Highlight current line while writing and scroll to center

[jaap-karssenberg]

Use case is for more comfortable writing

• highlight current line
• option to keep current line in center of screen

[jaap-karssenberg]

Search for "typewriter scrolling" to find examples of the behavior intended
Would work well together with distraction free mode.

[jaap-karssenberg]

To implement the scrolling need add empty lines at the end, else we can not scroll last line to the center. This can be hidden from the user by making sure that when you click or move cursor to these lines the cursor ends up on the last line with content.

Also would need to make sure that when writing the buffer back to file, these lines are cut off.

Implementation of the highlighting is just a custom tag that is moved with the cursor.

[Osndok]

Are the empty lines really needed? That sounds a bit hackish. I think the proper way to do this would be to have additional render objects inside the scrollview, but outside of the textview. I have thought about plugins that would want to populate this space anyway (e.g. to show backlinks at the bottom of the page as the export does).

[jaap-karssenberg]

@Osndok if you have some example code for that I'll be happy to use it

[Osndok]

I couldn't find a good example, but I was able to make a "proof" that it can be done.

I'm pretty sure the accepted solution involves ScrolledWindow(ViewPort(VBox(...)))... but don't know enough about python/gtk to wire up the signals correctly:

• Osndok@dc1772e

[CharlesNepote]

Both functionalities should be enable/disable by an option.
Personally, I will be so happy to use current line highlighting but not sure about keeping the current line in the center of the screen.

One of my use cases: I often make transcription from old documents (XVIe-XVIIe century) and I need to compare line by line my transcription and the original document. Highlighting current line will help me to do so.

[vossenjp]

+1 for highlighted current line, -1M for keeping it centered

[ed0mm]

This looks asleep but I wanted to add my +1 for it! Scroll to center would be a great addition for me, especially in the distraction free mode