Persistent Highlighter

A Visual Studio Code extension that allows you to permanently highlight text in your code.

Get started in Persistent Highlighter

Features

• Multi-Language Support: Now supports Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other non-English text highlighting
• Persistent Highlighting: Highlights are saved and will reappear when you reopen the file.
• Smart Word Boundary Detection: Automatic language detection with appropriate boundary matching for accurate highlighting.
• Multiple Colors: Use a variety of colors to highlight different terms.
• 25 Built-in Colors: Choose from 25 carefully selected built-in colors.
• 18 Preset Colors: Quick access to 18 curated preset colors in the custom color picker.
• Custom Color Support: Use any hex color code for personalized highlighting.
• Color Selection UI: Easy-to-use color picker for both built-in and custom colors.
• Tree View Sidebar: Manage all your highlights in a dedicated sidebar view.
• Cross-Session Persistence: Highlights persist across VS Code sessions.
• Case Sensitive Matching: Optional case-sensitive search for highlights.
• Large File Optimization: Intelligent performance optimization for large files.
• Caching System: Efficient caching mechanism for improved performance.
• Easy to Use: Simple commands to add, remove, toggle, and manage highlights.
• Right-Click Context Menu: Quick access to highlighting operations directly from the editor context menu.

Commands

• Persistent Highlighter: Add Highlight: Adds a highlight to the selected text or the word under the cursor.
• Persistent Highlighter: Add Custom Color Highlight: Adds a highlight with a custom color chosen from 25 built-in colors or a custom hex color.
• Persistent Highlighter: Remove Highlight: Removes a highlight from the selected text or the word under the cursor.
• Persistent Highlighter: Toggle Highlight: Toggles the highlight for the selected text or the word under the cursor.
• Persistent Highlighter: Jump to Next Highlight: Navigate to the next highlight in the current file.
• Persistent Highlighter: Jump to Previous Highlight: Navigate to the previous highlight in the current file.
• Persistent Highlighter: Clear All Highlights: Removes all highlights from all files.
• Persistent Highlighter: Refresh: Refresh the highlights tree view.
• Persistent Highlighter: Jump to Highlight: Navigate to a specific highlight in the current file.
• Persistent Highlighter: Edit Highlight: Modify the text of an existing highlight.

Installation

1. Open Visual Studio Code.
2. Go to the Extensions view (Ctrl+Shift+X).
3. Search for "Persistent Highlighter" and click "Install".
4. Reload Visual Studio Code.

Usage

Basic Usage

1. Select the text you want to highlight or place the cursor on a word.
2. Open the command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P).
3. Run one of the Persistent Highlighter commands.

Custom Color Usage

1. Select the text you want to highlight.
2. Run Persistent Highlighter: Add Custom Color Highlight.
3. Choose from 18 preset colors or select "Custom Color".
4. If choosing custom color, enter a hex color code (e.g., #FF5733).
5. The highlight will be applied with your chosen color.

Preset Colors: Coral, Turquoise, Sky Blue, Mint, Light Yellow, Plum, Seafoam, Golden, Lavender, Light Blue, Apricot, Light Green, Salmon, Light Purple, Pale Green, Peach, Pale Blue, Rose

Keyboard Shortcuts

• Shift+F1: Toggle highlight

Right-Click Context Menu

You can now access highlighting operations directly from the editor's right-click context menu:

1. Right-click on selected text or a word in the editor
2. Choose from the available highlighting options:
   • Add Highlight: Add a highlight with default color
   • Remove Highlight: Remove existing highlight
   • Toggle Highlight: Toggle highlight on/off
   • Add Custom Color Highlight: Add highlight with custom color

Note: Context menu can be configured in VS Code settings:

• persistent-highlighter.enableContextMenu: Enable/disable context menu (default: true)
• persistent-highlighter.contextMenuCollapsed: Show as submenu or direct items (default: false)

Sidebar Management

1. Open the Explorer sidebar (Ctrl+Shift+E).
2. Find the "Highlights" section at the bottom.
3. Use the tree view to:
   • See all highlighted terms across all files
   • Jump to specific highlights
   • Edit highlight text
   • Remove individual highlights
   • Clear all highlights at once

Configuration

The extension provides several configuration options to customize behavior:

