So let’s consider a “quick refresh” context menu choice for Search results. Fairly simple to add a menu item. User invokes menu item, what happens? Oh, software reruns the search? Well, how does it do that??

This would presume that whatever is right-clicked upon has some way of knowing what the search was. All it actually “knows” is what the search term was (because it can read that from the text in the window). It doesn’t know the state of the Match case checkbox at the time of the search, it doesn’t know the Search mode, it doesn’t know if the item came from a Find All in Current Document or a Find in Files, and if a Find in Files what was the Directory, the Filters, etc., etc. So a major code restructuring would have to take place in order for each search to be retained so that this stuff could be recalled when needed, i.e., when a quick-refresh is called for.

The Search results window is pretty much just a dumping ground for output. It doesn’t carry around a lot of extra data about the search that was conducted, for purposes of reconstructing that search later. Why? Because whomever wrote that code didn’t think it was necessary for it to do so. And, up until this point, it wasn’t needed.

@Ronny-Fritsch said in Tab font size shrank to tiny size - how to change it back?:

Display Settings -> advanced Display Settings -> advanced Settings for Text and other Elements -> User defined Skale Setting -> Change to 125%
after this, the Windows User logs out after logging in again the bug is fixed.
You can now change the Skaling back to normal

Thanks Ronny-Fritsch, This worked!!! Was trying since very long to fix this issue.

@Bob-Wright ,.

I first assumed that when you said,

the notepad++ method of “highlighting” or marking that appearance is basically useless.

you were just trying to be rude.

But then you said,

That functionality you see, the turning the demarcated characters both red, my installation does not display that functionality. Perhaps it is a failure of the “theme” I am using.

So now it looks like you changed a setting, and that then obfuscated a built-in feature, so you genuinely didn’t know that the feature you wanted existed and works out-of-the-box. It’s hard not to assume the worst when a rude / argumentative tone is taken from the start.

Which theme do you use, that it doesn’t show the matching braces? If that’s the default behavior of one of the bundled themes, I will see if we can get the developers to fix that. Without specific details of which theme and which version of Notepad++ you are using (?-menu, Debug Info for full version info), I won’t be able to dig into whether there is something wrong with a particular theme that ships with Notepad++ or not.

the work around CTRL-B

That’s not a workaround. That’s the Notepad++ feature that takes you between braces. And if your settings prevent you from seeing the highlighting, that’s not the fault of the Notepad++ development team – they assume that users won’t change colors in such a way as to make a highlight invisible unless that’s what they want.

If the delimiters were clearly demarcated

They are. Out of the box, with no settings changes, they are a bright red. I don’t know how much more clearly they could demarcate it.

Meanwhile if I have to RTFM to use what should be an intuitive or obvious feature

Anytime you don’t understand or cannot find any feature of a piece of software, the reasonable expectation is that you would read the manual. For Notepad++, I and others have spent dozens (hundreds by now?) of hours improving the manual over the last few years. When you or anyone else comes and says that they cannot be bothered to read the manual, it’s rather a slap in the face.

what should be an intuitive or obvious function

it is. It’s a bold red highlight on both the { and the } in default Notepad++ settings. If that’s not intuitive and obvious, I don’t know what is.

b7577d39-1c18-42ac-b15f-11d152fff58f-image.png

@Jürgen-Zimmermann

make the line operations a top level menu. I use them so frequently and always have to locate it in the edit menu

You can make it less burdensome if you customize your editor right-click context menu to add only those Line Operations commands that you actually use.

User manual LINK with info.

@Mark-Olson

If you follow my “Issue also reported HERE” link, you’ll see that OP solved his problem.

@Alan-Kilborn said in Save and start two (ands more) instances:

You could use “sessions” but it may not have the “ease of use” that you are thinking of for your situation. You’d have to experiment.

I think you are absolutely right. I already looked at the “sessions”, but did not notice the settings, which automatically retains change in session during restart. And also open each session in a new instance. One minus - with each restart, you will need to open every session, but i think it is suitable for me, it solves problem with my different size monitors.

Thanks for you help.

@Cariboudjan said in [Suggestion] Option to “Always search “Normal” by default”:

I noticed that the Find in Files process takes about 4-5x longer than usual with this new script. Is there a reason why?

(Strangely, I didn’t notice this trailing comment of @Cariboudjan 's before now…)

The answer is that the script has nothing to do with Notepad++'s Find in Files function, so you need to look elsewhere for why something might be different about it.

