[New Plugin] ExtSettings

dinkumoil

I did some testing using NppExec plugin to send the Scintilla events. The only differences between SC_TECHNOLOGY_DEFAULT (value 0) and the other technology modes are:

Characters get slightly wider and higher
It is possible to use SCI_INDICSETSTYLE 29 INDIC_GRADIENT and SCI_INDICSETSTYLE 29 INDIC_GRADIENTCENTRE to set search match highlighting to these gradient modes.

I even don’t see the slight difference in font weight between SC_TECHNOLOGY_DEFAULT and the other modes that I can see in your first set of screen shots above. I use Source Code Pro font.

All in all, I have to thoroughly think about whether it’s worth to include this setting in my plugin.

Ekopalypse

@dinkumoil

just to make it clear - it is all up to you to decide what you want to include into
your plugin and what you don’t want, I appreciate EVERY decision.
I come across of those settings just because of testing my scintilla wrapper
and see that there is something new or old, and remember that I’m actually
using it, and thinking it might fit into your plugin but as said,
those are ALWAYS just proposals.

tomasz1986

@dinkumoil said in [New Plugin] ExtSettings:

I even don’t see the slight difference in font weight between SC_TECHNOLOGY_DEFAULT and the other modes that I can see in your first set of screen shots above. I use Source Code Pro font.

All in all, I have to thoroughly think about whether it’s worth to include this setting in my plugin.

Just for the record, font rendering is very heavily dependent both on the operating system, the monitor, the font, the user himself, and possibly many other variables. Just as an example, the exact same font, with the same type of rendering, may still look very different depending on the screen (e.g. CRT vs LCD, or TN vs IPS vs VN, etc.) which is being used.

Also, some people are simply more susceptible and notice even slight differences like that much more easily. I have personally experimented with different font rendering in Windows, and find the old GDI rendering much better for my eyes, while DirectWrite rendered text looks fuzzy to the point that I start to feel dizzy when trying to read it for a longer period of time. But again, this is just my case, and the situation may be totally reverse for someone else.

guy038

Hi, @dinkumoil, and All,

Thank you very much, @dinkumoil, for this very useful plugin, with numerous options ;-))

Some points concerning the options ( From top to bottom and from left to right ! ) :

Backspace unindents : Seems very useful when coding, but more accessory with simple text
Indentation guide lines : I could not be able to see the difference between the Python style and Standard style options !
White space style : IMO, the term Everywhere visible would be more appropriate than Always visible, in the drop-down list. But , don’t bother about this !
White space size : To my mind, only sizes from 2 to 4 seem practically exploitable ! Of course, a click on the Show All Characters icon, in the Toolbar or selection of the options View > Show Symbol > Show White Space and TAB or View > Show Symbol > Show All Characters resets the size of the space symbol to the default 2 value
Upper line spacing and Lower line spacing : I did some tests with the line below, containing some underscore characters ( \x5f ), followed with some macron characters ( \xaf )


____________________¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

And it happened that, with the Courier New default font :

- Any size < -2, for Upper line spacing, does not display the macron characters
- Any size < -1, for Lower line spacing, does not display the underscore characters. However, depending of the zoom factor, even the -1 value may not display the _.

Conclusion : the suitable values, whatever the zoom factor, seem to be :

