Plugin for Code folding

[PABourdin]

This is a feature request to add a plugin that would show a [-] or [+] sign in front of code blocks, loops, if-conditions, etc. to fold and unfold such code blocks for better readability of code.

I see there were previous efforts to include a folding plugin to pluma from external developers, but none of these plugins works with the current Pluma.

Thank you for looking into it.

[vkareh]

This would be a great addition. Unfortunately, until GtkSourceView actually implements language-level block awareness and integration with the gutter widget, we would have to implement it from scratch ourselves.

I see several possible approaches:

• Language aware patterns ({} bracket detection on some langs, if/else pattern-matching on others, indent on yet other langs, etc.). This would require tracking those nuances across all languages we want to support. This is probably the most straightforward, but seems very burdensome depending on which/how many languages we want to support.
• Indentation-based. Seems easy, but will might fail when indentation is inconsistent (MATE source code is full of indentation inconsistencies that would make this a nightmare).
• LSP (Language Server Protocol). This is what other IDEs do: they rely on a language-specific lib/component to detect folding ranges/patterns. This is highly complex and would need to be adapted to each language as needed.
• We wait until GtkSourceView implements this and we just enable the option. This might never happen - I think it's been tried before but gotten nowhere. Not high priority, I guess...

My suggestion for whoever wants to tackle this is to go into the https://github.com/mate-desktop/pluma-plugins repo and attempt the approach of creating a new plugin to do this using pattern-matching (using {} braces as an initial proof-of-concept, for example).

[vkareh]

@PABourdin

I see there were previous efforts to include a folding plugin to pluma from external developers, but none of these plugins works with the current Pluma.

Do you have links/references? Could be a good starting point...

[PABourdin]

I am not sure, if this implemented it - and I can not run it in todays Pluma to test:
https://github.com/moflaher/pluma-folding

I see of course the point with GtkSourceView, yes. How about requesting this feature there, too?