[MonoDevelop] Regarding Collapsable Code Regions

[Jerry Haltom]

So, this is mostly a slight brain-dump directed to whomever is working
(if anybody) on collapsible code regions in the IDE. I have come up with
this idea, and just want to throw it out there in case perspective
people are about to work on, or are working on this feature. Would like
the idea at least considered when designing this.

Imagine a feature: In the code you were working on, just above each
method, you see in-line comments. Just like you do when using VS ///
style comments. They are shown in-line. However, imagine if they were
actually backed by Monodoc, and shown in your local language. Imagine if
you could edit them, right there, in-line, and you would be editing the
back-end Monodoc comment files. Wouldn't that be nice? Sure would.

Other ideas include decorating code with other external data sources.
For instance, showing documentation of called methods in-line with the
called method. Or showing in-line comments on a method that implicitly
implements an interface method, describing what it's implementing.
Basically decorating the code with other external sources.

The implementation of this would probably tie quite a bit into the same
thing that allows collapsible code regions to work: the TextView being a
bit more than a TextView... a view that wasn't a 1:1 mapping into a
backend document, but could go through a translation layer to introduce
other sources into it.

Basically, this would maybe manifest in the ability of a plugin to
provide other widgets that would be integrated into the final view. A
Monodoc plugin could go through your code file and locate each method,
and add a SubTextView widget into it or something.

Maybe collapsable code regions could actually be implemented by creating
sub-TextView widgets for each method block.

So, if you're implementing collapsible code regions... consider these
other uses!