All the script does is open (or switch input focus to) the Find window and set the state of some controls on that window. Draw your own conclusions about how that can impact a Find in Files action (…it can’t).

Should I the update [?]

@PeterJones Aaaaah ok. I thought this is more of a reaction to individual post. I was wondering if there is like a voting mechanism on the issues as a whole that shows the developers which issues are “most wanted” in the grand scheme of 1900 opened issues… well I guess in the end developers do not decide based on votes anyway… its not that simple :)

but good to know there is THUMB UP

@Alan-Kilborn 👍

Thank you for your feedback. I also guess that only a person that is interested by this and has developer skill can achieve this. In the meantime, I have contacted Druid to inform them, an integration with Notepad++ would be appreciated.

@crypto_go_

Npp is not a replacement for tools like Wordpad, MS Word, or Libre Office Writer because,
as you noted, it does not store styling information about the text.
Npp treats the content as plain text and uses Scintilla,
the underlying control, and its lexical analysis to color certain parts.

@Sylvester-Bullitt ,

Sorry, the regex engine knows nothing about the “file metadata”, which includes its name.

However, if you use a scripting plugin like PythonScript, you can make a script that does know the file’s name, and has access to a regex engine so that it can search for the file’s name in the active file (or in any other file, for that matter).

@MC-Ivan ,

it’s nothing inherent to v8.4.2.

Which theme have you lost? Have you looked in %AppData%\Notepad++\themes (which is the default location; see also Cloud and -settingsDir if one of those options is used). Have you looked in c:\program files\Notepad++\themes or wherever you installed Notepad++? (Note that if you had shared ?-menu’s Debug Info, I would have been able to narrow them down to precise paths, because all those options would have been shown to us)

If it’s one of the standard themes, you could try re-installing Notepad++ , or grabbing the portable zip and extracting the right theme config file and placing it in the appropriate Themes folder for your installed Notepad++

@Lycan-Thrope said in Bad contrast theme bugs and installer bug:

you forgot to submit your Debug information

Well…it doesn’t actually help too much in this case because the complaint is about N++ behavior that has existed back to the beginning of time (defined as: as long as I can remember – I suppose that makes it a personal beginning of time). So, it’s not like knowing what version the OP has is important. But yes, technically to be correct, all submitted issues should have Debug Info included.

@John-Knox said in Cobol Copy Book:

I have a Cobol copy book which I would like to use to view data in a file.

I did a bit of searching on the web and it suggests COBOL data files are likely to be in encoded format, so binary in nature. Descriptions such as “packed-decimal, Binary Coded Decimal (BCD) or “some type of binary” given that Standard COBOL has binary fields limited by decimal values (to the size of the PICture clause).” or “from AS400, COBOL data file using EBCDIC format”.

If so then Notepad++ is definitely NOT the right application. Notepad++ is a text editor and does not understand binary or otherwise encoded files. Whilst it can allow you to view them, the underlying structure is unknown to Notepad++ so text which may appear visually together can possibly be separated by the data structures involved.

However if the data is indeed text (so assumption it is of fixed width) then there is a plugin called “Fixed Width Data Visualizer” which can be used to visualise data structures. However there is no mention specifically of cobol copy book files, so if you were to try it you would need to experiment and possibly manually add in the data structure from the copy book yourself. That means you would need to be accurate in the structure as copied into the plugin (of course).

The plugin (for 64bit Notepad++) is here

Good luck
Terry

EDIT: if you did open the COBOL data file does it seem like there is a structure to it and does it seem as though it has fixed width sections?

EDIT2: Try this link, several apps on Sourceforge which are likely to have a better chance than Notepad++

@Terry-R
I wil try with first option first and see now it goes for the record set of 35k.
Thank you for your response @Terry-R

@jim-hughes said in Notepad++ has a Reload false alarm / bug? “This file has been modified by another program. Do you want to reload it”? even when it hadn’t been recently modified at all?!:

I’m getting this “file has been modified” warning constantly

This page of the online manual might help.

As you would have read, it tends to be an issue with cloud based storage, is that what you are using?

Terry

@Andreas-V ,

Automatic filetype detection works for me.

My first guess is that you have a file greater than 200MB, because there is a set of options (added in v8.4.7) called Settings > Preferences > Performance which allows you to turn off certain higher-CPU-cost features of Notepad++ for large files, and syntax highlighting is turned off by default for files >200MB.