Bookmarks

[iamvoidcoder]

In absence of plugins support, could the team perhaps consider adding in bookmarks as a core feature?

I only just discovered Zed and honestly can't put it down after installing. Liking a lot. There is just this one feature which makes it impossible to work with large code base projects. Even with fuzzy file finder it is still a big pain to bounce between large number of places in the code, impossible to keep all locations in memory.

Many editors have built-in bookmarks support. Visual Studio, Sublime Text, BBEdit, TextMate etc. All have built-in bookmarks. In others there will always be some community bookmarks plugins. It is kind of hard to survive without :(

Thanks

[iamnbutler]

I've genuinely never heard of bookmarks in an editor. Can you explain how this works?

[plaukiu]

You plant a bookmark on to a line of text in any file in your project (or filesystem). You press a key command or select from a list to jump to one of them.

[iamvoidcoder]

Yes, these work like plaukiu said. You have an ability to selectively bookmark arbitrary lines in your project files. These are stored in project metadata so not lots across sessions. Bookmarked lines will normally have a bookmark icon in the gutter or different color line number so you can visually distinguish the marked lines. You can then quickly jump to these bookmarks via hotkey or from a fuzzy finder bookmarks list (sort of like Go To File fuzzy finder works).

When jumping to a bookmark if the corresponding file is already open it will simply activate the tab and place cursor on the bookmarked line. Otherwise open the file in new tab and move cursor to bookmarked line.

Normally you'd have key actions like:

• Toggle bookmark on the current line
• Jump to next bookmark
• Jump to previous bookmark
• Clear all bookmarks
• Invoke bookmark fuzzy finder jump list

It is very useful when you are concurrently editing a number of places far apart in the same buffer or in multiple buffers. Splits can help but you can only split so many times before the editor becomes too small and unusable. Hitting a hotkey to quickly jump between these places is much easier.

Personally I think I can live w/o bookmarks in relatively small projects as it is not too hard to remember where is what. However in large projects with thousands of files and tens of large files open it is simply impossible to remember all the places I'm editing or inspecting. So what happens I keep repeatedly abusing Find in Project to look up the same places in the code over and over again. Rather than bookmark these places and quickly bounce between them via hotkey.

Another exercise where I can't live without bookmarks are the large files. E.g. I often have to analyse some enormously large log files. You scroll through thousands of lines and find certain places of interest. Then if you want to revisit them you have to repeat the painfully slow search process all over again. Bookmarks would make it easy.

[iamnbutler]

Awesome explanation, thank you.

A few further questions:

• How do bookmarks respond to changes?
• For example, if I make a bookmark, and Max deletes the code that it was pointing at, what happens?
• Am I attaching a bookmark to a line or a specific node, like a function, struct, etc?
• Do you give them names? Are there other metadata you attach to a bookmark?
• Would you expect to see your co-worker's bookmarks in a collaborative environment?

[iamvoidcoder]

I think there are some excellent novel ideas right there in your questions. Though, being realistic, I think this function should be super simple and generic. At least the core part of it with any extras being optional as it is hard to meet everyones needs.

• How do bookmarks respond to changes?
• For example, if I make a bookmark, and Max deletes the code that it was pointing at, what happens?
• Am I attaching a bookmark to a line or a specific node, like a function, struct, etc?

You bookmark arbitrary lines in the files, not specific langue constructs. When the bookmarked line moves up or down due to editing the bookmark moves with it. When the bookmarked line is completely deleted the bookmark is also deleted.

If you never used bookmarks in other editors perhaps you used breakpoints in any IDE? There are lots of similarities between the two. You can toggle breakpoint on the code line and a special marker appears in the gutter. There is normally some sort of visual active breakpoint list showing all breakpoints with project file paths and line numbers. You can jump to any breakpoint in the code from the list etc. Breakpoints also respond to editing in the same way as bookmarks, i.e. they move up and down with the line they are attached to and get auto-removed when the line is deleted. Very similar behaviour.

