Description Scott Moore 2014-06-23 20:57:27 EDT

Many editors in the past, including Brief and codewright, use or enable a "virtual space" mode where the text is considered to float in a sea of spaces. In eclipse, when traveling down the text, and lines are encountered that are shorter than the cursor position, the cursor jumps to the end of that line. I see that it returns to the same position if positioned back in a line that is longer than the current cursor position.

In a virtual space editor, the cursor can go anywhere, and travels straight down, regardless of where the line endings are. If you enter text to the right of a line ending, the line encompasses where the text was entered.

I have found virtual space mode far more intuitive. Here are the points.

- It is far easier to add text to, for example, line up with text above. With eclipse, you have to space over to where you want text.

- I can use the cursor up and down arrows to quickly verify that I have the same indents on code. Eclipse also can do this, but it is less intuitive, since the cursor jumps around.

- It pretty much solves the issue of saving invisible space to the output file, since the editor considers lines to always have whitespace at the end, and does not save it.

Anyways, its a mode, it would be a nice option, and I think it would be a great optional feature for eclipse, enabled by checkbox.

Thank you for your attention.