CodistCodist is a Visual Studio extension which strives to provide better coding experience and productivity for C# programmers. Codist 是一个致力于为 C# 程序员提供更佳的编码体验和效率的 Visual Studio 扩展。 Details of this release are listed in the Release Page on GitHub. If you like Codist, please vote it ★★★★★ and/or buy me a cup of Chinese tea. Wanna try something cool before it is officially released? Keep an eye on its repository in GitHub and don't forget to give a Star for it! What's newThis release brings better C# 12 support, a new C# code analysis function for Argument Assignments, Markdown editing experience, and many bug fixes. Version 7.9.3 fixes syntax highlight could get disabled when copy with rich text enabled. Details are listed in the release page on Github. FeaturesHere's a brief but not complete demonstration of Codist's enhancement to Visual Studio. Check out this list to see what Codist can do for you.
Codist supports localization into other languages and it has both English and Chinese now. Advanced C# Syntax HighlightThe advanced syntax highlight function highlights every aspect of C# language elements with diverse styles, including using various font families and text styles, underline styles, enlarging or shrinking font sizes, changing foreground or background colors and transparency. You can change syntax highlight styles in any languages, such as Visual BASIC, F#, SASS, and so on, even if they are not recognized by Codist. The following screenshots of the
Default Syntax Highlight ThemesTo quickly get started with advanced syntax highlight, open a C# project, then click the Customize Codist Syntax Highlighting command under the Tools menu. A window will pop up, click buttons at the left side of the dialog under the Predefined themes and see changes in effect. The styles on the right of the dialog immediately lists effects of corresponding syntax elements. Don't forget to click the Save button at the bottom of the dialog to confirm the changes. With the Save and Load buttons, you can backup and share your own syntax highlight settings. If you mess up your syntax highlight styles, you can press the Reset button to reset all settings to default, or reapply predefined themes by clicking buttons at the left bottom. Note: There is a known issue in Codist that if you change the theme of Visual Studio, you may have to restart it to make syntax highlight settings to work properly. If the Reset button does not work, please try restarting Visual Studio. Customization of Syntax Highlight StylesTo customize and tweak the desired syntax highlight styles, click or select the text in the document window, and click the Customize Codist Syntax Highlighting command under the Tools menu. The customization window will pop up and listing syntax classifications applied to the active text. Click the style in the Syntax Styles list, adjustment controls will be displayed at the bottom of the dialog, where you can change the style. As you change the style, you can immediately see how it appears in the code document window. Underline styles can be customized. Firstly assign a color for the Line, afterwards, more configuration elements will appear. If you want to change another syntax element, click on the place where it is applied in the code document window. If the customization window is still opened, and the Selected Code section under Syntax Categories is selected, the list will display the corresponding syntax styles for the place you clicked immediately. You can explore other syntax categories by clicking the list on the left of the dialog. Syntax definitions in the All languages section will list all syntax styles for any languages installed; those under Tagged comments section apply to comment taggers, others apply to corresponding languages accordingly. Note: Font size is relative value to editor default font size. Partially checked checkboxes denote default syntax styles are used. A Side Note for Editor Font: You may consider substituting the font used by Visual Studio code editor with professionally designed fonts for programming, for instance, IBM Plex Mono, Fira Code, etc. Employing MacType can significantly enhance system-wide textual display quality, especially for Chinese, Japanese and Korean programmers. My Symbols and External SymbolsCodist can identify symbols which are defined in your source C# code and which are imported from external assemblies. This feature is so unique that you may not find it elsewhere. You can customize it in the symbol markers section under the C# section in the Syntax Highlight Configurations dialog. Style C#: User symbol is used for symbols from your code, and C#: Metadata symbol is used for symbols imported from external assemblies. Note: some predefined themes have defined external symbols with bold style, as the above screenshot shows. Comment Tagger and Styles
Super Quick InfoThe quick info (the tool-tip shown when you hover your mouse pointer on your C# source code) can be enhanced by Codist. General Quick InfoTo customize the Super Quick Info, adjust the settings in the options page. Options in the General page apply to all code editor windows.
