How can a code editor hint at code nesting level without indentation?

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87077/how-can-a-code-editor-effectively-hint-at-code-nesting-level-without-using-inde

by splattne • 15 years ago

85 22 15 years ago

programmers.stackexchange.com

wccrawford• 15 years ago

So far the only idea is to indent everything and use a graph to shot the nesting level?

If we got rid of indentation, I'd like to think it was replaced by something that took less space, not more.

asolove2• 15 years ago

The context in the original question makes clear: the OP is not looking to save space. He wants to take out the structural (tabbed) spacing inherent from the nesting of XML in order to make it visually clear where documents have manually-inserted whitespace.

This is actually a really interesting question, although I'm not sure the answers there are very helpful. I would prefer seeing the code actually indented, and then a light-gray visual guideline where the structural indentation ends, e.g.:

  |<xml:something>
    |<xml:what-the>
      |  left some extra whitespace
    |</xml:what-the>
  |</xml:something>

kenjackson• 15 years ago

Yes, I like your approach the most of those listed.

mjschultz• 15 years ago

It's been a while since I used an IDE (instead of vim), but don't most of them support code-folding that provides a light gray bracket for a block of code (usually with a collapsible indicator at the top)?

Or is the effect you want slightly different?

jtreminio• 15 years ago

PHPStorm does something very similar to this, and it jars me everytime I try to use Netbeans and this is missing.

ars2• 15 years ago

He wants automatic detection of nesting?

Good luck with that, considering I find it hard to manually decide how to indent mixed PHP, HTML and Javascript code. I can't imagine an automatic tool having any success.

adriand2• 15 years ago

I believe Xcode 4 does something similar to the heatmaps shown here, although it does everything vertically, in shades of gray. You can sort of see it in this screenshot - look in the left-hand margin of the code editing window. http://www.neowin.net/images/uploaded/xcode4.jpg

sil3ntmac• 15 years ago

I get a 403 forbidden (check your permissions maybe?)

idonthack• 15 years ago

outside referrers are blocked, copy and paste the url

adriand2• 15 years ago

Whoops! I just did a Google image search and found that image, it wasn't mine. I didn't realize it wouldn't link properly.

dunham• 15 years ago

I tried to post a comment to this effect on stack exchange, but it wouldn't let me post images.

XCode does this in a single column using varying shades of grey:

   http://i.stack.imgur.com/frCcI.png

The grey rectangles may also be clicked on to fold text. On hover you see:

   http://i.stack.imgur.com/EzjXW.png

And after folding you see:

   http://i.stack.imgur.com/wsNRR.png

Zev• 15 years ago

Xcode 3 does this as well.

zitterbewegung• 15 years ago

Why not color the backround of the text and not have it as a side bar?

bane• 15 years ago

Curly braces.

chanux• 15 years ago

I wondered how his final result would look like with a little modification...

http://imgur.com/u5mNi

How can a code editor hint at code nesting level without indentation?

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