Description Jean-Marc N/A 2004-10-21 17:23:57 EDT

Each time I had to switch from one programming editor or IDE to an other, I was
looking for an intelligent word wrap, line wrapping, feature. HTML-Kit is one of
the best software to implement the auto word wrap feature :

« Auto word wrapping, wrapped line status in the gutter area, word wrap column
indicator and display-only soft wrapping to easily edit files with long lines
without breaking lines in the original file. » (HTML-Kit website)

It allows you to auto word wrap lines to the width of the editor window. In fact
I never understood why some editors allow us to specify a number of characters
to wrap to, a maximum line width in the Eclipse terminology :

« Option : Maximum line length 
Description : This is the maximum length of any one line. Lines longer than this
number are split and wrapped. Entering 0 here disables line splitting completely. 
Default : 80 » (Eclipse help contents)

This option is available from Line Wrapping tab of the Preferences > Java > Code
Style > Code Formatter > Show dialog.

But how can you expect a developer to count the number of characters the
window's width can handle ? The in-famous 40 and 80 « standards » were valid in
the 90s when we were all working under text-based environments like DOS for
example, but we all switched to graphical environment so the 40 and 80 are no
more, there are no characters boundaries anymore, the editor window's width - is
the boundary - so a word wrap feature has to deal with it. Or it should be so.

Why do we need line wrapping anyway ? Under a 1024x768 desktop, even if the
Navigator and Outline views are shown, the Editor window can display many
characters per lines, it means we don't really need word wrap for the code. Even
a well indented code doesn't take too many columns, number of characters per
line, to display. I think line wrapping is really useful, say necessary, for
javadoc comments. Because the more you document your projects, the more you have
to write long sentences to explain how a special methods work. First time the
problem occured to me, I was writing the following note :

« If the collection encapsulates an array, the @c rewind method should call the
@c reset Array functions. » (some PHP script)

And the 3 last words were missing... And the more I worked with Eclipse the more
I needed an auto line wrapping feature. It would allow us to read all the
javadoc comments from the editor window. We wouldn't have to scroll right and
left to read a simple paragraph, we would be able to write them and read them
like if the editor window was a word processor. And more important we wouldn't
have to specify an approximate « Maximum line width » limit.

So I think an Auto Line Wrapping feature would be useful. It would make Eclipse
a better editor, so a better IDE.