VS.NET 2003 VB outlining broken
Evidently the VB code outlining support is completely broken in VS.NET 2003. Why hasn't this gotten more publicity?
We used the code outlining features all the time at work in 2002, and they worked great. But after switching to VS.NET 2003 we noticed that selecting Edit, Outlining, Toggle All Outlining does nothing in VS.NET 2003 for VB code. Not only that, but turning off Tools, Options, Text Editor, Basic, VB Specific, "Enter outlining mode when files off" doesn't work either. Doh! I can't believe this hasn't been fixed yet in a patch for VS.NET 2003, because it makes working with #Region -- which we use a lot -- pretty much impossible.
I searched around for a bit and found this blog entry by Roland Weigelt. While it's not a fix, per se, it does add support for #Region outlining at the very least. I was not able to get the code he posted to work, rather, I used the code posted in the comments by Andrew Eno:
Imports EnvDTE Imports System.Diagnostics ' Macros for improving keyboard support for "#region ... #endregion" Public Module RegionTools ' Expands all regions in the current document Sub ExpandAllRegions() Dim objSelection As TextSelection ' Our selection object DTE.SuppressUI = True ' Disable UI while we do this objSelection = DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection() ' Hook up to the ActiveDocument's selection objSelection.StartOfDocument() ' Shoot to the start of the document ' Loop through the document finding all instances of #region. This action has the side benefit ' of actually zooming us to the text in question when it is found and ALSO expanding it since it ' is an outline. Do While objSelection.FindText("#region", vsFindOptions.vsFindOptionsMatchInHiddenText) ' This next command would be what we would normally do *IF* the find operation didn't do it for us. 'DTE.ExecuteCommand("Edit.ToggleOutliningExpansion") Loop objSelection.StartOfDocument() ' Shoot us back to the start of the document DTE.SuppressUI = False ' Reenable the UI objSelection = Nothing ' Release our object End Sub ' Collapses all regions in the current document Sub CollapseAllRegions() Dim objSelection As TextSelection ' Our selection object ExpandAllRegions() ' Force the expansion of all regions DTE.SuppressUI = True ' Disable UI while we do this objSelection = DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection() ' Hook up to the ActiveDocument's selection objSelection.EndOfDocument() ' Shoot to the end of the document ' Find the first occurence of #region from the end of the document to the start of the document. Note: ' Note: Once a #region is "collapsed" .FindText only sees it's "textual descriptor" unless ' vsFindOptions.vsFindOptionsMatchInHiddenText is specified. So when a #region "My Class" is collapsed, ' .FindText would subsequently see the text 'My Class' instead of '#region "My Class"' for the subsequent ' passes and skip any regions already collapsed. Do While (objSelection.FindText("#region", vsFindOptions.vsFindOptionsBackwards)) DTE.ExecuteCommand("Edit.ToggleOutliningExpansion") ' Collapse this #region objSelection.EndOfDocument() ' Shoot back to the end of the document for ' another pass. Loop objSelection.StartOfDocument() ' All done, head back to the start of the doc DTE.SuppressUI = False ' Reenable the UI objSelection = Nothing ' Release our object End Sub End Module
To install, use the steps Roland outlined:
- Open the Macros IDE (Tools - Macros - Macros IDE)
- Create a new module "RegionTools", replace the code in the created file with the posted source code, save file.
- Assign keys in VS.Net (Tools - Options - Environment - Keyboard).
Thanks Roland and Andrew for your tips!