Hacker News Reader

This made me think that it would be useful to have different, easily switchable highlighting modes: syntax and symbols when I'm writing, structure when I'm reading code.

Or maybe syntax highlighting for the scope I'm in and structure for the rest.

I often use the folding/nesting indicators when reading code, it would be an extension of that.

View on HN

I've been using (and loving) something similar to this while switching modes between code and prose in vim [0]. In addition to changing how syntax highlighting, spellchecking and line breaks happen, there are some other interesting bits specific to prose; like formatting text for pasting into word processors, &c.

[0] http://alols.github.io/2012/11/07/writing-prose-with-vim/

The editor Source Insight had/has this feature, code was in one of two modes, draft or preview. I think that the syntax algorithm was the same, but draft was fixed pitch, syntax colored only, whereas preview had proportional fonts, different sizes and styles in addition to color

I last used SourceInsight circa 2005 so I have no idea about its current status

Reply on news.ycombinator.com