Mastering Visual Studio .NET

Appendix F. Text Editor Settings

VS.NET provides a single text editor that is used by all languages. It has a very flexible scheme for configuring its operation. Some settings are applicable to all languages, such as the display of line numbers or the way that tabulation is performed. You can configure these settings either on a global basis or on a per-language basis. Other configuration options are unique to particular languages.

All of these settings are configured in the Options dialog (Tools → Options) under the Text Editor folder. This has subfolders for each language. It also has a folder called All Languages, which is where you can configure globally available features (such as tab management) in a global way. But the categories under the All Languages section (General and Tabs) are also available under each individual language if you would rather configure things on a per-language basis.

Global Settings

A few text editor settings are global (i.e., they cannot be changed per language). These can be edited by selecting the General item in the Text Editor category. The first four govern the editor’s behavior:

Go to selection anchor after escape

Determines whether the Esc key causes the cursor to move to the start or end of the current selection. The default (off) behavior is for the cursor to move to the end of the selection.

Drag-and-drop text editing

Enables dragging and dropping chunks of text.

Include insertion point movements in undo list

Determines whether cursor movements (performed ...