The SPE IDE that I use for my Python code uses this "visual cue" that looks like a vertical dashed line for alignment of (what I would call) function blocks. How can I get this option in Visual Studio 2008?
Here is what it looks like:
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No problem. A picture paints a thousand words. – Drew Noakes Sep 19 '09 at 16:24
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I've seen it called structural highlighting or code outlining.
There's a Visual Studio plug-in called CodeRush from Developer Express that supports this (bottom of the page) and a lot more.
update:
As divo mentioned, there is a free lite version of CodeRush. I confirmed that it includes structural highlighting.
Bruce McGee
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1Please note that there is a free edition for C# (and maybe VB, haven't checked it) available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vcsharp/dd218053.aspx – Dirk Vollmar Sep 19 '09 at 17:06
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Yes, this is exactly what I need -- Coderush Xpress Structural Highlighting. Thanks!! – seedofc Sep 19 '09 at 17:24
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Unfortunately, Visual Studio does not support indentation lines out of the box.
Andrew Hare
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Thanks for your reply. Are there any third party plug-ins that add this functionality? – seedofc Sep 19 '09 at 16:16
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These lines are arguably more useful in Python where indentation denotes nesting. In C#, nesting is explicitly marked by curly braces. I feel as though curly braces provide the visual cues I need to see this kind of thing, so you might just try to persevere -- in time the cognitive load associated with glimpses of C# versus glimpses of Python will reach equilibrium.
VS2010 implements the text editor in WPF and there are some examples online of creating plug-ins that augment the text editor area. This could be a fun project without being too difficult.
I am envious of Python's indentation-centric nesting. I wish that the C# compiler supported something like that. I wish that white space was part of the language. It would make tooling support for the language better as well.
Drew Noakes
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Drew, your assessment seems spot on. However, for some reason, the curly braces throw me off. I feel like I'm constantly trying to figure out where a block of code starts and ends. This could be because I'm relatively new to programming in general. I definitely feel like Python's use of whitespace and indentation makes it much easier to read in comparison to C#'s curly braces. – seedofc Sep 19 '09 at 16:43