Support for Plugins Admin & NppPluginList

[shawnkhall]

Feature request: column sorting within Plugins Admin. Since there’s no logical default sort order and the search is limited, sorting will help us find our favorite plugins.

[DataCrypt]

@donho Thank you for all your work on NPP. I like the new PlugIn Admin and if you can somehow include that in the portable version so that it’s available in a future release, that would be very helpful. Thank you again and happy holidays!

[A Former User]

This post is deleted!

[ivanbuto]

Question: Is it possible to make the new Plugins Admin work also on Windows XP or would this be too much work?
I tried Notepad++ to 7.6.1 with the Plugins Admin. The lists of plugins read fine, however, the update process didn’t work due to a missing function. I can provide a screenshot if needed.
Plugin Manager worked fine also with Windows XP.

[donho]

@DataCrypt said:

Thank you for all your work on NPP. I like the new PlugIn Admin and if you can somehow include that in the portable version so that it’s available in a future release, that would be very helpful. Thank you again and happy holidays!

It will be in the zipped package of next release (v7.6.2).

[jackpoz]

Plugin “XML Tools” shows an error about libxml and/or libxslt not being found. I copied both dlls in the new plugin subfolder C:\ProgramData\Notepad++\plugins\XMLTools but that didn’t fix the issue. Any clue where plugins should have their external dlls ?
Link to the screenshot

[Serge Wenger]

Admin Plugins does not work because I have to use the company proxy. I have no error message, but no new plugin installation or update are working correctly.

[Serge Wenger]

Is there a log or something to do to help to find a solution?

[dumdi dum]

Hi there,

maybe I just didn’t find the answer to my question, but shouldn’t it be possible to install plugins without admin privileges?

I did uninstall 6.9 with the silent switch and installed the 32 Bit 7.6.2 version with the silent switch aswell.

Now all Plugins are listed in the Programdata folder, where usually every user can create or delete folders - but still if I want to install one plugin with the plugin admin menu, notepad++ is closing and asks for administrator credentials.

Is this still the intended behavior?!

regards

[mattesh]

Hi @donho ,
Plugin_Central is quite outdated,
but still referenced in
official plugin-howto -> Plugin_Development

Also the specifications for certain content on docs.notepad-plus-plus.org seems to be quite old.
Could you please check how contributors can do some updates for your wiki?

Best regards, Mattes

[Ivan Bútora]

This post is deleted!

[ivanbuto]

@ivanbuto said:

Question: Is it possible to make the new Plugins Admin work also on Windows XP or would this be too much work?
I tried Notepad++ to 7.6.1 with the Plugins Admin. The lists of plugins read fine, however, the update process didn’t work due to a missing function. I can provide a screenshot if needed.
Plugin Manager worked fine also with Windows XP.

Here is a screenshot of the error generated when Notepad++ restarted itself after trying to update a plugin via Plugins Admin in 7.6.1 on Windows XP.

With versions 7.6.2 and higher, the Plugins Admin does not even appear under the Plugins menu.

So should I just expect that it won’t be made to work under Windows XP at all? I do have the appropriate TLS update installed (KB4019276), so the system can use TLS 1.2.

[dmmiller2k]

@jackpoz In order for the XMLTools plugin to work, those external DLLs (i.e., libcurl.dll, libiconv-2.dll, libwinpthread-1.dll, libxml2-2.dll, libxslt-1.dll) must be copied into the Notepad++ executable directory (i.e., where the Notepad++.exe file resides, or, “C:\Program Files\Notepad++”).

[Stan Mitchell130]

**Problem Installing Style.xml for Plugin External Lexers **

I’m using the recommended procedure for testing my plugin: Npp 7.6.1, gup debug. After modifying nppPluginList.json, my distribution zip is found and the files are extracted and installed. My lexer plugin depends on an xml file for syntax styling that should be in the user directory under %APPDATA%\Notepad++\plugins\config but it is not getting copied there. With the old plugin manager, some rules were supplied for where things were to be copied on installation. How should that kind of thing be handled now with the new Plugin Admin?

[Bas de Reuver]

I’m running into the same problem as @Stan-Mitchell130 's GEDCOM plug-in with my CSV Lint plugin. The plug-in provides a custom lex() function which requires an .XML file for the syntax highlighting colors. When installing the plug-in this XML file should be placed in the user’s \config\ folder, like so:

CSVLint.dll ----> C:\Program Files\Notepad++\plugins\CSVLint\CSVLint.dll
CSVLint.xml —> %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Notepad++\plugins\config\CSVLint.xml

I’ve added the installation .zip files (both 32bit and 64bit) to the Plugins Admin list and the .zip files contains just the two files, like so:

CSVLint.zip

• CSVLint.dll
• CSVLint.xml

But this places the CSVLint.xml file in the same folder as the Program Files\Notepad++\plugins\CSVLint\ folder, so this is incorrect. After you install the plug-in and start Notepad++ wil give an error “\plugins\Config\CSVLint.xml is missing. CSVLint.dll is not compatible… etc.”

I noticed that the GedcomLexer also provides an XML file but it’s placed in a subfolder in the .zip called “Config”. However, this still causes the GedcomLexer.xml file to be copied to the incorrect folder Program Files\Notepad++\plugins\GedcomLexer\Config\GedcomLexer.xml, so that gives the same problem.

GedcomLexer.zip

• GedcomLexer.dll
• Config\GedcomLexer.xml
• etc. more files

So my question is, how should I provide the .XML file in the .zip file, in such a way that the Plugins Admin will copy it to the correct .\config\ folder?

[Ekopalypse]

@Bas-de-Reuver

I am not sure if this is the best way.
From the plugin’s point of view, it is necessary that this file exists.
What if it was accidentally deleted?

What I do is check the existence of the file in the setInfo callback and create it if necessary.

fn set_info(nppData NppData) {
	npp_data = nppData
	notepad = npp.Npp{npp_data.npp_handle}
	editor = sci.create_editors(nppData.scintilla_main_handle, nppData.scintilla_second_handle)

	// create language xml in plugin config directory if needed
	config_dir := notepad.get_plugin_config_dir()
	lang_xml := os.join_path(config_dir, language_name+'.xml')
	if !os.exists(lang_xml) {
		if !create_lang_xml(lang_xml) {
			msg := 'Unable to create VLang xml file\n$lang_xml'
			message_box(npp_data.npp_handle, msg, 'Error', u32(C.MB_OK | C.MB_ICONERROR))
		}
	}
}

[Bas de Reuver]

@Ekopalypse You mean when it’s not found then generate the default XML file on the fly? So the plug-in .DLL will include a hard-coded default XML file including all the default color settings.

I find it a bit counter-intuitive to include a configuration/settings file as hard-coded, but on the other hand I agree that in this case it is more practical for the end-user. Okay thanks for the tip, I’ll look into that.

[Ekopalypse]

@Bas-de-Reuver

yes, you have to have one anyway.

[Bas de Reuver]

Okay I’ve fixed the issue, see code here, and I’ll prepare a new release.

One important thing here is that if you write the lexer xml file, it has to be UTF-8 encoded (so without BOM). If you write it UTF-8-BOM encoded then Notepad++ won’t read it, even though it also won’t give the “xml is missing” error anymore.

[datherton15]

Apologies if this is in the wrong spot…
Having issues with the XML Tools plugin crashing when trying to “pretty print” the the xml is missing a single closing bracket on the last tag (it was a bad cut-paste). It consistently happened as I’m poor at cut-paste :oP.
Thanks for any assistance in passing this forward to the appropriate devs…
DA