Feature Request: Column Guides

Hi Boyd,

Thanks for the suggestion. We do have a single column guide already on the TODO list. May I ask what other (more than one) column guides would be used for? I hadn't seen that in an editor and was curious.

I can personally only think of a need for one column guide, but others might find more columns guides useful. I mentioned that this might apply to something like Fortran. It's been 10 years since I used Fortran in college, so I'm sure a lot of what I'm about to say may not be entirely accurate.

The way Fortran was laid out, each column in a line had a specific meaning. It all went back to the days of punch cards. Each line couldn't exceed 80 characters, and certain columns within the line were reserved for specific use. I think column 80 was reserved for some special characters like a line continuation indicator. I think the first 5 columns were reserved for line numbers. I seem to remember column 6 being reserved for comment indicators or something like that. So in this case, it would be beneficial to draw a column guide to separate each reserved area of the line.

One column guide would be great, but I thought it might also be beneficial to have more than one. If a language like Fortran could make use of it, maybe someone else could find a creative use as well. Someone, for instance, might want to insert a column guide to help line up in-line comments occuring after a statement as well as have another guide to indicate when a line is getting too long. Just ideas :-)