Transient, Sticky, and Locked Editors

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In order to prevent accumulation of many briefly-visited open files, Wing can open files in several modes that control how and when they are closed. The mode being used is shown with an icon in the top right of each editor split:

nonsticky Transient Mode -- Wing opens some files in a non-sticky transient mode that will automatically close the file again when unused and unedited. This is done for files opened when searching, debugging, navigating to a symbol's point of definition or points of use, and when using the Project or Source Browser tools with the Follow Selection checkbox enabled.

The maximum number of non-visible transient files to keep open at any given time can be set with the Editor > Advanced > Maximum Non-Sticky Editors preference. By default, Wing keeps five transient editors open at a time, and closes the least recently used ones as new transient files are opened.

sticky Sticky Mode -- Files opened from the File menu (including Open from Project and Open from Keyboard), by File Set or by double clicking on items in the Project or Source Browser tools will be opened in sticky mode, and are kept open until they are explicitly closed, even if they are not edited.

locked Locked Mode -- In Wing Pro and Wing Personal, when multiple splits are visible, a third mode is available, where the file is locked into the editor split. In this case, the split is not reused to display any newly opened or visited files, except when no other unlocked splits are present.

A file can be switched between these modes by clicking on the stick pin icon in the upper right of the editor area. Transient files that are edited are immediately converted to sticky mode and cannot be set back to transient mode until the changes are saved.

Right-click on the stick pin icon for a menu of files that were recently visited in the associated editor or editor split. Each item in the menu indicates whether it was last visited in transient or sticky mode.