- Any value >= -2 for upper line spacing
- Any value >= 0 for upper line spacing
Now, the vertical lines new feature is really interesting ;-)) Of course, if, after defining some of them, with your plugin, you enable the Vertical Edge Settings in Settings > Preferences... > Editing or switch from option Line Mode to Background mode or vice-versa, it deletes all the previous vertical lines defined and displays the classical vertical edge line !
Wrap mode : Again, I did not see any difference between the options Word boundaries and Whitespace characters, of the drop-down list :-(
Line number margin : Didn’t know this particularity. Nice !
Wrapping markers close to text may interest some people. I, personally, prefer that these marks remain at each extremity of the window, for better readability !
To be analog to the Notepad++ description, may be the Mark Highlighting title of the section should be renamed Smart Highlighting
- Now, the numerous styles proposed to show the Smart Highlighting are valuable. I particularly like the 3 styles
  Straight box, Underlined (2px, inset) and Colorized text , rather visible and easily identifiable from other N++ highlighting styles !
- However, note that if you’ve changed the color of the Smart Highlighting, as soon as you switch for an other opened document, and switch back, immediately, to your initial document, any smart Highlighting zones is colored with the default green color :-(( I don’t even know, if this issue could be easily coded ?
- Strangely, if you disable and re-enable the Smart Highlighting in Settings > Preferences... > Highlighting, while not changing current document, does keep the modified color of the Smart Highlighting !
Cursor beyond line endings : For adepts of the Virtual Space feature. Can be interesting if you need to easily write very far from current line ending !
Wrap cursor at line start : Seemingly, when your file contains lines of very different length and some very long lines, this feature prevents you from moving to the end of the previous line. However, why not use, instead, the Down and Up arrows keys to navigate, while keeping the same columns visible ? Just tell me what I miss, here !
Select full line : Again, I don’t see an immediate advantage to that feature !
Selection alpha : I spent more than a month to study color, in many aspects and how calculate the blending of two colors, involving the α factor, as well as some practical results relative to our beloved editor ! Refer below :

https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/post/47895

So, if we consider, in RGB mode :

- The default current text foreground color (0,0,0)
- The default current text background (255,255,255)
- The default selection color (192,192,192)
- The default current line background color (232,232,255)

The alpha option allows you to change, both, the color of background and foreground ( text ) of the resulting selection, according to the two general formulas :

RESULTING Selection Background = α x SELECTION Background + ( 1 - α ) x CURRENT Background    with α in range [0,1]

RESULTING Selection Foreground = α x SELECTION Foreground + ( 1 - α ) x CURRENT Foreground    with α in range [0,1]

In other words, with α, transposed in range [0-255], we get :

Resulting Bg Red    =  ( α x 192 + ( 255 - α ) x 255 ) / 255    for part of selection NOT in CURRENT line

Resulting Bg Green  =  ( α x 192 + ( 255 - α ) x 255 ) / 255    for part of selection NOT in CURRENT line

Resulting Bg Blue   =  ( α x 192 + ( 255 - α ) x 255 ) / 255    for part of selection NOT in CURRENT line


Resulting Bg Red    =  ( α x 192 + ( 255 - α ) x 232 ) / 255    for part of selection in CURRENT line

Resulting Bg Green  =  ( α x 192 + ( 255 - α ) x 232 ) / 255    for part of selection in CURRENT line

Resulting Bg Blue   =  ( α x 192 + ( 255 - α ) x 255 ) / 255    for part of selection in CURRENT line


And :

Resulting Fg Red    =  ( α x 192 + ( 255 - α ) x 0 ) / 255   =   α x 192 / 255    WHATEVER the selection location

Resulting Fg Green  =  ( α x 192 + ( 255 - α ) x 0 ) / 255   =   α x 192 / 255    WHATEVER the selection location

Resulting Fg Blue   =  ( α x 192 + ( 255 - α ) x 0 ) / 255   =   α x 192 / 255    WHATEVER the selection location

- As α value increases towards 255, the gray colors of selected text and the background converge, reducing contrast between them and, when α = 255, color of Fg = color of Bg = (192,192,192), leading to an invisible selected text !!
- On the contrary, as α value decreases towards 0, the selection background becomes more and more transparent and, when α = 0, color of Fg = (0,0,0) and color of Bg = (255,255,255), except for the part within current line where color of Bg = (232,232,255)
- So, in the end, only values between 120 and 150 and, of course, 256 seem interesting ! Value 130 seems a good compromise !
The Multi Paste and Convert EOL on paste seems rather useful and I see very few interest in unchecking them :-))
To conclude, although I can’t test printing, presently, the Magnification feature is surely valuable, as I don’t see anything about it, in the Settings > Preferences... > Print panel !

