Copy text from notepad++ to putty terminal loses formatting.

[Matt Drake]

Using Notepad++ with Putty 0.67 SSH terminal everytime i copy code from notpad++ it loses its formatting in weird ways each time i paste. some of its correct then other parts becomes justified and mixed together, removing blank lines in some places and not others, is there a way to copy from notepad++ and paste directly as previously formatted,

I have tried the export to RTF and paste but doesnt seem to do the trick
i am coding in python if that makes any difference.

http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j262/skaterdrake/notpadBug.jpg

[PeterJones]

I doubt it’s the programming language (per se) that makes a difference. It’s probably the settings of your particular terminal, whether you are using tabs or spaces for indenting in NPP, and what the receiving application (not PuTTY; whatever program you’re running in the PuTTY terminal) is expecting and set up for. If I run vim on linux thru a PuTTY 0.67 SSH terminal, and paste from Notepad++ into vim with auto-indent turned off, I get exactly what I pasted (if auto-indent is turned on, vim adds extra indenting: this is an example of how settings on the receiving application can affect things).

debugging questions

• In Notepad++, what are Settings > Preferences > Languages > Tab Settings > [Default] > Replace by space set to? unchecked (☐) or checked (☑)? What about for Tab Settings > Python?
  • in your existing NPP window, you can turn on View > Show Symbol > Show Whitespace and TAB, and look for a light-colored dot (SPACE) or a light-colored arrow (TAB) at the beginning of the indent lines, to see what the indent is for that specific file.
• What program are you running in the PuTTY terminal, that you’re trying to paste into?
• Try an experiment:
  • run plane-jane Windows notepad.exe
  • type in two copies of the example text (below)
    • once indenting using the tab character
    • once indenting using four or eight spaces
  • copy/paste each (one at a time) into the destination program in PuTTY
  • Do they both come out the same (whether both wrong or both right), or is one formatted correctly and the other not
    • if they both are wrong, then it’s likely an issue with either your PuTTY settings or with what the receiving program expects
    • if the tab-indented version comes out wrong, but the space-indented version is right, you’ll want to set NPP to convert TABs to SPACES
    • if the space-indented is wrong but the tab-indented is right (that would surprise me), you want NPP to not convert TABs to spaces
    • if both are right from notepad.exe, but it still pastes wrong from Notepad++, then there’s something magical going on with your copy/paste buffer, and you might want to try loading Notepad++ without any plugins (run notepad++.exe -noPlugin) and copy/paste from NPP again, to see whether some plugin is interfering with the Windows clipboard.

example text

def getWindDirection():
    global lastwinddir
    ...
    return
    
while True:
    print 
    ...

other suggestions

Instead of copy/paste from Windows::Notepad++ to PuTTY::OS::Application, would you be able to use Notepad++'s NppFTP plugin to edit remotely from Windows::Notepad++ to the filesystem on whatever server you’re accessing thru PuTTY? (Or, if you’re used to a standalone FTP/SFTP/… like FileZilla, how about editing on Windows, but then copying to the server using your external FTP program)