Dear devels What would you think about implementing a 'narrowing' feature in Geany?
Currently, the functions that are longer than a screen are very hard to track with simple scrolling. One thing that helps is matching braces, but only to a degree. Even if you highlight the braces by placing the cursor on one of the two, you may still need to start searching for the end of the function, and you may still easily miss it. (I think there is a binding that allows to go to the second brace directly, but that's still not it.)
Another way to deal with this would be to add a 'narrowing' option. I've first heard of this on the LyX list [1], with a reference to the commercial EmEditor [2] (scroll to 'narrowing' to see some screenshots). For example, Geany could narrow down---keep the needed part in the usual background but grey-out all the rest---when placing the mouse on braces. (Or, this could be provided as a c-menu item when the cursor is on the bracing. Alternatively, the narrowing mode could be activated after selecting several lines and clicking on a menu item.) Whichever the implementation, this feature can be very helpful to improve workflow and reduce the mental workload necessary to inspect/edit specific parts of the code.
Do you think this would make sense for Geany? Regards Liviu
[1] http://www.mail-archive.com/lyx-users@lists.lyx.org/msg80540.html [2] http://www.emeditor.com/modules/feature1/rewrite/tc_35.html