Ability to set preview mode as default for files like SVGs

[shreyashsaitwal]

What are you proposing?

Zed allows certain file types to be viewed in their rendered form using the preview button (eye icon) in the quick action bar. I'm proposing a new setting that would allow the user to set the preview mode as the default when opening certain files, like SVGs.

Why does this matter?

Currently, files like SVGs always open in code view, requiring a manual click to switch to preview. For files where the rendered output is more useful than the source, this is a repetitive, unnecessary step.

I'm also looking into doing my first contribution to Zed and thought this might a great place to start, since its something I run into often.

Possible approach

We could add a setting that supports one or a mix of the following behaviors:

• A global default to open files in either code or preview mode.
• Per-filetype overrides, so different file types can have different defaults.
• A "remember last used" mode per filetype, so Zed automatically reopens files the way the user last left them.

[JosephTLyons]

Im under the impression we should give users the option to opt into each thing we can render. In the future, we could have more files we could render (Ex: HTML, etc) and think users would want to choose which open as preview by default and which open as the raw text.

Curious to hear what other Zed staff members think.