[FR] Option to open the settings.json to the side when opening the settings UI editor

[wenfangdu]

Quote from Rob Lourens:

I know this isn't much, but I was wondering whether it would help with the search to be able to open a settings UI editor to the side. Then you'd be able to search there on the side while still keeping your focus on the setting.json text editor.

Since @roblourens gutted the settings split JSON editor, at least give us an option to open the settings.json at the right side of the UI editor automatically.

Requirements:

• An option to automatically open the settings.json at the right side of the UI editor.
• When the settings.json is opened, the focus should remain in the UI editor's search bar.
• When switching to workspace settings, switch the settings.json to the workspace one as well.
• When triggering the workbench.action.openSettings action multiple times, the right side settings.json should be replaced if needed instead of opening multiple settings.json.
• The UI editor and settings.json should remain two editors instead of combining them into one so that we could navigate between these two files using navigation shortcuts.
• The UI editor's table of contents should be allowed to hide at all times even when not searching.
• Closing either the UI editor or settings.json should close them both.

If there're any missing features, please comment below.

Demo:

[vscodebot]

(Experimental duplicate detection)
Thanks for submitting this issue. Please also check if it is already covered by an existing one, like:

• Split JSON settings editor discussion issue (#68386)

[codestothestars]

What utility is this supposed to provide? Is there some interaction between the GUI editor and the text editor? I'm not sure of how it's useful to open these two things together.

[wenfangdu]

@codestothestars

Thanks for stopping by, there're many cases this can be useful, for example, when configuring editor.renderWhitespace, I want to see the behavior of each option immediately, this can't be done only through the UI editor, we have to experiment in an ordinary text editor, in this case, we can do that in settings.json.

The same goes for the other direction as well, if I see editor.renderWhitespace has been configured to trailing in settings.json, and I want to know what the other options are, then I can search in the UI editor and see the description of each option.

And when configure other settings like workbench.colorCustomizations, we'd have to edit settings.json since the UI editor doesn't support editing them, it's convenient if settings.json is already at the side.

On the other hand, it's just helpful to know the existing settings in a single file while configuring settings in general.

[codestothestars]

@wenfangdu

Thanks. I can see the use, and I can see how it is helpful in some way. I guess what I am stuck on is that this idea is born from the removal of the original JSON editor, and I am personally hoping for features that restore the utility that it provided. I can see that this would restore some benefits of the original JSON editor that I liked, but it also seems unfortunately like a half-measure that doesn't really address the problem as I see it, which is the lack of a good JSON settings editor. I want to say, though, that I really appreciate the thought that you and others in the community are giving to this problem.

And when configure other settings like workbench.colorCustomizations, we'd have to edit settings.json since the UI editor doesn't support editing them, it's convenient if settings.json is already at the side.

It's funny, as someone who has almost exclusively used the original JSON settings editor, I actually had not realized that there were settings like this that the GUI editor does not support editing. It's weird to think that an interface as pleasant to use as the original JSON editor was removed in favor of something that is not even feature-complete, let alone a good replacement.

[claudiomces]

1.59 release broke JSON settings editor (or a release note is missing?) #130262

[harley-dk]

A versão 1.59 quebrou o editor de configurações JSON (ou uma nota de versão está faltando?) # 130262

[af4jm]

It's real simple... when a settings .json file is open, there needs to be a search bar that filters the left side (the global settings) hiding anything that doesn't match... that used to be the 1 and only way to discover settings in VSCode, now there isn't any way... if it weren't for the price tag, I would've switched back to Sublime already (I could go to Atom, but since it's Electron based, perf is going to suck as bad as VSCode)... my wife won't use VSCode because "it's a big heavy IDE, just like VS", and the VSCode team is aggressively taking away my counter-arguments (e.g. having the Py extension sit on top of the Jupyter extension even though Jupyter sits on top of Py... I gave up trying to get it to work)

[wenfangdu]

@af4jm

when a settings .json file is open, there needs to be a search bar that filters the left side (the global settings) hiding anything that doesn't match

I just tried Sublime, it didn't filter out the result too, is there a setting to enable it?

[af4jm]

@wenfangdu I stopped using Sublime before VSCode went 1.0, figured why pay $99/year for that when VSCode is free... but you get what you pay for... VSCode is built on Electron, which makes it a performance nightmare... VSCode is developed by Microsoft, which means when one of their lazy devs says "let's remove this feature so it's 1 less thing to maintain" and 50 out of 51 comments say "please don't, I use that feature all the time" the feature is going to get removed (and the 1 "I don't care either way because I don't use that" comment will be their justification to ignore 95% of their users)

I used to say Microsoft isn't like Google & Apple... ha! so wrong! they're just another company with a de-facto monopoly using it to do whatever they want to in spite of their customers

[serious-angel]

@af4jm

when a settings .json file is open, there needs to be a search bar that filters the left side (the global settings) hiding anything that doesn't match

I just tried Sublime, it didn't filter out the result too, is there a setting to enable it?

I believe it's easy to implement in ineffably magnificent both Sublime Text and VSCode considering their APIs:

1. https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/api_reference.html#sublime.Window;
2. https://code.visualstudio.com/api/references/vscode-api#window.

Not to mention JetBrains APIs, too! For example, PhpStorm: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/docs/intellij/php-open-api.html