Performance Settings

• persistent-highlighter.enableLargeFileOptimization: Enable optimization for large files (default: true)
• persistent-highlighter.chunkSize: Chunk size in characters for large file processing (default: 50000)
• persistent-highlighter.maxFileSize: Maximum file size in characters before applying optimization (default: 1000000)
• persistent-highlighter.visibleRangeBuffer: Number of lines to buffer around visible range for large files (default: 100)

Search Settings

• persistent-highlighter.caseSensitive: Enable case-sensitive matching for highlights (default: false)

Context Menu Settings

• persistent-highlighter.enableContextMenu: Enable right-click context menu for highlighting (default: true)
• persistent-highlighter.contextMenuCollapsed: Collapse context menu submenus by default (default: false)

To modify these settings, go to VS Code Settings and search for "Persistent Highlighter".

Recent Updates

Version 0.0.13

• Fixed Highlight Display Issues: Resolved critical problems with highlight positioning after file modifications, including issues when adding spaces or making small text changes
• Simplified Update Logic: Removed complex incremental update algorithm that was causing highlight misalignment, replaced with reliable full-document updates
• Enhanced Stability: Eliminated race conditions and offset calculation errors that were causing highlights to shift incorrectly after text edits
• Code Cleanup: Removed redundant updateDecorationsIncremental method for cleaner, more maintainable codebase
• Improved User Experience: Highlights now remain correctly positioned regardless of text modifications, edits, or insertions
• Better Performance: Streamlined update process reduces computational overhead while maintaining accuracy

Version 0.0.12

• Multi-Language Support: Now supports highlighting non-English text including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other Unicode characters
• Improved Word Boundary Detection: Enhanced regex pattern matching for better accuracy with mixed-language content
• Smart Boundary Recognition: Automatically detects text language and applies appropriate boundary matching
• Backward Compatibility: English text highlighting continues to work exactly as before

Version 0.0.11

• Right-Click Context Menu: Add context menu support for quick highlighting operations
• Context Menu Configuration: Add settings to enable/disable and customize context menu behavior
• Improved User Experience: Direct access to highlighting features from editor context menu
• Submenu Support: Optional collapsed submenu mode for cleaner context menu organization

Version 0.0.9

• Update version to 0.0.9: Keep project version up to date
• Fix invalid highlight text provided issue: Prevents adding empty or whitespace-only highlights
• Remove redundant clearAllFromTreeCommand: Streamlined command list for clarity
• Update gitignore and vscodeignore: Keep project files clean and optimized

Version 0.0.7

• Jump to Next/Previous Highlight: Add new command for navigation between highlights
• Cyclic Navigation: Highlights cycle through the file when reaching end/beginning
• Case-sensitive Support: Navigation respects the case-sensitive configuration setting
• Improved User Experience: Seamless highlight navigation with appropriate warning messages

Version 0.0.6

• Fixed greedy matching issue: Highlights now use whole-word matching with proper word boundaries
• Improved search accuracy: Enhanced jumpToHighlight function to use whole-word matching
• Better text matching: Fixed issue where partial word matches were incorrectly highlighted
• Performance maintained: All optimizations and caching systems remain intact

Version 0.0.5

• Added intelligent caching system for improved performance
• Implemented large file optimization with configurable chunk processing
• Added case-sensitive matching option
• Enhanced custom color picker with 18 preset colors
• Improved sidebar tree view with better highlight management
• Added incremental document change processing

Development

Prerequisites

• Node.js (version 16 or higher)
• Visual Studio Code
• TypeScript

Development Setup

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/jsfaint/persistent-highlighter.git
cd persistent-highlighter

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Compile TypeScript
npm run compile

# Run in development mode (watch)
npm run watch

# Run tests
npm test

# Package extension
vsce package

Architecture

The extension uses a comprehensive architecture with:

• HighlightManager class: Central manager for all highlighting operations with caching support
• HighlightsTreeProvider class: Manages the sidebar tree view for highlight management
• VS Code API integration: Uses TextEditorDecorationType for rendering highlights
• State persistence: Uses globalState to store highlights across sessions
• Event-driven updates: Listens to document changes, active editor changes, and configuration changes
• Performance optimization: Intelligent caching and large file handling
• Custom color management: Dynamic decoration type creation for custom colors
• Incremental updates: Efficient processing of document changes without full re-rendering sing of document changes without full re-rendering