TextFX 64-bit binary / source code unavailability?
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Sometimes there is a pre-made solution. Sometimes there’s not. You’ve only had one post here, and your account is only recent, so it’s impossible for us to know how often you’ve looked at this forum, to see who the regulars are. But, so that you know, most of the people who have given workaround answers in this Topic have been contributors for a year or more, and have very good familiarity with Notepad++, and have a good idea of what it can and cannot do, whether natively or through plugins. If you see a thread like this, where someone has asked whether such-and-such a feature exists, and multiple people give answers that show more-technical workarounds, rather than just pointing someone to a whiz-bang plugin that does it out of the box, it generally means that no one on the forum has run across a whiz-bang plugin that meets the needs.
(Also, an unsolicited secret of interpersonal communication that I have learned over the years: In my experience, when people volunteer their time and knowledge to help others in a user-community-forum like this, cursing at them – whether literally or through Q*bert-ese – is generally not helpful: it doesn’t suddenly “jog their memory”, it’s not a magic password that suddenly unlocks secret information that they would have otherwise hidden from you, and it doesn’t usually encourage people to continue to be willing to help. In fact, it pretty much does the exact opposite. Do what you will with this tidbit of information.)
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I did a search for “date” in this topic and didn’t see anyone mention Date: Insert Long/Short Format. TextFX is the only thing I’ve known that contained that function. Is there another plugin (or built-in feature) that allows you to easily insert a full date/time stamp into the current editing window? Am I missing something obvious? Is there a reason why TextFX was never released for the 64-bit version of Notepad++? Thanks!
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I did a search for “date” in this topic
Did you search the whole Community for “date”? Of course, Community search is known to be poor…
Regarding “another plugin”: You can script yourself a date solution that can put the date in any format you can imagine; these might get you started with that:
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/community/topic/13792/date-time-again
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/community/topic/16147/date-and-time
https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/5537Is there a reason why TextFX was never released for the 64-bit version of Notepad++?
There is an experimental version out there somewhere, and by that I mean something not by the original author, or with permission of same. As to a reason, well, people’s interests change over time. I’d guess the author lost interest or moved on to a different text editor. It happens.
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@amarand said:
Is there another plugin (or built-in feature) that allows you to easily insert a full date/time stamp into the current editing window?
You could use the NppCalc plugin for that (installable with both PluginManager (Npp up to v7.5.9) and PluginsAdmin (Npp v7.6 and above)). Activate the plugin and type e.g.
FormatDateTime( 'dddd, dd.MM.yyyy hh:mm:ss', now() )+ENTER. The plugin inserts the according date/time infos (ddddis the name of the weekday in your locale) into the following document line.It’s not the same like that what the TextFX plugin does since the command you typed gets not overwritten but NppCalc is more flexible and has a bunch of other useful functions.
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@dinkumoil said:
You could use the NppCalc plugin for that
…okay…but is there a way to bind to a keycombo with that plugin? Typing that horrendously long thing is even worse than simply typing the time. What am I missing here?
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So the general solution here seems to be:
The 64-bit version of Notepad++ is pretty much useless for a lot of us (including myself.) Having a text editor be in 64-bit doesn’t help me much, there are no really killer new features that have been added, and I can emulate a 32-bit program pretty easily on my system.
I’m not sure why anybody uses the 64-bit version, honestly. Just download and install the old 32-bit version - I’m on 7.5.9 myself, and it works fine.
I would be interested to hear if someone has some compelling argument for why 64-bit 7.6.6 is superior to 32-bit 7.5.9. I can’t see one.
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@Alan-Kilborn said:
is there a way to bind to a keycombo with that plugin?
You can record a macro while typing the formula (including the terminating
ENTERkey) and assign this macro to a keyboard shortcut afterwards. -
i’ve just seen that nppcalc is apparently also not available for x64, and can not serve as a date workaround replacement for textfx on npp x64.
is this correct ? -
You are right, I’ve completely missed the fact that the question of @amarand was about a x64 plugin. Sorry for that confusion.