• Do you give them names? Are there other metadata you attach to a bookmark?

Not seen this functionality in other editors. Custom bookmark names seems like a good optional feature. Naming probably only makes sense for long term permanent bookmarks but then you have to somehow distinguish between the two bookmark groups, the quick immediate bookmarks you need right now for editing and permanent labeled bookmarks pointing at certain important places in project files. Subjectively, the labeled ones probably must not be included in hotkey Go To Next / Prev navigation, must not be removed by Clear All Bookmarks and must only appear in modal bookmark list to be useful.

• Would you expect to see your co-worker's bookmarks in a collaborative environment?

Don't think these are very useful in collaborative environment. At least the normal unnamed ones you'd pepper the code with for quickly moving around. On the other hand, the permanent named bookmarks from your other question above are completely different matter. I can totally see creating some permanent named bookmarks pointing to important places in project files. Useful for anyone collaborating on project, not just yourself.

[plaukiu]

Here and here is some info on a brand new implementation of bookmarks in XCode

[solidcode79]

+1. Honestly, unnamed bookmarks are great for navigating large files. Notepad++ on windows is what I recently remember has the cleanest implementation of this. I remember Visual Studio Code 6.0 (circa ~2004) had this. The key bindings as I remember on windows for notepad++

MVP

• Toggle bookmark on the current line CTRL+F2
• Jump to next bookmark F2
• Jump to previous bookmark Shift + F2

Good to have

• Clear all bookmarks
• Invoke bookmark fuzzy finder jump list

[failable]

Simple bookmarks in Emacs: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Bookmarks.html

[smpallen99]

A related issue #5122. Vim support named marks (bookmarks IMHO) local to current buffer [a-z] and global book marks [A-Z].

[solariz]

Hey just came here because searching how-to set bookmarks in Zed, just to find out you can't.
Just to add to the Post here, coming from vscode I used the most fav. Bookmarks extension there which have a great explain page how it works:

https://github.com/alefragnani/vscode-bookmarks

Would love to see this coming to Zed, even if in a very simplified version.

Why is it Useful?

For me particulary I do a lot of Code reviews and bug search where I need to parse through endless of code written by other people. Sometimes on searching for a bug or a certain behavior I bookmark that line in a long code file to later quickly jumping back and forth the identified lines. Now in Zed I need to go back to Pen & Papaer again on my desk and manually note down those linenumbers on the paper ;p

How I use it

I set a shortcut to CTRL-LEFT for toggle line bookmark, and another shortcut CTRL-UP/DOWN to jump next / prev bookmark. This is very easy to use. I do not need a index or summary or naming bookmarks, just simple mark and jump.

thanks !

[baldwindavid]

#13111 is the issue for the currently unsupported vim global marks; local marks are already supported in Zed. I imagine vim global marks could leverage some sort of generalized bookmark functionality.

[solariz]

What are vim local marks and how can I use them in zed ?

[baldwindavid]

Basic local marks support came in #11507

The simplest usage is to "mark" a place in a file via shortcut (e.g. m a) and then jump back to that location via ' a. You can mark multiple locations using different letters (e.g. m b, m c, etc.) and then revisit with ' b, ' c, etc. This is all only in a single file.

The unsupported global marks are similar except use capital letters and work across files.

Probably goes without saying, but this is only when Zed's vim mode is enabled.

[solariz]

Thanks for explaining, not using the vim mode so hoping and wait 😅

[mildred]

It would be great to have commands to move to the previous / next mark

[universalmind303]

another great example of 'bookmarks' is hx's jumplist

[Thomascountz]

As a workaround for not only being able to create a sort of jumplist and have "bookmarks" in minibuffers, I use a code comment (via code snippet keymap-ed shortcut) and a pinned global search tab.

[misantroop]

Big fan of VSCode's Numbered Bookmarks. I find it critical for my workflow and the implementation appears to be rather simple. Any row deletion on a bookmarked row removes the bookmark. All other bookmarks in file where row number > deleted row number are offset by number of deleted rows.