Notepad++ should support editorconfig out of the box

[rugk]

The most annoying problem I have with Notepad++ is when I quickly need to edit some files in a project and don’t want to open a full IDE (like Visual Studio) for that.

In contrast to Notepad++ Visual Studio supports editorconfig out-of-the-box, so I don’t get indentation or other problems when I quickly want to edit a file there.
Notepad++ does not. There you only have an plugin that you need to install afterwards.
Especially contributors to FLOSS projects may not have this installed and thus sent code contributions/PRs with wrong formatting.

So I’ve opened an issue to argue for full support/inclusion of editorconfig by default in Notepad++:
https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/6183

Let’s tackle these annoying style guide problems with wrong indentation etc! They can be solved so easily when you use editorconfig. Just everyone has to do so. Because editorconfig’s aim is consistency and only with widespread adoption of it, this goal can be reached.

[Trey Hunner]

I’m commenting here in response to @chcg on the GitHub issue this (#6183) because I don’t seem to have permission to comment on the GitHub repo anymore

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The EditorConfig plugin that was linked to is the official one that we (Hong Xu really) made years ago when we created EditorConfig.

Unfortunately the existence of the plugin isn’t adequate for my use case. I have anywhere from 2 to 20 hours with my students depending on the course and every minute we spend setting up their machines takes time away from our learning together.

Currently I send them a set of instructions to go to Settings -> Preferences -> Language and change the appropriate settings for Python to set their Python settings to 4 spaces.

If EditorConfig was built-in to Notepad++, I wouldn’t need to do this. I’m hoping that Notepad++ will add built-in support for EditorConfig, just as BBEdit, Komodo, Visual Studio, PyCharm, and other editors have done.

Alternatively, I’d love to see the tab/space default preference reconsidered, as it’d at least help students who do a fresh Notepad++ install. I’ve probably helped about 300 people change this preference on their machine over the last few years, so that they could work with most Python files.

[Alan Kilborn]

@Trey-Hunner said in Notepad++ should support editorconfig out of the box:

Alternatively, I’d love to see the tab/space default preference reconsidered

If you mean you’d like the default preference for Python to be 4 space-characters per tab (to be PEP8 compliant), I believe that fresh installs of relatively current Notepad++ versions do that. However, if one updates from an older Notepad++ where the default was tab characters, this will not happen.

[PeterJones]

I believe that fresh installs of relatively current Notepad++ versions do that

Confirmed:

• v7.8.1 64-bit zip has Settings > Preferences > Language > Python with Replace by space, 4
  
• v7.7 64-bit zip has same
• v7.6.6 64-bit zip did not have Replace by space as default

So, v7.7 or newer has that option as default.

[PeterJones]

@Trey-Hunner ,

BTW, in response to this comment:

if EditorConfig was built-in to Notepad++, I wouldn’t need to do this. I’m hoping that Notepad++ will add built-in support for EditorConfig, …

Some hints about the development philosophy of Notepad++:

• if it’s already implemented by a plugin, there is very little likelihood it will be implemented natively
• if it’s already configurable by the settings, then there’s little chance the default setting will be changed, because it just takes a change to the settings
  • if you don’t like the default settings bundled with Notepad++, you can make a new bundle with the settings configured the way you like it; this can either be done by
    1. starting with the zipfile distribution, and you edit the files in the zip, and you distribute the modified zip
    2. having the users install from normal installer, and you just distribute the updated settings files
  • furthermore, as I said a while ago, the default settings on this one did change, so the default settings now match what you want.

… built-in support for EditorConfig, just as BBEdit, Komodo, Visual Studio, PyCharm, and other editors have done.

FYI:

• bbedit: development paid for by buying the software
• komodo: has the financial power of ActiveState to pay for its development
• visual studio: has the financial power of Microsoft to pay for its development; not all versions are free
• PyCharm: that one looks like it might be truly free, developed by volunteers rather than paid employees

So you’ve listed one common example of a comparable software that’s free (freely developed, freely maintained, freely downloaded), that has implemented the EditorConfig natively. My response to that: “That happens”. Different OpenSource software in the same space (like different text editors) gets developed because different teams have different goals for the important feature sets, and whether those features should be implemented natively or by plugins.