Grid pattern support in editor area

[arigit]

Feature request: "Display Grid Pattern" support.
Both gEdit (optional) and gnome-Builder (by default) support displaying a subtle grid pattern in the editor area.

The pictures below show how the grid looks like with different solarized theme flavors. I understand this is a matter of taste but since this became Builder's default I guess this is popular with devs; I don't use builder but I find myself using it in gEdit all the time and I miss it in Geany.

I couldn't find any open or closed feature requests on geany so here it goes. Some research shows this was a feature added by gtksourceview.

[elextr]

I think this would need to be implemented by Scintilla, the editing widget Geany uses which is a separate project here. Then Geany would then only need an option to turn it on (off by default).

[b4n]

I'm still puzzled one what is the purpose of this pattern, esp. as on your screenshots the grid doesn't even seem to match line boundaries or something.

But anyway, as @elextr mentioned, if Scintilla gets support for it we could add a setting easily (or a plugin could add it, even). And implementing this without modifying Scintilla itself, while I believe would be theoretically possible, would likely be a pain and a lot less efficient -- and in any case not worth the hassle IMO.

[elextr]

while I believe would be theoretically possible, would likely be a pain and a lot less efficient -- and in any case not worth the hassle IMO.

Well, the last attempt to modify the background had to be removed after a while IIRC.

[b4n]

@elextr wasn't it VTE background that was removed because newer versions of the VTE lib dropped the feature, and dealing with it manually was too much trouble?

[elextr]

Yes, might have been VTE.

[kugel-]

I'm with @b4n here. It doesn't seem useful if it doesn't even align to line heights / characters. And it would be a lot of work, and needs to be implemented in scintilla (we like to avoid invasive local changes to it).