I don't know what's causing it. Is it footnotes? Keep Options? I don't have time to troubleshoot.

Ps: Adobe FrameMaker don't even blink when we have 500-page documents with balanced columns and make major edits to the text causing everything to move. So it should be possible to make "balance columns" responsive.