C# Quick InfoSuper Quick Info especially enhances programming experience for C# programmers. There are plenty of options available in the options page.
When Override XML Documentation checkbox is checked in the options page, it is also possible to activate options under it.
Codist shows XML Doc for those Additional Quick Info ItemsA dozen of additional quick info items could be displayed in the Additional Quick Info Items options page.
Navigation BarNavigation bar locates at the top of the code editor window. It overrides the original navigation bar. When the Navigation Bar is loaded, it hides two drop-down lists on the original Navigation Bar, but preserves the project drop-down list. Basically, the Navigation Bar serves the same purpose of the original one comes with Visual Studio, displaying symbol information where the caret is placed. Note: Navigation Bar works with both C# code documents and Markdown documents. Nodes on the Navigation Bar are clickable.
CustomizationThe Navigation Bar can be configure via the options page.
Markdown Navigation BarThe Markdown navigation bar lists all titles appear in a Markdown document. Similarly, you can type in the search box to filter down the titles. Smart BarThe Smart Bar is a context-aware tool bar that appears automatically when you select some text, or double tap the Shift key on your keyboard. There are two toolbars on Smart Bar. The top bar contains general editing commands for all file types. Buttons on the bottom bar changes according to file types. Buttons on the Smart Bar changes according to your selection, typical buttons are editing operations (e.g. Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, Duplicate, Formatting, Find, etc.), code analysis operations (e.g. Go to definition, Find references), refactoring operations (e.g. Rename, Extract method, etc.) Each button on Smart Bar usually has multiple functions. Left clicking, right clicking, Ctrl+clicking and Shift+clicking trigger different commands. For details, see the tool-tip for the buttons. Right clicking a button usually expands the effective range of a command to the whole line, or brings out a pop-up menu for more commands. There are multiple predefined web search commands in the menu when you right click the Find button, which will launch your browser to search the text you select in document window. So, it is handier to look for answers from the web or find code examples in GitHub. You can specify what browser you prefer to use in the options page. C# Specific CommandsWhen you select a symbol, you may probably see a Smart Bar like below. The C# commands are on the second row. The first one is Go to Definition, that behaves the same as the keyboard The second one is the Analyze symbol... button, a menu will pop up showing possible symbol analysis commands for the symbol. Since some commands require considerable amount of calculation, items ending with "..." will require a mouse click to expand. For instance, clicking the Find Callers command in the following screen shot will search the source code and list at what places are calling the selected method in a symbol list. In the symbol list, you can filter items like the what you can do in the Navigation Bar, click items on the sub-menu and jump to the corresponding location. Various commands will be conditionally listed under the Analyze symbol... menu. Here is a list of commands for an interface. The Find Members command under Analyze symbol... lists all members defined within a type. For some special types, for instance, For Visual Studio extension developers, the preview offers more, for instances, it allows previewing images of The Find Implementations command for an interface type will display all types that implement that interface. The same command will also appear for interface members, which finds out corresponding members that implement the specific interface member. When we begin to work with new libraries, we usually have to learn new types and APIs. Two typical scenario are that "what methods, properties return specific instance of a type?" and "what methods can an instance of a given type can be passed into?". Thus, Smart Bar provides Find Instance Producer and Find Instance as Parameter for type names. The following screen shot demonstrates the result of finding instance producers which returns an instance of There are two buttons on the top right corner in the result list of symbol analysis commands. The Pin button will keep the list on the screen. And you can use your mouse to drag those lists around. Code RefactoringsFrom version 7.0 on, quite a few code refactorings are provided via a button on the C# Smart Bar. You can access the menu from keyboard by assigning a shortcut key to the Symbol MarkerSymbol marker draws markers for C# symbols. Typically, you can double click a symbol in the C# source code, select the Mark Symbol command on the Smart Bar and choose the desired highlight marker on the drop-down menu. After applying the command, all occurrences of the marked symbol will be marked with a different style. To remove symbol marker, click the Remove symbol mark command in the drop-down menu of the Mark symbol command. Symbol markers will be cleared when the solution is unloaded. Note: The style of symbol markers can be