This Bugzilla instance is a read-only archive of historic NetBeans bug reports. To report a bug in NetBeans please follow the project's instructions for reporting issues.
It would be nice if the editor could be set up in multiple columns, ala Emacs. Perhaps an obscure feature but nice sometimes. I'll attach a patch to openide/text (no bug category for that?) which works to do this. It's a bit crude (editor toolbar gets lost, for whatever reason; and error stripe doesn't really know what to do, but I'm not sure what it *should* do).
Created attachment 24966 [details] Diff for openide/text to implement multiple columns
I don't know what Emacs follow-mode is and can't make head and tail of your patch (just uncoditionally creates two editor components and forces them to scroll in sync?). Anyway, what's the use case beyond of the things covered by "clone and drag alongside".
> Anyway, what's the use case beyond of the things covered by "clone and drag > alongside". Don't think we have any clone action in the UI anymore... It's just a 2 column (or n column) editor - if you're using a small font, you can see more source at the same time. I used it all the time when I was working on the NetBeans book in emacs, and Jesse asked me once upon a time to try to implement it. It's hardly a thing our users are screaming for, but it can be nice to have. I just felt like taking another crack at it. Since the editor is built to assume the possibility of multiple components over the same document, it probably wouldn't be too hard to get it working really well - but probably it's up to someone who really loves the feature to implement it.
For text which is not too wide (filled, or otherwise obeys some right margin), it permits you to display much more onscreen at once than you otherwise could, like in a newspaper. M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split in Emacs.
Reassigning to new module owner mslama.