Any way to measure distance between current and all other lines in Eclipse editors?

Question

I'm using the Vim plugin in Eclipse, and only thing that would make me more happy would be if I could somehow measure distance from current line to all other lines. It is kinda hard to guess exact number of lines i.e. is that 8 or 9 lines I need to move down? So some kind of modification of the line numbering bar that changes the numbers to be relative (+-) to the current line would be nice to have.

Is there something like this? If not I'm so desperate that I will probably try to build it myself.

Answer 1

Standalone vim has the relativenumber option in version 7.3 that does what you want. I don't know how closely related that is to the eclipse plugin, or how difficult it would be to port over.

Before that option was available, I used to make heavy use of marks instead of guessing relative line numbers. Basically, you mark a line with m followed by a letter of the alphabet, and can move to that line with ' followed by the same letter. Maybe that will help if you don't already know about it.

Answer 2

Install the Relative Line Number Ruler plugin. It shows a relative line number ruler by default, which can be disabled using the context menu on the ruler. The diff/absolute line number ruler can still be displayed if desired.

This is useful if you're using a Vi emulation plugin such as Vrapper.

Answer 3

The relative number plugin can be so slow. I am using this in my vimrc:

let g:RTL = 1

function X_rtl()
    if g:RTL == 0
        set number 
        let g:RTL = 1
    else
        set relativenumber
        let g:RTL = 0
    endif
endfunction

nnoremap <esc><esc> :call X_rtl()<cr>

So if I hit escape twice, it will change numbers to relative, and if I hit it twice again, it will switch back;