customized in the Syntax highlight Configurations dialog. The default colors are listed below. You also need to turn on the Syntax Highlight feature in order to make this feature work. Behavior of Smart BarBy default, Smart Bar appears after selection changes, you can alter the behavior in the options page by unchecking the Show Smart Bar when selection is changed checkbox. Smart Bar automatically disappears when you move your mouse cursor away from it, or execute a certain commands on the Smart Bar, or click somewhere else in the code editor window, emptying the selection. To make the Smart Bar reappear, you can tap the Smart Bar in Other WindowsSmart Bar also works on Output, C# Interactive, Immediate (Debug), Find Results and some other text selectable window panes. If you select a path within those windows, extra commands will pop up allowing you to open it directly or locate it in Windows Explorer. Scrollbar MarkerScrollbar Marker draws extra glyphs and shapes on the vertical scrollbar for the following syntax elements:
Please see the first screenshot of this article. The markers can be toggled via the options page. Auto Changing Version NumbersCodist can automatically change version numbers for output assemblies before build. To activate the behavior, right click the project in the Solution Explorer and select the Auto Build Version Numbers... command. On the left side of the dialog, build configurations are listed. "<Any>" configuration applies to all build configuration scenarios. Others applies to the corresponding scenarios respectively. On the right side of the dialog, current version numbers are listed. And four drop-down list controls specify the behavior how version number parts are changed. Once you change the drop-down list control to a value rather than "Unchanged", the new version number will be displayed next to the current version number as a preview how it will be changed before next build. Press the "Save" button to save the settings and Codist will change build numbers for you before future builds. Note: The build settings are saved in the obj folder where the project file locates. Display EnhancementsIn the Display tab of the General options page, several display enhancement options are offered. Within the Extra line margins group box, you can adjust margins between lines to make code lines more readable. Programmers who do not like ClearType rendering, which made text blurry and colorful, may want to try Force Grayscale Text Rendering options. From version 6.6 on, resource monitors can be used to monitorCPU, disk and memory usage via the status bar on Visual Studio. Checking the Monitor CPU, Monitor disk or Monitor memory check box enables the corresponding monitors. It is possible to use Compact menu like Visual Studio 2019 in Visual Studio 2017. Simply checking the Move main menu to title bar option will do. By checking the check boxes started with "Hide...", it is possible to hide some elements from the user interface of Visual Studio from options under the Layout Override section. Jump List ShortcutsJump List is a menu section that appears when you right click the Visual Studio button on the task bar. It lists your recently opened solutions, projects or documents. If you are using Open-Shell or other similar Start Menu applications, Codist can add three shortcuts to the Quick Start list of Visual Studio when you check the Jump List Shortcuts option. Those shortcuts start Visual Studio in a special mode.
Auto Pair PunctuationsFrom version 7.6 on, Codist can automatically "pair" punctuations around selections. To make this work, follow the steps below:
You can always turn off this feature by unchecking the Auto Pair Punctuation option in the option page. Codist in Your LanguageIt is possible to localize Codist to other language. Simplified Chinese (简体中文) and English are provided by default. The interface of Codist will change according to the International settings of Visual Studio. Other FeaturesFrom version 7.4 on, extra menu commands to open build output target folder are added to the Build menu. It is possible to output a time stamp after each build. For VSIX developers, there is also an option to automatically increment version number for your VSIX manifest file. Feature ControlOpen the Codist section in the Tools->Options dialog. In the General section you can toggle features of Codist.
AcknowledgementsI have learned a lot from the following extension projects (sorted by the time when I learned from them). Codist would not be what you see today without them.
And thank you, every donators, beta testers, feedback providers to this project. LicenseCodist comes from the open source community and it goes back to the community. Codist is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see "https://www.gnu.org/licenses". Bugs and SuggestionsPlease post New Issue in the GitHub project if you find any bug or have any suggestion. Your vote and feedback on the Visual Studio Extension Marketplace are also welcomed. Support Codist by DonationIf you like Codist, consider buying me a cup of Chinese tea. You can donate any amount of money as you like. The recommended amount of donation is 6 donations have been received so far :) Well, you have already reached here. Why not give Codist a ★★★★★ rating? |