@Kang-Tri Firewalls rarely get in the way of plugins. Disabling them as a general practice in an attempt to solve a problem that someone can’t articulate well is bad advice.

The essential point to remember is that the every facet of the API surface is C-compatible, just like the Win32 API, which underlies all of N++'s internal functions. The details of how N++ dispatches plugin messages naturally involves a few C++ semantics, because it’s a C++ application. Plugins can implement their own C++ types, too, but nothing in the API says they have to. If you just want to display a free-floating form, you can use whatever functions your plugin natively supports, from ::CreateDialogParam to System.Windows.Forms.Form.ShowDialog.

The (poorly documented) purpose of the docking API is to register a form with the Docking Manager. In practice, that means preserving the form’s position and geometry in config.xml, so that N++ can optionally reload it when the application starts. To do that, a plugin sends NPPM_DMMREGASDCKDLG with a pointer to a C-like structure filled with some basic parameters, as shown in the developers’ manual.

The form’s creation is entirely up to the plugin. N++ simply invokes the function that creates the form by calling through a function pointer. No plugin is required to instantiate a DockingCont or any other object derived from a C++ class. Examples of plugins that do this anyway are special cases, not illustrations of how the docking API works.

@Udhaya-Bharathi-Kumar

You wrote “How to connect NZ with notepad++.” Notepad++ is normally the client application and would connect with a server. NZ is normally a server that you connect to using clients. You want to do this backwards. Is your desire to control and use Notepad++ using NZ scripts?

For me, step-by-step starts out with defining what it is that I want to do. I usually start out using pencil on paper to make drawing of a high level overview and then fill the gaps and details. Once I have a general idea of the goal I code up a simple user interface that’s mainly there to run test/debugging of the next phase which is the bottom layer details which I fully write and debug. I usually learn a lot about exceptions and oddities while coding the bottom later that needs to be taken into account when the middle or upper layers get structured.

See bottom–up and top–down design on Wikipedia. I’m doing both top down and bottom up but with an emphasis on bottom up. I leave the middle layer that glues the top and bottom for last.

I said in Save Plugin Button State:

If a certain plugin is not using it (or using it wrongly), that’s an issue for the plugin’s maintainer to resolve.

The bug report is here, finally: https://github.com/nea/MarkdownViewerPlusPlus/issues/159

In the meantime, just putting .dll after the plugin name will get it working, e.g.,

<!-- <GUIConfig name="DockingManager" ... > --> <PluginDlg pluginName="MarkdownViewer++.dll" id="0" curr="1" prev="-1" isVisible="yes" /> <!-- </GUIConfig> -->

@Mark-Olson said in determining how many capture groups there are programmatically:

No, PythonScript uses Boost for editor.{research/rereplace}.

Ah, I see. I can’t follow everything, but when I see:
https://github.com/bruderstein/PythonScript/blob/master/PythonScript/src/UTF8Iterator.h
it’s clear they’re taking a similar approach to what I’m doing… except it looks like they figured out how to define regex_traits for 32-bit Unicode characters without ICU. If I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing, then the PythonScript regular expression code interprets any Unicode code point as a single character, even if it is outside the Basic Multilingual Plane. (In Notepad++ search, non-BMP code points appear as two “characters” to regex, the high surrogate and the low surrogate.) Now I have another job… to see if I can grasp how they did it, and if I can, rewrite my utf8 iterator for about the sixth time…

In any case, thanks for the thoughts, and sorry it’s been a bumpy road. What I’m doing is in C#, and it’s unclear to me whether that will make this task easier or harder than it’s been for you.

If folks using your framework don’t care about using precisely the same regular expression language Notepad++ implements, they could probably use C# regular expressions; they’d have to copy the data to be searched to a buffer (translating to wide characters if it’s utf-8). I don’t know C# at all, but I get the impression you can’t template the regex classes like we do in C++, and hence wouldn’t be able to define a custom iterator, so using the Scintilla data “in place” wouldn’t be an option (at least for utf-8, unless C# has a built-in regular expression class for utf-8).

To use the Boost regex language, I guess you’d have to do whatever is done in C# to call a set of C++ routines that could incorporate Boost regex… or just accept the limitations of using Scintilla commands (including no access to capture groups past 9, and no way to get the replacement string without actually doing a replacement).

@jcaillon

The above download link is to an old version. To keep the link pointing to the latest version you should replace the tag/VerNum with latest. Please edit your first followup post with below link.