Now, @Dinkumoil, more generally :

I think that the Close button should be selected, by default, in order to close while hitting the Enter key . May be, the possibility to close, while hitting the ESC key would be nice, too !
Could you give the user the opportunity to get multiple configurations ? For instance, regarding the vertical lines, we could have a configuration 1 with some vertical lines, a configuration 2 with other vertical lines starting at other columns and having other colors, and so on…

Probably, your .ini file could memorize ( Be sensible ! ) up to 5 completely different configurations. Just my idea ! Of course, your new window would give us the choice of the configuration to activate ;-))

Could you consider adding the SCI_SETCARETSTICKY feature ( 2458 ). Do you know it ?
- Let’s suppose the caret is at column c, line n, in current N++ window
- Then, you type in some text
- Now, hitting the Down / Up arrow, the caret is automatically located line n+1 / n-1, at the same column c
- You may decide, afterwards, of an other location column c1 and/or in an other line n1, with either a mouse click or a keyboard action
- Type in, again, some chars, from column c1
- As soon as you use the Down / Up arrow, the caret is moved on next / previous line, at the same c1 column

Note the 3 possibilities : 0 => Disabled, 1 => Always enabled and 2 Enabled only after typing Tab and Space chars

Of course, this feature is useful only when inserting different text, on the consecutive lines reached. Indeed, when text, to be inserted, is identical throughout all lines, the built-in column mode is more intuitive ;-))

More anecdotal, you could, also, consider the SCI_SETMARGINLEFT ( 2155 ) and SCI_SETMARGINRIGHT ( 2157 ) settings, which set the width of the blank margin, on both sides of text, in pixels ?

As always, just propositions ! Do as you like ;-))

Best Regards,

guy038

dinkumoil

@guy038

Thank you for your detailed response and your suggestions.

In general I can say that many of the settings depend heavily on personal taste, the use case (e.g. simple text editing or coding), the used theme, the used font and its size, and many other factors which don’t come to my mind at the moment. Whether somebody wants to use a certain setting or whether he finds it useful or not depends on all these factors. I’m only the guy who makes these settings accessible to the normal user who doesn’t want to deal with scripting plugins and sending Scintilla events to configure them, though they are not available through the Notepad++ user interface.

I could not be able to see the difference between the Python style and Standard style options !

To see the differences in Python and C++ code have a look at >>> these comments <<< where I talked about the different styles with DonHo.

the vertical lines new feature is really interesting. … if, after defining some of them, with your plugin, you enable the Vertical Edge Settings in Settings > Preferences... > Editing or switch from option Line Mode to Background mode or vice-versa, it deletes all the previous vertical lines defined and displays the classical vertical edge line !

The single vertical line (provided natively by Notepad++) and the multiple vertical lines features are exclusive in Scintilla, you can only activate one of them. There is nothing I can do about that.

Wrap mode : Again, I did not see any difference between the options Word boundaries and Whitespace characters, of the drop-down list :-(

The differences are mostly remarkable when watching source code, e.g. in C or C++:

Wrap mode “At word boundaries”:

Wrap mode “At spaces”:

may be the Mark Highlighting title of the section should be renamed Smart Highlighting

That’s a good point, I’ll put it on my list.

if you’ve changed the color of the Smart Highlighting, as soon as you switch for an other opened document, and switch back, immediately, to your initial document, any smart Highlighting zones is colored with the default green color

Seems like setting the smart highlighting color has to be done whenever a tab has been activated. I will put it on my list.

Strangely, if you disable and re-enable the Smart Highlighting in Settings > Preferences... > Highlighting, while not changing current document, does keep the modified color of the Smart Highlighting !

Nothing strange, toggling the smart highlighting feature and setting its color are two different Scintilla commands.

Wrap cursor at line start … Just tell me what I miss, here !

You miss nothing, its a question of personal taste. I’m a Delphi developer, thus I mostly use the Delphi IDE for coding. There I’m used to have no cursor wrapping at line start.

