Thursday, February 12, 2009
GUI design question
Most text editors have the option of horizontally splitting the view of the currently edited document, thus enabling to use a part of the view for editing and the other part for browsing sections of the document that are distant from the currently edited one, but related.
Why most text editors do not offer a vertical split option?
Any person that has ever used a diff tool knows how the side-by-side view of documents is useful.
Moreover, wide-screen displays are now the norm, and with such displays the vertical split makes more sense in terms of display surface usage.
I’ve built this two mock up of an editing window with horizontal and vertical splits for comparison:
Secondary question: apart from “his majesty” emacs, which allows me to split the editing window at my will, do you know other editors that support vertical splits?