Download Latest Version here:
https://github.com/jcaillon/3P/releases/latest

@Mario-Lemelin ,

Did you “install” using the “mini-portable” minimalist zip file? If so, then it doesn’t install the Plugins Admin (see Online User Manual > Getting Started > Installing from 7z or Zip, which includes both normal portable and mini-portable descriptions).

Are you running with -noPlugin command-line argument? If so, then it may have disabled Plugins Admin. (update: my experiments say that -noPlugin does not disable Plugins Admin)

If that’s not the case, please share your ?-menu’s Debug Info.

@Alan-Kilborn said in getting pull request merged?:

says this should have been done FIRST, but I don’t know if this has any bearing on lack of attention…

@Geoff-Winkless I see you’ve now created an issue. Update your Pull Request description to include the text “Fix #49”. This will “link” the issue and pull request.

Cheers.

@rdipardo Sorry for sneaking into this discussion, but I just whipped up a quick 5-minute example. While it’s a simple solution and might not cover all nuances, maybe it can serve as a starting point or a simple helper:

Find what: (\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+)
Replace with: cond(CAP1 > 0 and CAP2 == 0 and CAP3 == 0, MATCH, cond(CAP2 > 0 and CAP3 == 0, " " .. MATCH, " " .. MATCH))list structure.gif

This example showcases how you can use multiple formatting combinations. Additionally, it’s worth noting that you can also set multiple formatting steps sequentially to achieve more complex patterns.

Please note that this plugin will be rolled out with the next Notepad++ update. However, you can download it in advance here.
As mentioned, it’s a quick workaround and might need refinements to handle all possible scenarios.

@PeterJones said in Dumb question time: compatible-versions and old-versions-compatibility — What am I missing?:

at some indeterminate time in the future

Thanks, @PeterJones. That pretty much explains why I couldn’t make sense of it: it’s not something that does anything useful now, just a guess at what might be useful in the future. I won’t worry much about it, then — guesses about what might be useful in the future have a high rate of irrelevance when the future arrives, no matter who is doing the guessing.

@Mark-Olson
I know XMLTools, I use it in parallel. But I think XPatherizerNPP is more useful with evaluating XPath expressions. XPatherizerNPP has some issues with out of memory exceptions when used with large XML files so I was looking for a x64 version. Maybe I can find some time to make a port of the original Plugin.

If you’re referring to NotepadPlusPlusPluginPack.Net, it’s not “out of date”!

Maybe @Zigy-WasTaken meant the age of the last stable release (0.94.00), from 2018. Even the 2021 “beta” release is now 40 commits behind the trunk, and there is still an unpatched issue affecting the binary compatibility of the ScNotification structure, whereby the Updated field seems to be getting clobbered by an out-of-bounds write.

All things that capable .NET developers can fix on their own, of course, if they’re not turned off by the “some assembly required” caveat. But what is an absolute beginner supposed to do?

@rdipardo it’s not so much the ability to break/abuse it, it’s the fact that there is a correlation between the order of entries in your plugin menu and the docking dialogue(s) you can open from your plugin.

Hello, @maverick-f-16c, @peterjones, @coises, @terry-r, @mark-olson and All,

Ah… OK. If your two files have approximately 300K lines, my previous regex S/R won’t probably find nothing as it’s over the usual capacities of the Boost regex engine of Notepad++ !

So, I would choose the @coises’s way, using the N++ sort to get the right results. I did not fully read the @coises’s method and I prefer start from scratch !

So, let’s suppose we start with two files :

File_1.txt : FFF = 79 K = 6 C = 4 A = 8 XXX = 7 H = 51 BB = 6 E = 0 GA = 339 J = 4 DZ = 9 II = 6 File_2.txt : E = 5 J = 0 FFF = 4 ZYX = 1 A = 0 II = 18 DZ = 2 K = 6 C = 17 H = 27

Note that the records, in these two files, are randomly sorted, on purpose !

As in my previous post, create a new File_3.txt with the contents of File_1.txt, a separation line of some @ chars then the contents of File_2.txt : FFF = 79 K = 6 C = 4 A = 8 XXX = 7 H = 51 BB = 6 E = 0 GA = 339 J = 4 DZ = 9 II = 6 @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ E = 5 J = 0 FFF = 4 ZYX = 1 A = 0 II = 18 DZ = 2 K = 6 C = 17 H = 27

Now, execute , successively, the two regex S/R, below :

• SEARCH \x3D • REPLACE ( )\x3D

Then :

SEARCH (?-s)^.{40}\K\x20+

REPLACE Leave it EMPTY

Click only on the Replace All button

You should get this OUTPUT :

