There have been a few mentions about improving the way that PHPEd implements Bookmarks.

Maybe it's old age, but I am un-able to use the numbered system any longer; I need something visual. It becomes difficult to track all the numbers in all the files - so much so that I have had to write them all on pieces of paper for one project.

In fact, I've started setting breakpoints in code and using THOSE as bookmarks. Way easier. Until I need to debug that is...
I briefly used TODO's as a way to have a managed list of bookmarks, but that was silly.

Perhaps something akin to the Breakpoints tab would help. Double clicking on an entry would jump to the bookmark. The list would include all bookmarks set for all project files. It would show the filename and line-number. The bookmarks could be optionally named and retain their number.

(To those who don't read things carefully - I am NOT suggesting that bookmarks behave like breakpoints, but that there exist a Bookmarks Tab. To those who think I don't know how to use bookmarks, I do - I just have too many to remember.)

In this way jumping around between up to 100 bookmarked locations might be more manageable. Easy even.

I wonder if this small feature might improve the code maintenance experience for anyone else?
(I'd add a poll, but I don't think anyone really cares...)



Adrian Green.

Fully agree about difficulty to manage many bookmarks in a big project.

Look at how bookmarks are implemented in Visual Studio.
Just show a list of all bookmarks in a pane below the editor window. It would be very nice.

Bump back to the top.
I would really like to see bookmarks implemented properly. Unlimited bookmarks that can be named by me, and displayed as a list in the pane at the bottom of the screen next to the "todo" list. Add toolbar buttons for Prev, next bookmark, and add a method to click the left page margin to add or remove a bookmark in the same way as a breakpoint is currently added/removed.

The right-click menu method for managing bookmarks is IMHO unsuitable and dated.

If you don't like popups, don't Ctrl-1, Ctrl-2, Ctrl-3, etc bookmark shortcuts work for you? Did you try Ctrl+Shift+1, Ctrl+Shift+2, Ctrl+Shift+3 to set them?

You might consider using the //todo: system.

Personally I have no use for all the todo's that other guys might eventually get around to doing, so today I went through my project and replaced all TODO with someday. This gives me a blank To-Do List tab, and when I put in a comment with //todo: and an explanation if I am feeling energetic it immediately shows up in the To-Do List tab and I can then navigate to various todo marks. Think of them as bookmarks, but they called them todo. Works for me.

Im using disabled breakpoints as bookmarks. I need TODOs as i use these as im developing to remind me that before release there is something left to do

TODOs have their purpose, don't confuse them and pollute the code that might one day be edited by other people in OTHER IDEs.
I also use TODOs for what's their purpose is. The todo system is very useful. I agree the bookmarks system clearly is not. Instead of finding excuses and workarounds, this simple feature should be right in the ide.
Count me in.
It's getting harder and harder for me to use phped and its highly lagging behind set of features for code navigation and editing, after playing around with almost any other IDEs. Its speed and visually pleasant interface are not going to keep me for long. I used to recommend PHPEd to many and many people here and there, but I don't see tens of basic features implemented I hoped for in the versions after I first got to know about PHPEd (somewhere in the early 5.x's).

I added a shortcut, t^J and it puts in //todo: what and I simply double click what and type a short hint as to the purpose. Note the lower case which could differentiate it from the real //TODO: if I leave them in for too long.

Quick and dirty but it works and that is really what I want. I doubt it would be a big task to simply duplicate the TODO code and rename some things to say bookmark, but as in all projects (and yes, don't forget that phpED is a project to its developers) time is precious and things get prioritized. I'm sure we all have the same realities in our own projects. Also, don't we pride ourselves on using tools in ways that were never thought of to solve some problem? Can you imagine where things would be if excuses were used that K&R didn't build such and such function into C, so that task is impossible to do. My job is to make it possible, and right now co-opting TODO for bookmarks is a solution that helps me to do my job.

Besides my //todo: are temporary and are removed once I have finished with that section of code. Of course that is how the real //TODO: is supposed to be as well.

lonnien, are you confusing the purpose of todo and that of the bookmarks?
Bookmarks should not pollute the code with unnecessary comments of any kind, and they are there to stay, even after any part of the code around has been finished.
We all know phped is a project on its own, it's just phped was traditionally way too slow on implementing most wanted basic features, present in other IDEs for decades. And the few new features despite being relatively simple, remain either very buggy, or are half-implemented and almost unusable. Just look at any other IDE and the speed new features get their way into them (if not already there) . Some of them are free, others are less expensive .

tedych, no I am not confused about Bookmarks or Todo lists. It is just that Todo lists do what I want for Bookmarks and I have very little use for someone else's Todo lists. A Todo entry should not be a permanent entry. At some point it should get Todone and then removed. When I set a Bookmark it is basically to remind me of areas that I need or want to navigate to. In some cases they are a real Todo reminder to myself and I make a point of doing whatever I said I should do, then I remove it or replace with appropriate comments for later maintenance documentation.

I came from Netbeans and find phpEd to be faster and I am slowly relearning how to do some things. After a few weeks I would say I am more productive now and am used to it. The debugger is far superior to xdb. I use an incremental development approach and nearly every line of code is examined in the debugger after I add it to make sure it produces the result I wanted. I find I catch many small issues that way, and also by viewing the available variables I quite often see an easier way to get at my data, since in many instances it is already there and requires no effort to generate it again.

It would be great to have an actual Bookmark tab that works the same as the Todo tab, but until that day comes I am productive mis-using what has been provided.

I think that there are two little problems with bookmarks. It's very easy to set them, add comment, then unset by mistake and lose the comment. Also, it's very easy to lose context (line#) of the mark if the file was modified with an external tool. TODOs built into the sources as comments are more persistent.
Anyway, adding unnumbered bookmarks with comments is in our plans.

Is it your plan to make them the same as the TODO window? That would be very neat.