SUGGESTION: Bookmarks are all wrong! Gone horribly wrong. (long rant)

[Daniel Beckham]

I like the patch that Roland Schäfer wrote that shows bookmarks in a left 
hand gutter columns, but the entire way that bookmarks are implemented in 
kdevelop are all wrong to begin with.  I don't think they work and they 
aren't easy to use... I don't even bother because it's faster for me to 
page up/page down until I find my place, instead of having to go to a menu 
option, pick the view and then try to figure out which line I'm looking 
for...  all wrong.

Here is the *right* way to do it. (IMHO) =)

1)  The menu options are fine, but there really should be a context 
sensitive menu option using the right click mouse button...  right click on 
a line, set a bookmark... easy eh?  Almost as easy as the default key 
binding. (ctrl-alt-a)

2)  There should be accelerator keys to help you navigate through the book 
marks...  Say... F2 is bound to "Goto Next Bookmark" and it takes you to 
the next book mark below your current cursor position..  when you get to 
the bottom of the page, it just does a warp 9 back to the top and finds the 
first bookmark in the page.  That way, you can cycle through sections of 
your code *very* quickly.   e.g. "Add some code... hit F2 to jump to your 
var declaration section and add a new var... hit F2 to jump back to your 
bookmarked code you were just working in."

"But there are three windows you can bookmark", you say.  "How do you use 
F2 to jump between those views?"  Easy... just click on the tab at the top 
of the window.. that's how you move between the three panes anyway isn't it?

3)  There seriously should be some sort of left handed gutter for 
Kdevelop.  Roland Schäfer's patch does implement this, but only in a static 
way.

BTW, the anchor is, visually, a bad choice for a bookmark icon. It's begins 
to look like code after a while and it's bad that it's almost the same 
color.  It should have been a bright red, blue, orange or green circle that 
clearly draws your eyes to the bookmark... that's what it's for... to 
*mark* a place...

Back to the gutter issue.  There needs to be gutter that visually shows the 
bookmarks and allows you to set and remove a bookmark by clicking on a 
particular line inside the gutter itself.  If you already have your hand on 
the mouse and want to set a bookmark, you could just click the gutter at 
the right point and viola!  Bookmark set, continue on with your life...

Another feature that the gutter would be useful for is for line 
numbers.  It would be much easier to see what line you are on or are 
approaching, by looking at the gutter.  Otherwise, you have to move your 
eyes to the status bar to find the line number... and then continue looking 
to make sure you hit the right line number you are looking for.  This is a 
visual IDE, not vi or pico.  We are in X-Windows... we should take 
advantage of the fact that we have all this graphical real estate that's 
not being used and add useful indicator information...


Ok, there was my *nice* rant about bookmarks.  What do you guys think about 
this?  Do you find the bookmarks easy to use?  Do you think they could be 
improved?  I personally don't think they are useful at all, in their 
current state.

Daniel