Hi, Since many people here edit long documents, they may have faced the following problem. It's difficult to keep in your mind a large chunk of content. This is why we divide text into sections. In lyx/latex, you can also have a master document and insert sections as \input. This is very helpful because each section is then its own file. This has an immediate effect on mental workload: for me, just seen that I cannot scroll out of the section, and the right scrollbar has a bigger handle makes a big difference, making me more relaxed. I try to make sections that fit one screen; this is common advice in programming too (don't make functions that scroll out of sight) for the same mental workload reasons.
The problem is that splitting a doc into files and \input them is not as flexible as just taking care of sections. It adds overhead. A price I've been willing to pay. Then I saw this: (scroll down to narrowing) http://www.emeditor.com/modules/feature1/rewrite/tc_35.html This is exactly what I want. The only thing I'd add would be to make the grayed out parts non-scrollable, ie lock the scrolling to the narrowed down section. Clicking on the outline sidebar would optionally narrow down the section. This way one can navigate a long doc, nave very focused editing, and not have to deal with a master file with \inputs. Change tracking would be improved as a side effect. If you remove a paragraph and paste it on another section (which is an independent file) most vcs and diff programs would have completely lost track of it: it would work as if you added brand new text to the section. It's harder to undo too. So having one single file has advantages. What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting for people here? Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and reduce mental load? In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be wrong... Best, -Jose Jose Quesada, PhD. Max Planck Institute, Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition, Berlin http://www.josequesada.name/ http://twitter.com/Quesada
