Developer Needed...

Chris Mckevitt

the way npp displays folds is annoying. from the visible fold line, to not being able to easily delete the fold etc…

I have no experience in plugins/etc, but I know what I want npp to do. I would like the folds to resemble this:

+function(){…}
+function(){…}

as opposed to:

+function(){
|----------------------------------------
+function(){
|----------------------------------------

How would I go about achieving this, or better yet, which one of you will do it for me so as to learn from example?!..

Claudia Frank

@Chris-Mckevitt

the problems are

a) it is handled by scintilla
and
b) I assume a couple of lexer do it differently.

So I guess there isn’t a quick solution for you. Sorry.

Cheers
Claudia

Chris Mckevitt

Thanks Claudia… Maybe we can hasten the solution if you would please explain you answers a little more. I’m don’t really know much about scintilla and lexers and as such, don’t understand the depth of your answers. Maybe a quick side note on how the scintilla handles it and how & why lexers are different?

Claudia Frank

@Chris-Mckevitt

Scintilla is the component which
is used by notepad++ to do all the coloring, folding, styling, … stuff of your language.
A lexer is the component which calculates which parts should be colored, folded, styled etc…

Scintilla itself has already a lot of builtin lexers but it also provides an interface for writing
own lexers e.g. the UDL from npp. Those lexers are written by different programmers,
although they may use the same scintilla version they are slightly different in functionality
and representation. E.g. put the following python code into a doc and set the lexer to python

def foo():
    # comment
    pass

you will see that folding starts from line 1 and includes line 3.
Use this vbs code and do the same (except you want select visual basic as lexer)

Sub Foo()
    'comment
    
End Sub

You will see that folding starts also at line 1 but doesn’t include the last line.
Even more critical is when pasting this, which from vbs syntax view is absolutely ok, into a doc.

Sub Foo()
'comment
    
End Sub

This results in no folding at all. Why? Because the visual basic lexer programmer decided to
write the folding logic based on indention and not doing complex code analysis.
Which is fine, as long as the vbs user does the same kind of code styling.

So you see, even if one of the language lexer you use behaves the way you like,
there is no guarantee that others act the same.

When you want to write your own lexer than I would recommend to check the code of one of the existing lexers.
This Gmod LUA plugin is known to be a good example but must admit that I never used or checked the code myself.

Cheers
Claudia