SlickEdit User Guide

CODE ANNOTATIONS
Workspace and Project annotations are very similar. If you don’t create too many annotations, you could
save all of your annotations as Workspace annotations. However, if you have projects that are shared
between workspaces, you should use Project annotations so that the information is available regardless of
which workspace you are using. If you create a lot of annotations, you may wish to use Project instead of
Workspace so that you can view the list of annotations for a single project, providing a way to view a more
manageable subset of annotations.
See Managing Annotation Files for more information.
Private and Shared Annotations
Code annotations can be private or shared. Annotations are shared by sharing the annotation file with
other users. Like source files, annotation files are most easily shared using a version control system.
Only Workspace and Project annotations can be shared effectively. Because they refer to files in the
workspace or project, the path to those files is stored relative to the workspace or project. Even if users
have the same workspace in different directories, SlickEdit® will be able to locate the source files
referenced by annotations. Personal annotations and User-Defined annotations are not sharable. They
store a fully qualified path to the referenced file. Unless two people have the same directory hierarchy on
their machines, SlickEdit will not be able to located the referenced source files.
Relocatable Code Marker
Code Annotations use a relocatable code marker to store the location within the source code. This allows
SlickEdit® to find the new location if someone makes edits to the file externally, like editing the file with a
different editor. The next time you open the file, SlickEdit checks the location of each code marker and
verifies that it is still correct. If necessary, SlickEdit uses stored information to locate the correct line of
code for this annotation. If the code has changed too much, SlickEdit may not be able to find the new
location, and you will be prompted to find the new location yourself. This will only happen when the code
near the code marker has been heavily edited.
Annotations Tool Window and File Manager
SlickEdit® provides a Code Annotations tool window that lists all of the currently visible annotations. This
tool window allows you to filter the set of visible annotations. The primary filter is by type. If annotations of
more than one type are displayed, only the default fields common to all annotations are displayed in the
annotation list. You can use the tool window to create, edit, and delete code annotations as well. See
Managing Annotations for more information.
Code Annotations are stored in files, and they become visible when the annotation file is opened. SlickEdit
automatically opens the annotations from your personal annotations file along with those from the
workspace and project annotation files. You can use the Annotation File Manager to open any other
annotation files you like. See Managing Annotation Files for more information.
Managing Annotations
The Code Annotations tool window provides a detailed view of annotations that you have created as well
as operations for adding, modifying, copying, moving, and removing annotations. From this window, you
can also manage annotation files and create your own annotation types.
To display the tool window, from the main menu click View > Toolbars > Code Annotations, or use the
annotations_browser command on the SlickEdit® command line.
302 SlickEdit® User Guide