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Bug 368090

Summary:

[rulers][ltk] Provide a bit more width by "integrating" the line numbers with the code

Product:

[Eclipse Project] Platform

Reporter:

Dotan Cohen <bugs-eclipse-org-20110117>

Component:

Text

Assignee:

Platform-Text-Inbox <platform-text-inbox>

Status:

RESOLVED WONTFIX

QA Contact:

Severity:

enhancement

Priority:

CC:

daniel_megert, remy.suen, thatnitind

Version:

4.2

Target Milestone:

---

Hardware:

All

OS:

All

Whiteboard:

Attachments:

Description	Flags
Mockup	none

Description Dotan Cohen

2012-01-07 15:36:43 EST

Build Identifier: 

Most lines of Java are indented at least one level, very few lines of code appear with zero indent. Therefore, to save horizontal space it may be possible to reduce the display of all indented text by one level with minimal impact on usability, by starting indent levels at -1. This means that top-level indented code will actually be displayed to the _left_ of the edit window, covering the line numbers. The hidden line numbers are very easily inferred by looking at the previous and next line numbers.

Before you revolt, please see the attached screenshot mockup. For users with a vertical monitor (turned the monitor on its side to see more lines of code) those four extra characters sure would help!

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1 Dotan Cohen

2012-01-07 15:43:38 EST

Created attachment 209168 [details]
Mockup

This mockup shows the proposed changes to the editor window. The only inconvenience to the coder is that the line number for line 9 is hidden. It is, however, easily inferred.

Comment 2 Nitin Dahyabhai

2012-01-08 22:08:32 EST

If you're inferring something, you're not entirely sure.  In the mockup, when mixed with the code folding, there's no way to tell what line the visible import statement is on.  What you'd probably want, instead, is a way to have the horizontal scrollbar increment and decrement its scrolling in chunks equal to the visible indentation's width.

Comment 3 Dotan Cohen

2012-01-09 01:08:45 EST

> If you're inferring something, you're not entirely sure.

I am entirely sure that I would like a bit more horizontal space! There are a few places where that can be had, I started with one and I will propose more. I realize that this particular proposal is rather innovative and therefore controversial.


> In the mockup, when mixed with the code folding, there's no way to tell
> what line the visible import statement is on.

Right, and what does it matter? Seriously, if I get into a situation that I need to know what line number the import statement is on, then I expand it and I can count. More likely, Eclipse will highlight the error and I won't have to count. The convenience of having an effectively wider code pane is more than worth that!


> What you'd probably want, instead, is a way to have the horizontal scrollbar
> increment and decrement its scrolling in chunks equal to the visible
> indentation's width.

No, quite the opposite. I want to reduce or eliminate the need for the horizontal scrollbar.

Comment 4 Dani Megert

2012-01-09 03:17:38 EST

There are several reasons why we don't plan to add this:

- The line numbers would overlap with the whitespace characters.

- The Quick Diff information would get lost for those lines where no line 
  number is shown.

- The line number ruler is not aware of any logic (e.g. code). A simple 
  heuristic that prints the line number if there's not text would result in
  unreadable documents/text. We'd either have to provide a separate 
  implementation for Java or introduce a hook where one can plug-in the 
  heuristic.


You could try to contribute your own ruler via 'org.eclipse.ui.workbench.texteditor.rulerColumns' extension point. I think it should be possible to draw into the text editor widget.