Notepad++ 7.5 release

bruderstein

@chcg
Actually, even the list from https://github.com/bruderstein/npp-plugins-x64 is hosted on the server provided by the sponsors. Github just does the hosting of the source and then a job runs on travis-ci to upload any changes. Github told me i couldn’t host the list directly (without paying) as it is not the software itself.

I’m disappointed too that this decision has been taken, but I can understand it even if I don’t agree with it.

What I’m more disappointed about is the way in which it has been gone about: just removing it and starting development on a whole new management system, rather than trying to solve the problem at hand.

It’s likely this replacement solution will cause splintering in the community as plugin authors try to work out how to release a new plugin or an update. This doesn’t seem like the best solution for the community, and replacing the code of the plugin manager is replacing the part that works, without solving the problem it had.

I’m approaching this as I would have hoped it would have been approached before the removal:

The plugin lists and authorisation server need to be hosted somewhere. I’ve already got cloudflare setup taking the bulk of the bandwidth (this month was 127Gb transfer), so actually the traffic to the main server is pretty low.

If someone / some company is willing to provide the hosting for free, without adverts, then this is what we need:

Ideally a root server with a kernel that supports docker, but really just a server that can run a node.js server is fine. 2Gb RAM, 1CPU, roughly 1-2GB of transfer each month (due to cloudflare taking most of it). If it’s not with root access, there are some other requirements so that the interface with admin system works - I can provide details if anyone would like them.

If you don’t have hosting available, but are able to pay for hosting without adverts, then we’d need something like a digital ocean $20/month setup.

If we can’t find another solution and Don goes ahead with the reimplementation, when that is available I’ll deprecate the plugin manager and stop the hosting in order to ensure there aren’t competing solutions. The plugin list may stop being available sooner than that as the sponsors may withdraw their support.

Thanks for your support for the last 8 years.

Dave

bruderstein

I’ve just received an offer from the sponsors to continue without the logo, and just with the text.

@donho how does that sound? I totally understand either way.

Thunder T

BUG

Notepad++ crashes at launch if the recently opened files (in the last session) can’t be found.

P.S.: “Remember current session for next launch” option is checked in Settings>Preferences…>Backup.

The problem was fixed after I manually edited config.xml file and removed the files located in <History> section.
I also suspect that it also might have something to do with “&” character in file names, as it is converted to “&amp” sign inside config file.

sbaumann-hm

No longer able to remove unneeded (programming) languages. I can go through the steps, but when I close and reopen notepad++, the languages are back.

MAPJe71

@sbaumann-hm You might want to read some of the other posts above.

zgz

@donho
在win10下，如果修改过的文件，在不保存的情况下，重启windows（restart os),会丢失sessions,这个bug从6.9.2以来，就一直存在

th_user_

From the 7.4.2 Announcement thread:

For the View->Show Symbol->Show White Space and Tab option, is there any way to restore the previous size of the dot used to indicate a space character? It looks much more prominent now and I would like to be able to revert to the previous size if at all possible.

MAPJe71

@th_user_
Use the LuaScript plugin and add the following to startup.lua:

local editors = { editor1, editor2 }
for _,ed in pairs(editors) do
    -- make the space 'dots' less intrusive/prominent
    ed.WhitespaceSize = 1
end

Meta Chuh

@sbaumann-hm
if you do not want to wait for the next release, you can download the fix for “recently added languages can not be disabled” here:
https://ci.appveyor.com/project/donho/notepad-plus-plus/build/1.0.1457/job/dttc1a3qlp7tfrgj/artifacts

download Notepad++.Win32.Unicode Release.exe
rename it to Notepad++.exe
if you want, backup your current notepad++.exe in your np++ folder, in case you want to revert to the older build
copy the new Notepad++.exe to your np++ folder, replacing your current notepad++.exe

use at your own risk, as artifacts are less (in this case) or not yet tested

btw: in case you use the 64 bit version, you can download it here: https://ci.appveyor.com/project/donho/notepad-plus-plus/build/1.0.1457/job/j3jwagjac6lavljs/artifacts

Ben Voris

@Meta-Chuh This DLL gives “DLL signature verification failed”. I read elsewhere that one can rebuild from source and comment out a check, but that’s more than I’m ready to do. How did you get it to work?

