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steinsomers
Ketchup Master
Belgium
65 Posts |
 Posted - Aug 09 2006 : 12:46:20 PM
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| When the Go-button lands you somewhere in a text editor, I have a hard time finding the current line and the text cursor. It's quite often not in the center of the window. Any way to highlight the line? Or, as with Visual Studio's own Output or Error List, to turn up a little marker in the indicator margin pointing clearly to the right line? |
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jpizzi
Tomato Guru
USA
642 Posts |
Posted - Aug 09 2006 : 11:38:51 PM
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I would have sworn that this has been requested before. I searched, but could not find the topic nor a case. I can't remember the resolution.
Anyone else remember? |
Joe Pizzi |
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jpizzi
Tomato Guru
USA
642 Posts |
Posted - Aug 10 2006 : 10:43:48 PM
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Yes, this has been requested.
case=1062
Still no estimate on completion. |
Joe Pizzi |
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MrDoomMaster
Tomato Guru
251 Posts |
Posted - Feb 05 2007 : 4:14:45 PM
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I'm bumping this topic.
This is a very important feature request, to me. It's over 5 months old too. I'm a bit saddened that it's not been implemented by now :(
I would like to hear how things are going. Are there any plans to even implement this? What's the priority of such a request? Are there any work-arounds or third party plugins for visual studio that may achieve the same effect? |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
19021 Posts |
Posted - Feb 05 2007 : 7:29:47 PM
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I have bumped the priority on case=1062 for you, which is to select the word you have jumped to on alt-g.
Remember that we get lots of feature requests, and also lots of bug reports, so somehow we have to juggle these and balance them. This is in the list of enhancements to look at, so it has not been forgotten.
Depending on the IDE you are using you can press CTRL-W after alt-g to highlight the word you are sitting on, which might help a bit. |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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MrDoomMaster
Tomato Guru
251 Posts |
Posted - Feb 07 2007 : 11:30:28 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by feline
I have bumped the priority on case=1062 for you, which is to select the word you have jumped to on alt-g.
Remember that we get lots of feature requests, and also lots of bug reports, so somehow we have to juggle these and balance them. This is in the list of enhancements to look at, so it has not been forgotten.
Depending on the IDE you are using you can press CTRL-W after alt-g to highlight the word you are sitting on, which might help a bit.
Thanks for your reply, and also much thanks for bumping the case.
I do understand the volume of feature requests and bugs the team gets, so it's completely reasonable to have feature requests linger for so long. Apologies if I was misunderstood to be impatient or not understanding.
In other news, I personally believe highlighting the entire line itself would be better than just highlighting the current word. For those who use a white background in the text editor, a light pink or tan color (something not too 'bright') would be a good color for this line (just to give you a visualization on how I imagine this feature looking). However, I cannot complain that only highlighting the word itself is a bad idea. Anything is better than having to scan through the document to find the cursor (huge pain in the eyes!).
Just so you know, ALT-G is one of the instances where I have trouble finding the cursor but not the *only* one. In fact, it's mainly non-VA specific features that more commonly cause situations where I have a frustrating time finding the cursor. For example, CTRL-SHIFT-F (find in files) I use quite a bit, and finding where the cursor is jumping to when you're flipping through the results can be a pain sometimes. In the output window, when compiler errors or warnings occur this is also a problem. However, in VS2005 it does give you a small 'tick' icon in the very left column where the breakpoint icons appear (slightly helpful but it's even hard to find sometimes).
Anyway, thanks again for bumping the case for me. I look forward to seeing this in a future release. |
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steinsomers
Ketchup Master
Belgium
65 Posts |
Posted - Feb 07 2007 : 12:43:00 PM
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quote:
the very left column where the breakpoint icons appear
is called indicator margin. You can make the 'tick' icon stand out slightly better by changing the background color in the Fonts and Colors options (4th item in Text Editor), but you need to restart VS2005 to see the change.
Probably better than Ctrl-W is to assign a key to the Edit.ScrollLineCenter command (I took Ctrl-. after the "z." command in good old vi). There is also Edit.EmacsScrollLineCenter assigned to Ctrl-L in the emacs keyboard mapping scheme. The only difference between the commands seems to be a slight disagreement on where the center is. Enough about politics... |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
19021 Posts |
Posted - Feb 07 2007 : 1:32:11 PM
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Interesting, now I see this post I have a vague memory of encountering this command, but I don't think I have ever mapped a key to it before now.
Emac's vs Vi / Vim, I have never used Emac's, so I will say nothing about that, but I am a long term fan of Vim, but it does have rather a steep learning curve, so it is not for everyone.
MrDoomMaster you may want to try VA's Find References, when jumping to a reference it is selected, making it easier to see where you are. This is not quite the same as selecting the entire line, but makes more sense when jumping to the middle of a long line of code. Not quite the same as find in files, but still very useful 
The case actually asks for alt-g to select in the same way as jumping to a result from Find References, but will need to be approached carefully so that existing alt-g behaviour is not broken. |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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MrDoomMaster
Tomato Guru
251 Posts |
Posted - Feb 08 2007 : 11:26:07 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by feline
Interesting, now I see this post I have a vague memory of encountering this command, but I don't think I have ever mapped a key to it before now.
Emac's vs Vi / Vim, I have never used Emac's, so I will say nothing about that, but I am a long term fan of Vim, but it does have rather a steep learning curve, so it is not for everyone.
MrDoomMaster you may want to try VA's Find References, when jumping to a reference it is selected, making it easier to see where you are. This is not quite the same as selecting the entire line, but makes more sense when jumping to the middle of a long line of code. Not quite the same as find in files, but still very useful
The case actually asks for alt-g to select in the same way as jumping to a result from Find References, but will need to be approached carefully so that existing alt-g behaviour is not broken.
