comment style that tells text editors to fold sections of text
from some@programming.dev to programming@programming.dev on 03 Jul 22:37
https://programming.dev/post/33310905

I noticed that the developer of kitty terminal uses this style of comments I have rarely if ever seen elsewhere:

outside
#: section {{{
inside
#: }}}

Kate text editor recognize sections for purposes of highlighting, folding etc. It’s really nice for me because I sometimes I have a difficult time navigating large text files. And it lets you nest them.

• what is this called?
• are there other ways to do it?
• is it standard among text editors? I believe Kovid the dev for kitty is a vim guy so presumably there is support there also.
• why don’t more people use it? are there problems?

Screenshot that shows the code folding.

• Cursor is at the end of line 7 so the whole section line 7-22 is highlighted
• lines 12-16 are folded in a 3rd level comment
• I also included tab indents just to make it easier to see what’s going on (Kate treats it the same way regardless of indents)
• Highlighting/Mode > Scripts > Bash

I also like his style of distinguishing between narrative comments (starting with #:) and commented-out code (starting with #). Although in my example, Kate doesn’t treat them differently. Is there a term for this? Any conventions, support etc?

plain text used for screenshot

bash #: Comment level 1 {{{ #: Comment level 2 {{{ #: configure something key value #: }}} #: Another Comment level 2 {{{ #: Comment level 3 {{{ #: Helpful explanatory comment file location #: }}} #: Comment level 3 with hidden text {{{ you_cant see_this hidden_emoji “👁️” hidden_emoji2 " 👁️" hidden_emoji3 " 👁️" #: }}} #: let’s set some things up # setting yes # other_setting no different_setting maybe #: }}} # regular comment #: }}} # regular comment outside anything ___

For a real world example, see sample kitty.conf file provided on project website.

#programming