Selection alpha …

Thank you for providing these formulas, they could become handy for me at some time. But again, if and how someone uses this setting is up to him. It’s like always when telling a computer what to do: Garbage in -> Garbage out. I’m not a friend of the approach to fight human dumbness by technology, provided a certain setting can not cause serious damage or injuries.

I think that the Close button should be selected, by default, in order to close while hitting the Enter key . May be, the possibility to close, while hitting the ESC key would be nice, too !

and

Could you give the user the opportunity to get multiple configurations ?

I will think about it.

Could you consider adding the SCI_SETCARETSTICKY feature

I didn’t know that feature, but it could be useful. I will put it on my list.

More anecdotal, you could, also, consider the SCI_SETMARGINLEFT… and SCI_SETMARGINRIGHT … settings

I already thought about it but considered it to be “anecdotal” as well. But since Select full line is anecdotal too, I will think about including SCI_SETMARGINLEFT and SCI_SETMARGINRIGHT - equal rights for all anecdotal settings. ;-)

guy038

Hi, @dinkumoil, and All,

Many thanks for your ( long !) comments, examples and for considering some of my requests !

So, ok, the difference between Wrap mode options Word boundaries and Whitespace characters are rather particular and relative to languages !

Regarding the Indentation guide style, I’m, now, able to easily see the differences between the 3 styles : Real indentation, Python style or Standard style

I tested with the very small piece of C code :

	while (1) {



		if (result == None)
			test = 'OK'
			break;



		result = 2
	}

and an analog Python code :

    while 1:



        if result = None:
            test = 'OK'
            break



        result = 2

For both, there are 3 pure blank lines, before and after the if block

I assumed that default indentation is a tabulation char of size 4 and Python one is a 4 spaces string

Of course, @Dinkumoil, if I temporarily disable your plugin, by renaming the ..\Plugins\ExtSettings folder, we get the N++ default behavior, about Indentation guide lines ! That is to say :

Standard style, if current file is not a Python file
Python style, if current file is a Python file

So, may be, it would be worth to add, in your plugin, a Default option, for the Indentation guide lines feature, which would let N++ decide, by itself ! What is your feeling about it ?

This make me think of an other improvement. If, you ready to add multiple configurations, you could consider a default one, which leave all the N++ options unchanged. That is to say, with the values :

Backspace unindents : No
Folding lines : Yes
Indentation guide lines : Default ( New option )
White space style : Invisible
White space size : 2
Upper line spacing : 0
Lower line spacing : 0
Vertical Lines : None
Wrap mode : No line wrapping
End of Subline : Yes
Start of Subline : No
Line number margin : No
Subline end near text : No
Subline start near text : No
Highlighting style : Filled rounded box
Color : Green
Filling alpha : 100
Outline alpha : 50
Cursor beyond line endings : No
Wrap cursor at line start : Yes
Select full line : No
Selection alpha : 256
Multi Paste : Yes
Convert EOL on paste : Yes
Magnification : 0

Cheers,

guy038

dinkumoil

@guy038 said in [New Plugin] ExtSettings:

So, may be, it would be worth to add, in your plugin, a Default option, for the Indentation guide lines feature, which would let N++ decide, by itself !

I think about to remove the whole indentation guide line feature from my plugin. As you already noticed, Notepad++ now (since v7.8) switches to Python style by itself when it detects that the current active tab contains a Python code file and it switches to Standard style when it detects a non-Python file. Since this Scintilla setting has global scope, Notepad++ does this decision at every tab switch. I figured out that it does that even when changing the theme. So my plugin virtually has “to fight” against the build-in Notepad++ logic and, like when changing the theme, there are cicumstances it “looses” that fight. Since I don’t like non-robust features and I don’t want to fiddle around in Notepad++ too much, it’s likely to be the best to remove that feature.

you could consider a default one, which leave all the N++ options unchanged.