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@dinkumoil said:
You can record a macro while typing the formula (including the terminating ENTER key) and assign this macro to a keyboard shortcut afterwards.
Ah…but then wouldn’t the original text of the “formula” stay as well? The whole NppCalc thing seems clunky, while in spirit it has some good ideas IMO…
nppcalc is apparently also not available for x64,
Yes, apparently another limiting factor.
I’m still thinking that Pythonscript, if people want to go to the trouble of installing it, offers the best and certainly the most customizable (as to time/date format) solution.
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@Jeff-Johnston said:
compelling argument for why 64-bit 7.6.6 is superior to 32-bit 7.5.9
I don’t think there is anything compelling… 64-bit is the future, though…so there’s that.
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@Alan-Kilborn said:
but then wouldn’t the original text of the “formula” stay as well?
Yes it would, as I already wrote in my first NppCalc posting.
The whole NppCalc thing seems clunky, while in spirit it has some good ideas
I agree, it is somewhat like a half-baked Excel. But one can open a document in Npp and use it like some kind of dynamic notebook and as such NppCalc can be useful.
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@Jeff-Johnston said:
compelling argument for why 64-bit 7.6.6 is superior
- Though 64-bit still has an unreasonably-small file-size limit due to the old Scintilla component, you can still open larger files with Notepad++ 64-bit than with 32-bit
- When you do File > Open Containing Folder… > Explorer / cmd, 32-bit Notepad++ will open the 32-bit explorer or cmd.exe window
- When running any 32-bit application (like 32-bit Notepad++) in a 64-bit Windows OS, Windows will lie to you: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/winprog64/file-system-redirector
- In NPP32 (or cmd.exe 32, or explorer.exe 32, or …), if you try to open a file in
%windir%\system32(which is where the 64bit windows system files go), it will actually open%windir%\syswow64, but will tell you that it’s system32. - in NPP32, in order to edit a file that’s really in the 64bit system directory, you have to use the
%windir%\sysnativealias
- In NPP32 (or cmd.exe 32, or explorer.exe 32, or …), if you try to open a file in
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Really the only big thing in TextFX that I miss a whole lot in Notepad ++ 64 is TextFX > Tools > Sort, which has a lot of useful options (case-sensitive, case-insensitive) and allows you to sort UNIQUE to remove duplicates. Is there anything current that allows that?
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Notepad++ itself has some sorting options (though “case” criterion isn’t there) in the Edit menu’s Line Operations area. A recent (7.6.x) Notepad++ has a Remove Consecutive Duplicate Lines command, which could be used after a sort, to replicate the TextFX “unique sort” feature you described.
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Not very compelling. :)
When you do File > Open Containing Folder… > Explorer / cmd, 32-bit Notepad++ will open the 32-bit explorer or cmd.exe window
I’m not sure about that one…doesn’t 64-bit Notepad++ open a 64-bit explorer or cmd window?
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@Alan-Kilborn said:
I’m not sure about that one…doesn’t 64-bit Notepad++ open a 64-bit explorer or cmd window?
Yes. And I never see a good reason for not using 64-bit explorer or cmd window. And when 32-bit notepad++ opens a 32-bit explorer or cmd, then explorer/cmd are back to lying to me (#3). I really don’t like that Windows lies to me.
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@PeterJones said:
I really don’t like that Windows lies to me.
Yeah. Do you really edit text files in those areas all that often though?
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@Alan-Kilborn said:
all that often
Not really, no. It’s the principle of the thing. ;-)
My list above, plus your “64-bit is the future”, was compelling enough for me to make the switch to 64-bit some time back. And it’s compelling enough to show 64-bit is superior… but for some users (especially those who use the special features of TextFX, or of other not-yet-converted plugins), there are still good reasons for staying on 32-bit. Each user needs to weigh the pros and cons, and make an informed decision.
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@Alan-Kilborn - That’s very nice, thanks! In that case I think I’ll use 64-bit Notepad++.
