Feature request: improvements to keyword highlighting (style tokens)

Zoltán Kelemen

I use Notepad++ to skim through large amounts of log files and style tokens are a crucial feature for me.
However there are some major items lacking which would be most welcome (in rough order of importance):

Save style token highlights between sessions (just like bookmarks)
1b. Save style tokens in project files as well.
Make clearing style tokens behave the same way as marking style tokens (i.e. per keyword. Currently “remove a style” removes that highlight from all keywords not just the highlighted one. Adding on the other hand is additive)
Make possible to highlight a keyword with the same style across all open documents.
Make style tokens configurable / add more options (I know you can actually combine them, which is good, but not enough)
Add a GUI element to manage keyword / style / file(?) associations.

I would even be willing to contribute, but I’m not a developer and don’t even know where to start :-)

greenzest

Hello,

It seems to me that an easy solution to your request would be using the UDL (aka User Defined Language), i too frequently crawl through logs and this is a must.

Basically, this will let you style (with a tons of options) any keyword in any document with the specified extension (that you can set). Go to menu “language” > “define your language”, “create new”, then you should look for the “keyword” tab. For example, try to input the keyword “error” in the first group, style it in red with the button “styler” and appreciate the result. You can set the extension to associate with your defined language in the Ext. text box (separated by spaces).

Check this doc for more information.

Basically, the only feature missing from your list is the n°2, but with the combination of UDL + tokens you should be good.

++

Zoltán Kelemen

Thanks for the tip, I’ll consider this.

However I don’t really have standard expressions to look for (like “Error”) but instead I’m looking for IP addresses, CallIDs etc things that are unique for each set of logs (unique to an event) I may be tracing so I would need to keep the language “editor” open. Which is OK.
It has a number of already apparent drawbacks to marking already:

it seems slower (this may have been due to having a lot of large files open at once, including the one I used to try it and it may have attempted to apply highlighting to all)
it can only mark entire “words” not substrings too (because that obviously would not make sense in a language highlighting I understand, but sometimes I may want to track an IP that appears in a sip URI for instance: sip:john@10.20.30.40 etc This is the biggest actual issue with it.

Cheryl Tesch

Hello Zoltan - did you ever get a response from Notepad++ for these options you mentioned. I found out the hard way of using Style Token in a large text file and then after saving and reopening, 4 hours of work was lost. It is just a great feature but does not make sense why it cannot be saved.

Otiel

Would love to see that implemented as well.

Ananth S

It will really helps, if Notepad++ has this feature.

cmeriaux

@Zoltán-Kelemen said:

“Make clearing style tokens behave the same way as marking style tokens (i.e. per keyword. Currently “remove a style” removes that highlight from all keywords not just the highlighted one. Adding on the other hand is additive)”

You can clear style by style:
Search\Unmark All\ Clear 1st style
Search\Unmark All\ Clear 2st style
…

Style tokens uses the options of “find GUI” to work (whole word and match case)