When I use certain other code editors like Sublime Text, Atom, or VScode, I enjoy seeing the "minimap" which is available for all of these editors, either by default or as a plugin.
If you've never seen a minimap, it is simply a miniaturized representation of your entire code document, sitting alongside the code itself. It can be used to navigate through a code document by clicking and/or dragging, similar to a simple scroll bar.
I have found that minimaps are very useful, much more useful than I initially expected them to be. The ability to "step back" and see the entire document from a "thousand yard" vantage point is very useful in practice. From this "long distance" view, navigating to a desired section of code is very intuitive, for example.
I would be very interested in having minimap-like functionality in Rstudio. Does anyone else out there feel the same? Although I'm sure that "pull requests are welcome", I unfortunately don't have the ability to attempt to implement this kind of feature myself.
Agree... I'd love to have a minimap, too. Although it would have to be configurable (i.e. its width, or one should be able to switch it off, not everybody has a screen big enough...)
Agreed, though I do like the document outline (shift-command-O/ctrl-shift-O, or a button right where you'd think) for navigating RMarkdown documents with a lot of subsections.
Even better (and more hidden) is the little section/chunk/function selector at the bottom, which really rewards good chunk naming and document structure:
Yep! I also enjoy and appreciate the document outline and section selector capabilities and use them extensively.
What surprised me in editors that included a minimap is just how useful the particular miniaturized view of the code was. I often found that using the minimap to navigate the code document using the visual "shape" of the code in the minimap was faster and easier than using an outline.
