Enhancement: Minimap position highlight

[ghiscoding]

• VSCode Version: 1.10.0-insiders (2017-02-24)
• OS Version: Windows 10

I have some enhancement requests for the current minimap implementation which are already available in Atom as separate plugins.

1. 1. Enable the minimap in latest insider build and position your cursor in the editor. The minimap does not highlight (ligh grey background) your current position unless you hover over the minimap. I would like this highlight to be enabled at all time.
   • Implemented via issue Minimap: add a alwaysShowViewport setting #21784. A new flag was added "editor.minimap.showSlider": "always" (its default is however set to mouseover)
2. 2. Add CSS color display in the minimap, this is available in Atom as a separate plugin minimap-pigments which I find very convenient.
3. 3. Highlight the text in the editor would also highlight the text in the minimap. This is only available in Sublime Text and has a white background (instead of grey)... see print screen.
   • see this comment

[mika76]

I think 3 is the one I mostly use - so easy to find or find and replace when you can see the highlights in the minimap - as long as they are very visible (strong contrast) - in atom and sublime the highlights are not nearly as visible as they should be, it's too easy to miss them in the syntax colors...

[sillero]

if minimap is enabled AND with the behavior fixed as @ghiscoding suggested, we don't need that slim default bar, minimap replaces it

[rmunn]

Request 1 (always show the viewport on the minimap) is now being tracked at #21784. Request 3 seems to be a partial duplicate of #20934 ("editor selection" is one of the things asked for in that issue). Request 2 does not have any duplicates that I could find.

[jens1o]

I would like it when the current line is also highlighted in the minimap.

[globaltommy]

I'm very surprised there is no highlight on minimap - guess will STILL stick with atom.io for now.

[abhijitvalluri]

Request 3 is a feature that exists in Atom, at least via third-party packages. In my opinion, that is very much needed and without that the utility of the minimap is questionable at best. Hopefully they will implement this feature soon.

In the meantime, I'll still be sticking with VScode instead of atom as I totally love the git integration in VScode, including the diff feature and due to the search feature being in the sidebar rather than editor window.

[abhijitvalluri]

I quickly hacked together a rudimentary implementation of Request 1 and 3 at abhijitvalluri@a1f2d2f

For request 3, I couldn't yet figure out how to highlight just the precise token corresponding to the word that is highlighted. So, instead I decided to highlight the entire line. In my opinion, this is probably a bit better as it is easier to see the whole line light up instead of just the word, which will be much smaller and harder to spot.

Example screenshot:

You could take that code, modify it and make your own custom version of vscode. And if you can make it nicer still go ahead and send in a PR!

[abhijitvalluri]

Made some improvements to the minimap highlight implementation: https://github.com/abhijitvalluri/vscode/commits/minimap_enhancements

Right now, all the implementation details are hardcoded, including it being set up for a dark theme. Also, there is a bug wherein if the file is too large, so that the minimap scrolls and does not fit entirely in one view, then only highlights for the portion of the file that is visible in the minimap works. Once you scroll, there are no highlights for the invisible part of the file in the minimap.

UPDATE:
I have made the necessary changes to fix the issues I mentioned above: highlights work correctly even for very long files, scrolling does not remove highlights etc. in abhijitvalluri@46c6691

If you don't mind this hardcoded feature, and are fine with the dark theme, then you can make a packaged version of this by running:

gulp vscode-[platform]-min

And then you will have your very own vscode with highlighting in the minimap. This is good enough for me, for now! So I am using this as my default version of vscode! 🤓

[ghiscoding]

@alexandrudima do you think it would be possible to use/merge the code provided by @abhijitvalluri for the number 3. that I have in the list

3. Highlight the text in the editor would also highlight the text in the minimap. This is only available in Sublime Text and has a white background (instead of grey).