Fwiw, sha1sum gives:

1e4735c73a235e485cd0e58ca89be771aac04b7a *SciLexer.dll
1c408d57037086b6cce0f060a5fa4967c2f8db7c *notepad++.exe

MAPJe71

@Ben-Voris replace notepad++.exe only, keep the original digitally signed SciLexer.dll.

th_user_

@MAPJe71 Perfect, thank you.

dail

@Meta-Chuh @sbaumann-hm

Keep in mind the builds on appveyor do not use the Boost regex engine so some parts (regular expression searching/replacing, function list possibly URL highlighting) might not work as expected.

Ben Voris

@Meta-Chuh @MAPJe71, Thank you. Copying only the program worked

donho

@Thunder-T
Cannot reproduce it at all in v7.5 64 bits.
Could you copy your debug info here?

donho

@ImSpecial

I wanna bring this up again so it doesn’t get looked over, but was there a reason Notepad++ now creates an empty folder in “AppData/Local/Notepad++”?
Quite a few people are pretty annoyed that this program is no longer stealth anymore. The folder seems to serve no purpose either, I’m hoping this is a bug.

It’s indeed a bug. It’ll be fixed in the next release.
Thank you for the heads up.

CosmicPenguin2

I (CosmicPenguin2 @CosmicPenguin2) have been hanging out for months in https://gitter.im/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus helping people. Now lots of them are asking how to get the missing Plugin Manager, and I or dail8859 have to answer them. Many users are technically naive and will have difficulties manually placing files into program directories. Removing the Plugin Manager was a very aggravating “solution” to a non-existent “problem”. Nobody ever complained about the ad in it. Please put it back until you’ve written and debugged the new one. Thanks for all your wonderful work!

StanDog

@Donho
I’m not sure, if it was a good idea to remove the existing plugin manager as long as there is no other one available. This leaves people without anything left. And their system might have plugin files left, which they now have to remove manually (in case of uninstallation before a re-installation).

The removal of Dave’s plugin manager in such a way (no communication, no thanking for all the contribution, no previous announcement, creation of a “competing” plugin manager) will probably not increase others sympathy for the Notepad++ project. I am personally not happy in which way one free project kicked another free project out… especially a project (the plugin manager), which contributed so much to the Notepad++ community for so many years, and which allowed other developers to create plugins for this editor. Imho, a quite big part of Notepad++'s success can be attributed to Dave’s plugin manager and the plugins of developers, which extended Notepad++'s functionality significantly. Seeing how many gigabytes traffic alone the plugin list produces, it would be interesting to estimate, how many people used plugins through the plugin manager’s distribution system.

I just wanted to say this personal opinion as a plugin developer, because I’m not sure if I would like to continue to contribute to this project in the future.

Neil Laslett

I just wanted to strongly second @StanDog 's post. For me, the magic of Notepad++ is purely in the Plugin Manager. There are numerous text editors out there. And no offense, there’s nothing that special about that. What IS (or WAS) special about np++ was I could jump on and immediately tap into an amazing community and library of plugins to do…anything. Need to parse an XML file? JSLint some minimized JSON? Text markup for some legacy ColdFusion site? Done. No problem.

Now you’ve yanked the rug out from under everybody, with no replacement, and no acknowledgement. And all because of a silly sponsor ad? Not only have you removed the plugin bootstrapper, but you’ve potentially fractured the community, as now there is uncertainty about where the definitive plugin repo is / will be.

I know I can manually find, download, and install the PM dll but that’s not the point. Who wants to have to manually configure their text editor before they can get to work?

AlbertoGP

@donho said:

@juanmalunatic It has been a while that Scintilla has not been updated.
We will update it in the next major version.

When you do, watch out for the change in text selection behaviour introduced in Scintilla 3.7.3:
“Display block caret over the character at the end of a selection to be similar to other editors.”

I’ve written the details at the Scintilla bug report:
https://sourceforge.net/p/scintilla/bugs/1924/

We are discussing what to do about this in two other editors that use Scintilla:

Textadept: https://foicica.com/lists/code/201709/4051.html
Geany: https://github.com/geany/geany/issues/1442

If we end up doing our own patch to fix this, it would be good to coordinate Notepad++, Geany and Textadept to avoid having different APIs in each editor.