@notdodgeball said in Notepad++ open in new instance because I use multiple desktops:

This disregard of openSession I never fully understood, as to me it should behave much like you just described.

I regularly use, or perhaps abuse, -openSession. A whie back I created a batch file, nplist.bat, that extracts file paths from a text file and generates a session.xml file. It then runs Notepad++.exe with -openSession. While I could have just run Notepad++.exe and passed the file names directly to it. I created nplist.bat because I wanted something that allowed me to open thousands of files at once. I did not think thousands of files would fit on the command line and was not comfortable with starting Notepad++.exe thousands of times and having those pass the file name on to the running copy of Notepad++.exe.

Notepad++ must already have some sort of inter-process communication (IPC) that allows a newly loaded copy of Notepad++.exe to tell the main running instance of Notepad+exe to come to the foreground and to open one or more files.

That means I should be able to create an run-npp.exe that implements the -instance logic I proposed earlier. The easiest way to define and separate instances of Notepad++ would be to use portable copies. I’d put them in

c:\npp\apple\Notepad++.exe c:\npp\banana\Notepad++.exe c:\npp\strawberry\Notepad++.exe

This allows each instance of Notepad++ to live in its own world. This assumes that whatever IPC Notepad++ uses is something that allows for multiple copies of the .exe to run at the same time and for an external app to talk to them. If, for example, Notepad++ is using a named pipe with a fixed name then only one copy can own the pipe.

What want is the ability to tell an already running instance of Notepad++.exe to open a file. For example, I want to open fruit.txt in Notepad++ and want to use the banana instance of Notepad++.exe to view or work with this file.

No it’s not. The problem is back. Something made it work for one restart, then it broke again. I’m still looking for a fix/workaround.

@rinzwind5 said in Notepad++ whitespace autocomplete define:

bgColor is hard-coded in each UDL and cannot be set to ‘inherit/default’ (as in use the NPP theme setting’s background).

Nitpick: you said "Cannot be set … "; but the reality is that it would be better to say “can be set in exactly the same way as you do in the NPP theme setting’s background” – ie, by right clicking the color or toggling the checkbox for Transparent

Here’s a screenshot of a UDL defined with keywords one two three in red-on-transparent (and that UDL’s “Default” styler set to black-on-transparent – not shown in screenshot), when originally set up in Default (stylers.xml):
ef38e661-4a15-4182-94c0-b4ef82b6cddc-image.png

And here, all I did was change the theme to Solarized - Light: the background changes with no change to the UDL:
fe093247-e6bf-41d0-8ac6-2a345d36eaff-image.png

@PeterJones said in Coloring log files:

It looks to me like you want Notepad++ to display your logfile which uses ANSI ESCAPE SEQUENCES in the colors that those ANSI escape sequences define.

v8.1.1 includes the ErrorList higlighting for .log and .err, which allows ANSI escape sequences higlighting, including recognizing and using the ANSI foreground color escape sequences for choosing the foreground color.

@PeterJones

An it was right above auto-detect encoding … lol

Thx again

@xomx @PeterJones
Thank you for your assistance. I am currently using 2 monitors, both are the same model, I believe capable of 2560x1440. My second monitor is set in portrait mode. On the 2nd monitor most of the after image/moving seems to remain on screen when the after image moves higher than the first screen. (I am assuming about 1440 pixels from the bottom of the screen)

Prior to updating to 24h2, I had an update of 23h2 about a week ago, and did not notice any unusual behavior with the undocked search results. I honestly don’t remember if before the 24h2 update, if when I attempted to drag the undocked search results if the window moved or if I just had an outline that would show me when the window would be.

For clarification, the Search Result window is not missing. And prior to messaging here, I had deleted my config files. As well as removing and installing the latest version of Notepad++.

Please let me know if any more information would be of assistance.

So it really was a Scintilla v5.5.6 bug, fix for its next version:
https://sourceforge.net/p/scintilla/code/ci/0364bca4f6d3cb1e1aaffa3baae6a0dfe4b026f2/

@Alan-Kilborn
thankyou for the advice

30000 vs. 32767

I’ve no idea where 30000 originates. A quick search of the Notepad++ source code won’t find it literally. So… apologies to @mkupper about the “sloppily” thing; I did think you were speaking in “ballpark” terms.

@Denine ,

The owner is working on it, but, per here, it’s not as simple as one might hope.

@zitot-hawaii-edu said:

in distraction free mode, the two views/panes became only one view/pane…but I need both

Hmm, presumably, the designer of distraction free mode decided that a second pane would be distracting… :-)

@kracovwolf ,

[?i-s].*?music.*

The [?i-s] is a character class matching the question mark or lowercase i through s. I think you meant (?i-s) to change mode to match case-insensitive with . not matching newline.

@PeterJones

4 years later, and option 1 just saved me some grief.

I had 2 sessions open and autoindent started misbehaving, so I closed the window in which I had about 40 files open, and realized it, just too late. Re-opening one of the files, of course, opened it in the other session, where I had 1 file open. Luckily, the session.xml file had the large session, so all is good.

It’s not that my files were unsaved, it’s just that the session was set up in a convenient way for the work that I was doing.

Cheers for a helpful solution!

Thanks @PeterJones, I really appreciate your time! I spent a chunk of time yesterday too trying to work out the regex if-then-else functionality before I gave up.

