#127 Hide/Reveal text lines (a' la' ISPF)

[Zatlas1]

Dear Syn Team
I love your editor, it's great!
I do not have enough knowledge in Delphi or C++ to
even dream about helping you, but I would like to
suggest a feature. The problem with this feature is
that people who do Delphi,C++,Java,etc. tend not to
grasp why such feature is at all needed. The only thing
that supports its need is the WOW foctor, meaning,
when I show the feature to the Java, C++ crowd on the
old mainframe ISPF editor, I always get a "Wow, this is
indeed a great feature!"
The concept is really simple and could be ummarized
into these commands in English ({} mean an optional
clause):
1. Hide all text lines {between line number n to line
number n1} {that contain the pattern p}
2. (now, we have hidden lines, we want to reveal
selectively:)
Reveal all text line {between line numbern to line
number n1} {that contain the pattern p}
3. (subsequently we may manipulate these lines. For
example:)
delete all hidden|revealed lines
4. Flip the choice
and so on.

Now assume you have a long text in some programing
language. You want to see all the conditions (If, then,
elseif, endif - you may adapt it to your favorite
language, it does not matter) but not what the rest of
the code. You issue:
Hide all text lines
reveal all lines that contain ' if ' {case insesitive}
reveal all lines that contain ' elseif ' {case insesitive}
reveal all lines that contain ' else ' {case insesitive}
reveal all lines that contain ' endif ' {case insesitive}
That's it, you are done. You see only the conditional
flow without the noise. YOU control what is shown and
not the logic of the IDE or the editor. You specifically (in
my example) did not want to care about which class is
shown (which the tyranic IDE will mandate.) You are in
full control about what you see and what you don't.
The mainframe ISPF editor is the most flexible thing you
ever saw in that respect. It actually allow you to reveal
individual lines. If we go along with my original example,
let's say I suspect that the third 'elseif' cause my bug
but the code underneath it is of 100 lines. I just want to
see the first 5 lines, so I instruct the editor to reveal the
first 5 (or last, or from line n to n1) lines... again I see
what I want to see and not the noise.
I wish you'd listen and consider such a feature.
I imagine that the requested feature is hard to
implement, but [I'd like to promote its importance
:-)] a) it was implemented on the mainframe old editor
(ISPF) since the nineteen seventies and b) once
implemented one may manipulate all revealed or hidden
lines as a group which is very flexible.
I wish I would have been more proficient in object
oriented programming and would be able to contribute.

Thanks
and again, I love your editor and use it all the time.
Ze'ev Atlas