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Comment by paperwork | Hacker News Reader

I don't have intellij installed on my computer here, when you say 'split vertically,' do you mean it basically opens two views of same file next to each other, each view scrolling independently? If so, that isn't what I want -- almost every IDE and text editor already does that.

What I want is similar to how MS Word takes a single blob of text and reflows it in multiple columns.

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Huh, that's interesting. I can't say I've encountered that need before though; it's much more valuable for me to have many panes of different files open at the same time (or two locations of one file), rather than an "extended buffer" of a single file. Most of the context outside the immediate method is not immediately important, and most methods are just a few lines long -- enough to fit in a pane.

No, it creates an additional editor area that can have any number of files open in it. You drag files between the areas or open the same file in multiple areas.

You can continue splitting any area vertically or horizontally to create a configuration that fits your working style or the code you're currently writing.

Interesting idea. Don't think it's been done with an IDE before. Expanding code based on context would be cool too. (eg. second column shows the implementation of whatever the first column's cursor is on - super handy when stepping through code)

Not sure if it counts as an IDE, but emacs has follow-mode which does this.

http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html%5Fnode/emacs/F...

Interestingly enough Xcode tried that as well, and its had mixed reviews.

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