I wouldn’t want to pick up everything that starts with \ because that will pull in a lot of commands that aren’t related to document structure (every command starts with \). For example, here’s my minimum working example with a numbered list in it, and that picks up the \begin{enumerate} and \items:

\documentclass{scrreprt} \begin{document} \chapter{Chapter 1 with sections} \section{1.1} \subsection{1.1.1} Lorem \subsection{1.1.2} ipsum \section{1.2} \begin{enumerate} \item dolor \item sit \item amet \end{enumerate} \chapter{Chapter 2 with no sections} consectetur adipiscing elit. \chapter{Chapter 3 with unnumbered sections} \section*{Heading with no number} Phasellus mollis posuere ante vel tincidunt. \section*{Second heading with no number} Donec faucibus tellus sapien, vitae fringilla nulla bibendum eget. \appendix \chapter{Appendix A} \include{document} \chapter{Appendix B with sections} \section{B.1} Nam mauris nisl, cursus at erat in, \section{B.2} molestie luctus nulla. \end{document}

… but picking up the \chapter{} as a function along with the \section{}s is a great workaround!

Here’s what I have now:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <!-- ==========================================================================\ | To learn how to make your own language parser, please check the following | link: https://npp-user-manual.org/docs/function-list/ \=========================================================================== --> <NotepadPlus> <functionList> <parser displayName="LaTeX Syntax" id ="latex_class" commentExpr="(?x) (%.*?$) # Comment " > <function mainExpr="(?x) # free-spacing (see `RegEx - Pattern Modifiers`) (?im-s) # ignore case, ^ and $ match start/end of line, dot doesn't match newline \\begin{document} # match start of document " > </function> <classRange mainExpr ="(?x) # free-spacing (see `RegEx - Pattern Modifiers`) (?m) # ^ and $ match at line-breaks (?'CLASS_START' ^\s* # optional leading white space before \chapter \\(chapter\*?) ) (?s:.*?) # whatever, (?= # ...up till \s* # ...optional leading white-space of (?: (?&amp;CLASS_START) # ...next header | (\\end{document}) # ...or end of document ) ) " > <className> <nameExpr expr="(?x) # free-spacing (see `RegEx - Pattern Modifiers`) (?<={) # brace before name .*? # name (?=}) # brace after name " /> </className> <function mainExpr="(?xm-s) # free-spacing (see `RegEx - Pattern Modifiers`) \\(chapter| # match chapter so that even \chapters with no \section appear section| # match \section subsection| # match \subsection )\*?{.*} # match starred and unstarred commands " > <functionName> <funcNameExpr expr=".*"/> </functionName> </function> </classRange> </parser> </functionList> </NotepadPlus>

And the result on the sample file:
Screenshot 2025-05-14 094212.png

I modified the classRange mainExpr because I wanted to also match indented \chapter{}s (like I have for the appendices in the new sample file). After that change I found that the last \chapter{} wasn’t being matched with \Z so I changed the alternate search to look for \end{document} instead (which will always appear) and that worked.

Thanks for your help!

@Malek-A ,

If your active font has a glyph for that character, then whether it looks like an emoji or not depends on that font. If your chosen font does not contain the glyph, depending on your Notepad++ DirectWrite preferences, Windows OS may go through some alternate fonts to find one that has the glyph.

For example, for Yin Yang, if I use my default Fira Code font, which does not apparently have the glyph for that symbol, it uses an emoji-style rendering, because whatever backup font Windows OS has chosen uses the emoji rendering:
7ac95ec0-141b-4916-8dbd-7d0fab933f02-image.png

If I switch to DejaVu Sans Mono, which does have a glyph for that font, it looks like a normal character:
73f467c9-8ca2-4f1d-b6e3-1c26be584638-image.png

(both those screenshots were zoomed, so that you could actually make out the character rendering)

It’s not actually a Notepad++ specific issue: I can see similar even in my browser: ☯/☯ renders as

3414e66a-bbd0-446e-be30-b97906eca8ea-image.png

for me – once again, because of the font choices in the browser settings, and whether or not those fonts have a glyph for the given character.

Windows uses what it calls the CompositeFont for doing glyph substitutions. If you change your Notepad++ Settings > Preferences > MISC > …DirectWrite… / Rendering Mode , you can influence whether or not the substitutions happen (turning it off in older versions, or to GDI (most compatible) in newer versions should stop the substitution, but might mean that all unrecognized characters show up as �.

You can read more about CompositeFont in some of my old posts, or searching the web in your favorite engine.

“Some characters are not displayed [Unicode]” [May 2018] “Default font for Devanagiri script” [Apr 2019] “门这个字显示有问题” [Oct 2024] search here for other mentions of CompositeFont [insert link to favorite search engine’s results here]

The web search is mostly likely to be helpful in figuring out how to edit your Windows OS settings to make use of a different backup/alternate font for a given range of characters, if you end up going down that route.

But the best advice is to pick a font that has a glyph that you like for every unicode character you care about. (Easier said than done, I know)

@Palittle-Studios,

Not A Bad Idea But With Like Step-By-Step Tutorials, It Will Be GOOD.
You Could Mention Libraries Too

The FAQ is sufficient for anyone who already knows how to compile their code; once they know that, they can just put those compilation commands into the examples given. That’s as “step-by-step” as anyone who knows how to code needs. Libraries are done inside Notepad++ the same way they are when typing C/C++ code in any text editor; and passing libraries to the linker is done in Notepad++ the same way it is with any command-line compiling. All Notepad++ (and the Run menu or NppExec plugin or whatever you choose from the FAQ) are doing is helping you to “memorize” those command line calls, so that you don’t have to type them completely every time you compile.

If you need help learning C/C++, or learning how to compile and link C/C++ from the command line, there are about a gazillion webpages that already exist that explain how to do that – a forum focused on Notepad++ text editor is not the best place to look for details on the elementary learning of coding. Once you learn and understand coding in general, and compling-and-linking from the command line, then doing that from within Notepad++, using the information in the FAQ, is a piece of cake.

@PeterJones Thanks for that information, I’ll definitely turn on that setting. As far as searching goes, I hadn’t thought of using the term “backup.”