Showing a vertical rule in Visual Studio

If you want Visual Studio to draw a vertical rule in the text editor just like Delphi does, then you’ve come to the right place. According to this posting, you can get one by simply adding a new value to the following registry key:

HKCU\\Software\\Microsoft\\VisualStudio\\7.1\\Text Editor

The value to add is a string called “Guides”. Now, just assign a value like “RGB(128,0,0) 79″, restart Visual Studio and you have a vertical line after 80 characters (the value in the registry is 0-based). I tried it and it works as expected:

Showing a vertical rule in Visual Studio (larger image)

You can even change the color of this rule by adjusting the RGB values or display more than one rule by separating them with commas: “RGB(128,0,0) 79, 99″. I use it with Visual Studio 2003 but Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 seems to support it, too. In order to get it working with Visual Studio 2005, just change the version in the registry key to 8.0.