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M2tM
Junior Member
12 Posts |
 Posted - Jan 22 2009 : 11:10:27 PM
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Recently I've been doing some PHP programming with PHP Designer and it's got a very useful current line highlight which manifests by simply showing a light unobtrusive canary background color under the text of the current line. While this is a subtle feature it is useful.
Ideally the ability to specify a background color without wiping the existing font styling of the foreground would rock.
Failing that at least having the ability to set the color of the dotted outlines would be nice.
Right now the only options we have for visual assist x are dotted line and solid line and forground and background which wipes the syntax highlighting completely which makes it not a viable approach.
So far I've enjoyed visual assist x immensely, this feature would make the highlight current line much cleaner visually while keeping it useful. |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
18939 Posts |
Posted - Jan 23 2009 : 10:23:07 AM
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You can chance the colour VA uses. This is set via:
IDE tools menu -> Options -> Environment -> Fonts and Colors -> Display items = Current line (VA X) |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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wlater
Senior Member
USA
35 Posts |
Posted - Jan 26 2009 : 12:53:20 PM
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A free add-in tool that also might be of interest is SlickEdit-? Gadgets for Visual Studio.
http://www.slickedit.com/content/view/441
It offers a little bit more control for current line highlighting. It has some other features too (the file explorer in an editor window is nice for instance). Seems to behave well with Visual Assist X.
Please note that it is a small set of gadgets for Visual Studio. It doesn't hold a candle to Visual Assist, but has a few useful parts and the price is right. I have no affiliation with Slick Edit, just happen to use their VS gadgets. |
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M2tM
Junior Member
12 Posts |
Posted - Jan 27 2009 : 04:32:17 AM
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feline, I have version 10.5.1711.0 built 2008.12.11 and there is no Current line (VA X) option in the tools -> options -> environment -> fonts and colors -> display items list. I see only standard options here. And even if I did change it, that doesn't address the primary concern of it trashing the syntax highlighting rules if I give it a background color.
Thanks wlater, I'll take a look at slickedit as well.
*EDIT: wow wlater, color me impressed, SlickEdit's free gadgets do -exactly- what I need for highlighting the line color. Also has a line counter built in and other stuff, very cool. Obviously it is no visual assist x, but it plays nicely with it. |
Edited by - M2tM on Jan 27 2009 04:49:20 AM |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
18939 Posts |
Posted - Jan 27 2009 : 09:17:25 AM
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I did try SlickEdit myself some time ago, and when I tried it I ran into serious performance problems. I am not sure if that was just an old version, or something about my system.
M2tM you should have this entry in the IDE colour list, but if you are happy with SlickEdit then it is not worth worry about this missing entry. |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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M2tM
Junior Member
12 Posts |
Posted - Jan 27 2009 : 9:56:40 PM
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Hmm, on further use of it there is significant lag in typing with slick edit enabled. It isn't really the color of the outline I care to change anyway, it would be nice if I could get the highlight current line without removing the formatting though.
Just keep it in mind when working on VAX that it's on at least one developer's wish list. It may be impossible to implement efficiently with a third party tool. |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
18939 Posts |
Posted - Jan 28 2009 : 2:42:50 PM
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Changing the background colour while keeping the highlighting is tricky.
We are working on some changes to how highlighting works internally, for the next few builds, so it is possible this will become more doable with time. No promises, but it is possible  |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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M2tM
Junior Member
12 Posts |
Posted - Jan 28 2009 : 9:14:03 PM
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Yes, I noticed that the way slick edit does this is by actually rendering over the display, they don't set a background color, they apply a blended partially transparent rectangle over the text. I believe it is this which causes the inefficiency whenever you enable visual components with it. So while they have the flexibility of arbitrary rendering to the screen there is a huge performance hit. I imagine they must be doing it really inefficiently and it can probably be streamlined and optimized (depending on the api for plugins with visual studio), but the flexibility is going to be paid for regardless.
As far as VAX I think I understand the problem, but I may be way out to lunch. Basically the font color and background color are tied together and setting one means setting the other. There would have to be some way of detecting the current font style and color and then just overwriting the background color but setting the foreground back to what it was. The two must be tied pretty tightly and there not be any easy api to do this. Just a hypothesis for why you guys are doing it the way it is being done presently.
Glad to hear that it's on your possible future updates though, I've been using VAX for two years now (just updated my support) and have had -very- few complaints, I find it a pain to work without it on the odd occasion that I don't have it. |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
18939 Posts |
Posted - Jan 29 2009 : 08:35:13 AM
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A partial answer here is that VA painting in the IDE is hard! We have to paint the screen after the IDE has painted it, to avoid the IDE overwriting our painting. This results in us having to paint in the same order that the IDE does, which seems rather random.
For quite a while we never tried to change the background colour at all, and still do not try to do so in VC6.
If we had more control over the IDE then this would be easier, but we are sneaking around behind the IDE's back, without its knowledge |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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More options for highlighting current line
