Vscode: Let Extensions Change Line Height

[MillerMark]

We would like the following extensibility features in VS Code (to match the same extensibility points already shipping in Visual Studio):

1. The ability to change a line’s height.
2. The ability to change a line’s caret height (independently of the line height).
3. The ability to hide special coded text (such as inside a comment) on the line (or paint over it – like an adornment).
4. The ability to intercept the mouse click/down/up/over events so we can interact with adornments as first class citizens.

Context: These changes would allow extension developers to create plugins that support editing and viewing of rich documents and source code inside VS Code. For example, developers could edit markdown files, seeing embedded images right inside the file, or developers could add LaTeX formulas to comments and see them rendered beautifully as math formulas in the code. This would also allow the CodeRush team to port over the embedded images feature from CodeRush to VS Code as a free plugin.

Update: This change will help us port other CodeRush features to VS Code, including:

The Debug Visualizer, which shows the values of expressions under the expression, as you step through the code:

LaTeX Formulas in Source Code Comments:

Source Code Comments with custom font sizes:

[Penagwin]

Is there any update on this? I wish to do something similar.

[nhustak]

I'd love to see this.

[vscodebot[bot]]

We closed this issue because we don't plan to address it in the foreseeable future. You can find more detailed information about our decision-making process here. If you disagree and feel that this issue is crucial: We are happy to listen and to reconsider.

If you wonder what we are up to, please see our roadmap and issue reporting guidelines.

Thanks for your understanding and happy coding!

[MihaMarkic]

The features Mark mentioned looks really awesome and useful in Visual Studio and it's a pity not providing foundations for them in VSCode.

[khiron]

It's disappointing that I can't see projects my team develop using Visual Studio using CodeRush's LaTeX markup in VS Code. We don't need to put a picture of a rocket ship schematic in a code comment, but we do use LaTeX all the time for computational chemistry.

[usernamehw]

There seems to be a very similar feature, which is now in a proposed state: #66418

[khiron]

Yes that would be a kludge that might work, but we'd have to render static images instead of typing LaTeX directly into comments in the code editor which is a better use case.

And it wouldn't enable the other features like debug visualization.