Code Navigation
Castalia's powerful code navigation tools help you find your way around your code effectively. The 2-way navigation toolbar lets you navigate to the exact part of your code you want to see, and find your way back easily, smart navigation keys enhance the way you use your keyboard to navigate around your code, and the sidebar lets you see important information about your entire Delphi unit in one glance.
Navigation Toolbar
The powerful 2-way navigation toolbar integrates into the Delphi editor window and provides a number of navigation tools:
Class/method dropdowns
These comboboxes show more than just classes and methods. The "classes" dropdown contains a list of all the types declared in the current unit, and the "methods" dropdown shows every procedure or function in the current unit, regardless of whether it's a member of a class or not.
Selecting a type or a procedure from the dropdown navigates instantly to that part of your code.
Finally, as you move through your code, the class/method dropdowns always show the name of the class or method where the cursor is located, so you know where you are in even the largest and most complicated units.
Bookmark stack
Castalia's bookmark stack allows you to place a bookmark at a specific location in code and return to it later. You can use the bookmark stack as a traditional stack, returning to the last-placed bookmark, or as a list of bookmarks, jumping to any bookmark and moving forwards and backwards through them.
Additionally, if you are working in two different sections of code at once, you can drop a bookmark at one location, then navigate to the other. To switch locations, press Shift+Esc and the current location will be swapped for the bookmark location. You can switch back and forth as much as you need.
Castalia is better
Delphi's built-in mechanism for unit navigation is the "Structure Window." Castalia's navigation toolbar is better:
- Castalia's navigation toolbar finds any class or method in the code with just two mouse clicks. The structure window requires a number of clicks as you drill-down through the tree.
- Castalia's navigation toolbar shows you where you currently are in the unit. The structure window does not.
- Delphi's structure window requires 3 times as much screen real estate than Castalia's navigation toolbar for each method shown.
Smart home key
Castalia modifies the behavior of the Home key in the Delphi editor. When the cursor is in the middle of the line, pressing Home will move the cursor to the beginning of the line, as usual. However, pressing Home again will move the cursor to the first character in the line, skipping over any whitespace at the beginning of the line.
Text search
Castalia's text search toolbar is a modeless dialog box that supplements Delphi's text search functionality. As you type your search text into the search toolbar, Castalia will incrementally for the search string, allowing you to find what you're looking for as quickly as possible.
By default, the text search toolbar is activated by pressing Ctrl+F. If you don't want Castalia to replace Delphi's native text search dialog box, you can easily change the shortcut key.
Sidebar
The Castalia sidebar is a narrow gutter that appears to the right of the Delphi editor. It provides an overview of the file currently being edited, showing the location of things like bookmarks, syntax errors, search results, etc....
Clicking on the sidebar will take you to the line of code indicated by the sidebar.
Editor line numbers
In Delphi 5-7, Castalia adds line numbers to the code editor. (Starting with Delphi 2005, the native code editor has line numbers by default)
