Number in the margin

OldeMusicke

I made a typo -- some combination of ctrl, alt, or shift plus some other character -- and then the number 7 appeared in the editing tab, to the left of one line number. That is, it wasn't part of the file content.

I don't know exactly what I hit because it was a fumble-fingered thing that I haven't been able to reproduce. When I closed and reopened the file, the 7 was gone.

Before it went away, I found that in adding or removing lines, the 7 became a moving target -- always in the margin and always next to a line, but it wasn't tied to a particular line number or particular content.

No harm done and it's gone now. I'm just curious what it was. I haven't spotted anything about it in the help text. If it's there, I haven't hit on the right search term to find it.

Ed_NBOS

Hmm, not sure what that is. Its a canned editor so there may be some additional functionality in there for visual settings that the program itself doesn't use.

OldeMusicke

Aha, I poked around some more and found the magic keystrokes: ctrl-shift-(digit), for digits 1 through 9. It turns out to be useful.

It makes a bookmark for the current editing session. It's not saved with the file, so the markers will be gone the next time you open the file for editing.

Ctrl-shift-digit adds the corresponding digit to the line number area. If you already used that digit on some other line, ctrl-shift-digit removes it from the other line and adds it to the current line. If you use it on the line that has the marker, it removes it.

Here's the useful bit: ctrl-digit jumps to that marker, if you have it. If you don't have the corresponding marker, nothing happens.

I'll start using this when I want to bounce back and forth between different parts of the same file.

Given that I accidentally created a 7 marker, I must have accidentally included ctrl when I had intended to type shift 7 (&).

Ed_NBOS

Neat! I honestly didn't know the editor supported that!