Folding editor

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An example of text folding within Vim. The list in the text is shown folded (above) and unfolded (below).

A folding editor is a text editor which supports text folding or code folding, a mechanism allowing the user to hide and reveal blocks of text—usually named. Typically this is done to allow the user to better picture the overall structure of a document or program.

Folding is provided by many modern text editors, and syntax-based or semantics-based folding is now a component of many software development environments.

[edit] History

The first folding editor was probably STET, an editor written for the VM/CMS operating system in 1977 by Mike Cowlishaw. STET is a text editor (for documentation, programs, etc.) which folds files on the basis of blocks of lines; any block of lines can be folded and replaced by a name line (which in turn can be part of a block which itself can then be folded).

Folding editors appeared in the original occam IDE at around 1983, called Inmos Transputer Development System.^{[citation needed]}

The Macintosh computer historically had a number of source code editors that "folded" portions of code via "disclosure triangles". The UserLand Software product Frontier was a popular scripting environment that had this capability.^[1]

[edit] Editors with folding capability

Many text editors provide folding capability. Among them are:

[edit] See also

• Code folding

[edit] References

1. ^ Outliners.com. Retrieved on December 27, 2006.

[edit] External links

• What is a folding editor? by the author of the fe editor.
• Description of the folding editor used in occam.

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