Highlight overview next to scroll bar
lazarus / 9-Editor

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hendrikdv · 2012-07-17 09:30

Hello,

I've been maintaining some old Delphi 1.0 code using Eclipse as an
editor and the Pascaline language plugin. As Eclipse is very
heavyweight to manage and install on a new PC, I decided to switch to
Lazarus.

So far I like it, except I really miss a feature (provided by an
Eclipse "Glance" plugin http://code.google.com/p/eclipse-glance/) I've
grown addicted to.

When highlighting all occurrences of the current selection a bar
adjacent to the right scrollbar shows an overview where the highlights
occur within the file. That allows quickly scrolling to the right spot
to search for a particular occurrence.
http://ystrot.github.com/glance/i/matches.jpg or http://picasaweb.goog
le.ru/lh/photo/IV5IIjNc5NyH9gohPAPEUQ?feat=embedwebsite

I'm new to Lazarus, but i wonder if people familiar with the internals
can give me a clue if I could easily write a similar package to add
this feature or if it would involve digging very deeply into the IDE
internals and would take a lot of work.

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Martin_fr · 2012-07-17 11:14

Before I answer that, Lazaus has a "Find next/prev word occurrence"
function. You only need to set key shortcuts and you can jump between
the words.

There is an overview gutter unit SynGutterLineOverview (folder
SynEdit)
But it is still under construction, and may be completely changed.

The word search is in SynEditMarkupHighAll (folder SynEdit)
The incremental search is done in SourceEditor (folder IDE)

It currently is limited to the screen, and experience has shown, that
extending it can noticeable slow down the editor.
So it needs to be done in an IDle handler, and search small blocks of
lines at a time, then wait for the next idle  (or use
app.QueueAsyncCall)


Not yet sure, how to connect them. But all setup goes into 
ide\sourcesyneditor.pas

Least not last it needs an option to toggle it on/off.

---
If you decide to work on it, please discuss your ideas with me, so
they fit into the future concept of SynEdit.

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BigChimp · 2012-07-17 11:29

Fairly recently, there was an addition to Lazarus that shows a color
coded bar next to the right vertical scrollbar. It shows the
interface/implementation section etc.

Perhaps you could have a look at that diff to quickly locate what
you're looking for.

There was a message on the Lazarus mailing list discussing it, but I
can't seem to find it.
Edit: I think Martin's answer covers it

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hendrikdv · 2012-07-17 16:35

Thanks, I'll try to install the SynEdit package and see what happens

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Martin_fr · 2012-07-17 17:14

SynEdit is installed by default. Its the editor in the IDE itself.

Forgot:  the overview stuff is only in Snapshots.