I think that’s not a good idea because the defaults of Notepad++ could change over time, thus I would have to synchronize my plugin with the changes in Notepad++. If a user wants a default configuration he only has to delete the settings file.

Charles Bogel

First, thank you for your work on this plugin, I’ve found it very useful!

I would like to report two small issues. The first is with adding vertical lines.
Expected Behavior: I enter a column, I click “Add”, I get a new vertical line in that list in the bottom left.
Actual Behavior: I enter a column, I click “Add”, and I get no response. I need to select a color first, even though the color picker implies that it’s defaulting to black.

This behavior led me to believe your plugin was bugged until I looked into it more. Making this a bit more user-friendly by actually having it default to black (or grey if you’re worried about people using dark themes) would help.

The second issue. With the Extended Settings menu open, when I alt-tab out of Notepad++, I cannot alt-tab back in.
Expected Behavior: Open ExtSetting Menu. Alt-tab onto a window that covers Notepad++. Alt-tab back to Notepad++. Notepad++ should be the top-level window graphically and in the alt-tab menu.
Actual Behavior. Open ExtSetting Menu. Alt-tab onto a window that covers Notepad++. Alt-tab back to Notepad++. Notepad++ is not the top-level window graphically, but IS the top-level window in the alt-tab menu.

dinkumoil

@Charles-Bogel

Thank you for your issue reports. You are absolutely right with both of them. Unfortunately I’m very busy in my job for the next months. So, don’t expect a short-time fix, sorry.

cmeriaux

@dinkumoil
Thanks for this nice plugin.
Is it possible to add on the UI a button to apply the configuration ?

Thanks

dinkumoil

@cmeriaux

You mean applying the settings without closing the dialog? I already thought about it. I agree it would be useful.

But as I said, currently I’m so busy in my job that I’m happy to be off-keyboard late in the evenings and even at the weekends.

cmeriaux

@dinkumoil yes that’s it. You perfectly got my point ;-)

Are you on github ? Any chance that someone else can contribute ?

dinkumoil

@cmeriaux

The plugin is hosted at SoureForge in an SVN repository and is written with Delphi XE2. If you have an SourceForge account we can talk about collaboration. Another possibility would be to exchange *.patch files.

cmeriaux

@dinkumoil said in [New Plugin] ExtSettings:

Delphi XE2

It would have been nice but I don’t know anything in Delphi XE2
sorry

A Former User

This post is deleted!

Jeb Dude

@dinkumoil

In Notepad++ v7.9.1 32-bit the settings are not being saved.

Any chance of an update?

dinkumoil

@Jeb-Dude

In Notepad++ v7.9.1 32-bit the settings are not being saved.

I’m not able to reproduce that with a portable v7.9.1 32 bit.

Any chance of an update?

It’s in the pipeline, but it may still take a while.

PeterJones

@dinkumoil ,

I just had the strangest bug, that appears to be in (or at least affected) ExtSettings v1.2.1. The ExtSettings.ini file got corrupted to be all NULL bytes! I didn’t have a Notepad++ crash, so I’m not sure what could have caused that. And it seemed to happen in the middle of a Notepad++ editing session.

Backstory and debug: I woke my computer this morning, and was working in a web editor in my browser.
I think I had done selecting earlier this morning without difficulty, but I’m not 100% sure. But this time, when I went to copy some text from Notepad++ to my browser, and the selection highlighting was gone in Notepad++. I checked Style Configurator, which showed proper Selected text colour. Restarting Notepad++ didn’t fix it; rebooting didn’t fix it; I verified other apps still highlighted properly. Running a fresh portable unzip of Notepad++ didn’t have the problem – so I knew it was something specific to my normal instance of Notepad++. I temporarily renamed all my normal Notepad++ config files and restarted, to make sure that stylers.xml or something else hadn’t been corrupted, but still no highlighting. Disabled all my plugins, and the problem went away. Restored my normal config files with plugins disabled, and highlighting still worked. Enabled all the plugins and the problem returned, so confirmed it was a plugin problem of some sort. Enabling one at a time narrowed it down to highlighting stopped working when ExtSettings was loaded. I renamed ExtSettings.ini and restarted with ExtSettings enabled, and everything worked normally. I changed a setting in there (to force it to save a new ExtSettings.ini) and restarted, and it was still working. When I compared the renamed file to the new ini, I saw that the old/renamed version was 153 bytes of NULL, instead of 153 bytes of ini text.

