Highlight resource feature worth considering for the platform?

[elsazac]

I recently raised a PR in JDT UI that allows users to visually highlight openable resources in the Package Explorer by making their labels bold, with an optional foreground colour that is configurable via Colors and Fonts -> java.

There was this below suggestion. Attaching the discussion here :

eclipse-jdt/eclipse.jdt.ui#3135 (comment)

The current highlight feature is limited to the Package Explorer. The suggestion is to use IMarker so that marking a file as “important” works across all views, appears in the Markers/Bookmarks view. Is this solution worth considering?

[elsazac]

@merks Any suggestions on this?

[merks]

I’m running way behind on reviewing stuff and I’m on my phone now. I try not to forget.

[merks]

It actually looks quite interesting and even something I might use. 😁

There's the question of the name and placement of the menu item. I find Highlight Resource to be maybe more verbose than necessary. After all, it's a context menu on a resource so that kind of goes without saying. It could just be Highlight and it could be a checked menu item so that it always has the same label; unhighlight is apparently a valid English word, but a checked menu item seems sufficient. Where it's placed in the video seems okay, though maybe in the edit action group is misleading, and maybe placing it head of familiar menu items is not ideal (or maybe a good idea)...

[fedejeanne]

Looks neat, it could be a good addition.

Couple of questions/suggestions:

• Is it possible to highlight any kind of item in the explorer? e.g. may one highlight complete packages / projects / folders too?
• Can one select many items and toggle the highlighting in all of them at the same time?
• Is it possible to navigate between the highlighted resources? e.g. like with the annotations?

• Is there a view where one can see all highlighted resources? I am thinking something like the Markers view, were one can see bookmarks

[elsazac]

@fedejeanne

• Is it possible to highlight any kind of item in the explorer? e.g. may one highlight complete packages / projects / folders too?

Yes, this should be possible. I had actually started the feature with this during the initial development, where packages and projects could also be highlighted, later just made it only to openable resources in the editor. so the implementation can be extended to support these resource types as well.

• Can one select many items and toggle the highlighting in all of them at the same time?

Yes, this should also be possible. It is not implemented right now, but this could be extended to support multi selection.

• Is it possible to navigate between the highlighted resources? e.g. like with the annotations?

This may be possible once the highlighting is implemented using markers. I can look into this further and confirm the possibilities.

• Is there a view where one can see all highlighted resources? I am thinking something like the Markers view, were one can see bookmarks

currently, there isn't a dedicated view for this. However, this should also be feasible.