FFF = 79 K = 6 C = 4 A = 8 XXX = 7 H = 51 BB = 6 E = 0 GA = 339 J = 4 DZ = 9 II = 6 @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ E = 5 J = 0 FFF = 4 ZYX = 1 A = 0 II = 18 DZ = 2 K = 6 C = 17 H = 27

Then, move the caret on the first line, at column 25

Select a 12×0 rectangular selection of all the records BEFORE the @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ line

Type in the A letter

Select the column editor ( Alt + C )

Select Number to Insert with all zones = 1, fill in with the 0 char and click on the OK button

Then move to the first line, at column 25, AFTER the @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ line

Again do a 10×0 **rectangular selection of all the records AFTER the @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ line

Type in the B letter

Select the column editor ( Alt + C )

Select Number to Insert with all zones = 1, fill in with the 0 char and click on the OK button

You should get this OUTPUT :

FFF A01 = 79 K A02 = 6 C A03 = 4 A A04 = 8 XXX A05 = 7 H A06 = 51 BB A07 = 6 E A08 = 0 GA A09 = 339 J A10 = 4 DZ A11 = 9 II A12 = 6 @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ E B01 = 5 J B02 = 0 FFF B03 = 4 ZYX B04 = 1 A B05 = 0 II B06 = 18 DZ B07 = 2 K B08 = 6 C B09 = 17 H B10 = 27 Now, perform a classical sort, using the Edit > Line Operations > Sort Lines Lexicographically Ascending option

We get :

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ A A04 = 8 A B05 = 0 BB A07 = 6 C A03 = 4 C B09 = 17 DZ A11 = 9 DZ B07 = 2 E A08 = 0 E B01 = 5 FFF A01 = 79 FFF B03 = 4 GA A09 = 339 H A06 = 51 H B10 = 27 II A12 = 6 II B06 = 18 J A10 = 4 J B02 = 0 K A02 = 6 K B08 = 6 XXX A05 = 7 ZYX B04 = 1 Delete the @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ line

Then, run the following regex S/R :

SEARCH (?-s)^((\w+)\x20+A.+?)\d+(?=\R\2\x20+B.+=\x20+(\d+))

REPLACE \1\3

The OUTPUT is now changed as :

A A04 = 0 A B05 = 0 BB A07 = 6 C A03 = 17 C B09 = 17 DZ A11 = 2 DZ B07 = 2 E A08 = 5 E B01 = 5 FFF A01 = 4 FFF B03 = 4 GA A09 = 339 H A06 = 27 H B10 = 27 II A12 = 18 II B06 = 18 J A10 = 0 J B02 = 0 K A02 = 6 K B08 = 6 XXX A05 = 7 ZYX B04 = 1

Note : As you can see, due to the previous sort, the search regex just need to find, each time, two consecutive lines of the form :

ABCD A#1 = xxx ABCD B#2 = yyy

Which begin with the same value ABCD and replace the xxx value by the yyy value. This explains why this solution should work with huge files, without any problem !

Now, move again the cursor on the first line, at column 25

Perform a 22×0 ( or 22×3 ) rectangular selection of all the records

Once more, use the Edit > Line Operations > Sort Lines Lexicographically Ascending option

We get :

FFF A01 = 4 K A02 = 6 C A03 = 17 A A04 = 0 XXX A05 = 7 H A06 = 27 BB A07 = 6 E A08 = 5 GA A09 = 339 J A10 = 0 DZ A11 = 2 II A12 = 18 E B01 = 5 J B02 = 0 FFF B03 = 4 ZYX B04 = 1 A B05 = 0 II B06 = 18 DZ B07 = 2 K B08 = 6 C B09 = 17 H B10 = 27

Finally, use this regex S/R, to get, in File_3.txt, the updated values of File_1.txt ( from File_2.txt )

SEARCH (?-is)\x20+(A)\d+\x20+|^.+\x20B(?s).+

REPLACE ?1\x20

FFF = 4 K = 6 C = 17 A = 0 XXX = 7 H = 27 BB = 6 E = 5 GA = 339 J = 0 DZ = 2 II = 18

Notes :

As you can verify, the order of the lines, in File_3.txt, is identical to the initial order of these lines in File_1.txt

The records, present in File_1.txt and not in File_2.txt, are not changed

The records, present in File_2.txt and not in File_1.txt, are not added, either

Again, this solution should work in all cases, even with files with million of lines !

Best Regards,

guy038

Hi Plugin Community,

I have managed to test my plugin using notepad++ old version 7.8.9.

Thanks,
Ahmoy Law

@PeterJones Ok thanks.