Add way to open Markdown links in a different editor group

[tedhudek]

Scenario:

Markdown file is open in left editor group. This file has a lot of links to other .md files that I want to preview in the right editor group. But Markdown links can currently only be opened into the same editor.

Please consider. Thanks!

[tedhudek]

Adding @gregvanl per our discussion about this one

[mjbvz]

@tedhudek Do you mean that you would like an option to make the open preview to side command to open the preview to the left instead of to the right of the current editor?

[tedhudek]

@mjbvz No, sorry, I should have been more specific. Here's what I mean:

1. Double-click to open a .md file in a persistent editor in Code, preferably a file with many links to other local .md files.
2. In the file, Ctrl+click a link to another .md file.
3. The other file opens in a new editor, in the same editor group.

Desired: open the link as a raw .md file in a new or existing (separate) editor group.
Then, when I go back to the original file and ctrl+click another .md link, open that raw .md into the same editor group the previous one opened into. So I can quickly ctrl+click through a bunch of links and see the raw .md while my original file (the one with all the links) stays in view.

[mjbvz]

Ok, thanks for explaining the expected behavior in more detail. Marking as help wanted if anyone wants to investigate this.

To get started, look at:

• normalizeLink in documentLinkProvider.ts This is where we map markdown links to _markdown.openDocumentLink command links

• The handler of _markdown.openDocumentLink in extension.ts This is where we convert the command into an editor action. Instead of opening in the current editor, we would want to open in a new editor group here