VS2010 - Can i extend the 2010 text editor window with Graphics?

Question

Hello,

I am developing an extension to add graphics around code (text).

I've searched around and came up with only one other post refering to IWpfTextView (and related) interfaces.

What i want is to "markup" the code with (ex) arrows, boxes and lines. I've read through the mdsn and it seems scrolling up and down does a complete redraw and the Top coordinate changes. There's also http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.visualstudio.text.editor.aspx But no complete text on the matter.

Are there any examples on the subject? Is this a supported scenario?

Answer 1

Yes, this is supported.

In the SDK, there is a project template for "Text Relative Adornment", which shows the general idea. That template places an adornment underneath text, like a highlight, but you can place text-relative adornments anywhere on the view ("text-relative" just means that the adornment scrolls with the text).

For examples, you can start with this AgentBadgeVisualManager.cs file, which is for displaying a user "badge" off to the right of a piece of text.

I recently wrote a blog article about text relative adornments, though it's more of "best practices" and less of "here is the code you need to put an arrow on the editor".