I do actually use Find References, but in some instances I'm not trying to find a specific variable or something. A lot of times I use Regular Expressions or Wild Cards to find anything with a certain pattern of letters. These things VAX Find References cannot do for me, but if VAX highlighted the line/word of a search result provided by Find In Files, it would make it just as helpful :)
To me, Refactoring in VAX is still a very new feature and it's spoiling me more every day. However, having had to use visual studio's search functions to find references to variables for so long, it's taking a while to change my instincts (for example, if my goal is to find where a variable is used, my reflexes immediately press CTRL-SHIFT-F instead of using VAX :) )
Thanks again! |
Edited by - MrDoomMaster on Feb 08 2007 11:26:52 AM |
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MrDoomMaster
Tomato Guru
251 Posts |
Posted - Feb 08 2007 : 11:29:15 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by steinsomers
is called indicator margin. You can make the 'tick' icon stand out slightly better by changing the background color in the Fonts and Colors options (4th item in Text Editor), but you need to restart VS2005 to see the change.
Thanks. I didn't know this! |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
19021 Posts |
Posted - Feb 08 2007 : 11:55:24 AM
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For searching and highlighting I always use CTRL-I in VS2005, which triggers incremental search. This highlights the matches as it goes, and seems like a very good way of searching to me. Not quite the same as find in files though.
Looking fairly carefully at the IDE's find in files, when I jump to something it is doing a fairly good job of centring the matching line in the editor, making it easy and natural to find the caret. The idea of VA getting involved in the IDE's find in files and highlighting the text is an interesting one, but could cause problems when doing a wild card or regular expression search.
The IDE's find functionality has its own custom regular expression system that is different to any other I have used. Just for a change *sigh* Why cannot regular expression searching systems be more consistent? But that is a different rant |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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MrDoomMaster
Tomato Guru
251 Posts |
Posted - Feb 08 2007 : 12:10:09 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by feline
For searching and highlighting I always use CTRL-I in VS2005, which triggers incremental search. This highlights the matches as it goes, and seems like a very good way of searching to me. Not quite the same as find in files though.
Looking fairly carefully at the IDE's find in files, when I jump to something it is doing a fairly good job of centring the matching line in the editor, making it easy and natural to find the caret. The idea of VA getting involved in the IDE's find in files and highlighting the text is an interesting one, but could cause problems when doing a wild card or regular expression search.
The IDE's find functionality has its own custom regular expression system that is different to any other I have used. Just for a change *sigh* Why cannot regular expression searching systems be more consistent? But that is a different rant
Well my problem is a little more severe in that I'm using a 1050x1680 display for visual studio. All of my side windows (tool window, solution explorer, resource view, output window, breakpoints, etc) are all docked & set to auto-hide. This way the only real window on my screen is the text editor. This provides me a lot of viewing space for source, especially vertically. I can view exactly 116 lines of code on my screen at once.
Having said this, it's a little more difficult for me to find the current line that has been "jumped" to by visual studio. Especially when you're at the end of the document somewhere and it can't exactly "center" the scroll view. I'm not really sure how the centering algorithm works that you mentioned, but it has always seemed very unpredictable to me.
The only real thing I can search for when it jumps around the search results is the caret (which is nearly impossible to find on my huge display). |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
19021 Posts |
Posted - Feb 08 2007 : 12:46:07 PM
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That is a rather high res display, at least by my standards. I see the problem, I am just not sure what to suggest for the best. I am very wary of the idea of VA getting involved in highlighting the text when the IDE jumps to something, I have the feeling this could open a big can of worms.
*ah* I have just remembered
case=51
which is the suggestion to highlight the current line in the editor. This would help in this situation. However I am not sure how likely we are to try and do this. Until highlight all for Find References came along VA had always avoided trying to change the background colour in the editor.
I have the memory of coming across a plugin that did something like this, but only in one or two IDE's. |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
Edited by - feline on Feb 08 2007 12:48:17 PM |
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MrDoomMaster
Tomato Guru
251 Posts |
Posted - Feb 09 2007 : 5:25:10 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by feline
Until highlight all for Find References came along VA had always avoided trying to change the background colour in the editor.
You change the foreground color however. To me, changing foreground or background of the text is the same concept. VAX does a very good job of enhancing the foreground of text. I'm sure it could do just as well with the background color of the text.
At least I know now there is a case for this. However, I am not any more optimistic about it being implemented than you are, Feline.
Take care. |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
19021 Posts |
Posted - Feb 12 2007 : 08:28:37 AM
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I understand your logic, but I tend to believe our developers when they tell me changing the background text is a lot harder than changing the foreground text. Remember that we need to consider several IDE's, if we were only targeting one IDE it would make life a lot easier
I have found the thing I remember:
http://www.slickedit.com/content/view/441
It is the "Line ruler" I was thinking of. I have just tried this myself, out of interest, and using VS2005 SP1, running on win2k with VA 1544 my results are:
* I cannot make SlickEdit highlight the current line, no matter what I do
* Stopping VA loading causes the IDE to crash - this is new and seems to be related to having installed this plugin
so I would advice proceeding with caution. Certainly this suggests highlighting the current line is not as simple as one might hope. |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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support
Whole Tomato Software
5566 Posts |
Posted - Mar 17 2007 : 4:01:11 PM
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| Highlight active line is available in build 1549. |
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MrDoomMaster
Tomato Guru
251 Posts |
Posted - Mar 20 2007 : 12:22:21 PM
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Oh man, this is awesome.
Thanks so much! |
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Sasa
Tomato Guru
272 Posts |
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Where's that text cursor