So it sounds similar to the old Notepad++ NULL bug, but it’s with the ExtSettings.ini file. I haven’t ever manually edited the ExtSettings.ini file directly in Notepad++, so I don’t think it was a problem with the editor directly. And I hadn’t recently made any changes to the ExtSettings through the plugin GUI, so I am not sure why it would have been trying to write/edit the INI yesterday or today. There has not been a recent crash of my OS or of Notepad++. I know that yesterday, I wasn’t having any difficulty selecting text, so the NULL corruption either happened while just in the course of normal Notepad++ editing this morning, or it happened when my computer went to sleep last night and/or when it woke up this morning. So, I unfortunately don’t have a repeatable circumstance for you to try to replicate the bug. (I know, I hate it when others report bugs without a repeatable circumstance.)

@dinkumoil , When you create/open/write the INI file, are you using ‘CreateFile’ or similar API calls? If so, are you using the FILE_FLAG_WRITE_THROUGH to make sure it writes right away, rather than caching first? If you need help, I know that @pnedev is an expert on that now. :-)

Notepad++ v7.9.2   (64-bit)
Build time : Dec 31 2020 - 04:01:34
Path : C:\usr\local\apps\notepad++\notepad++.exe
Admin mode : OFF
Local Conf mode : ON
OS Name : Windows 10 Enterprise (64-bit) 
OS Version : 1903
OS Build : 18362.1256
Current ANSI codepage : 1252
Plugins : ComparePlugin.dll ExtSettings.dll HexEditor.dll LuaScript.dll MarkdownViewerPlusPlus.dll mimeTools.dll NppConsole.dll NppConverter.dll NppEditorConfig.dll NppExec.dll NppExport.dll NppFTP.dll NppUISpy.dll PreviewHTML.dll PythonScript.dll QuickText.dll TagLEET.dll XMLTools.dll

dinkumoil

@PeterJones

For writing the settings file I use a Delphi class that encapsulates the handling of INI files. AFAIK this class uses some Windows APIs for INI files (e.g. GetPrivateProfileString). Thus I don’t know if buffered write comes into play when the file is saved.

The plugin’s INI file is written when its dialog is closed (the dialog’s window is destroyd as well in this moment). That means the last change of this file happened when you used the plugin for the last time. Thus, I have no clue what could have caused NUL-ing the INI file - especially as you wrote

I hadn’t recently made any changes to the ExtSettings through the plugin GUI, so I am not sure why it would have been trying to write/edit the INI yesterday or today.

Sorry, I have no idea how this could have happend and how to reproduce this incident.

astewart77

I have an apparent compatibility problem with Notepad++ V8 and ExtSettings 1.2.1. The Vertical Lines settings are greyed out and the list is empty

even though my ExtSettings.ini

[Header]
Version=1.0
[Settings]
BackspaceUnindents=0
FoldingLines=0
IndentationGuideStyle=0
WhiteSpaceStyle=0
WhiteSpaceSize=4
UpperLineSpacing=-2
LowerLineSpacing=-1
LineWrappingMode=0
LineWrappingMarkerType=$00000003
LineWrappingMarkerLocation=$00000003
MatchHighlightingStyle=6
MatchHighlightingColor=$0000FF00
MatchHighlightingFillAlpha=100
MatchHighlightingOutlineAlpha=255
CursorBeyondLineEndings=0
WrapCursorAtLineStart=0
SelectFullLine=0
SelectionAlpha=256
MultiPaste=1
ConvertEolOnPaste=1
PrintingMagnification=-1
VerticalLine0=100;$00FFFF00
VerticalLine1=130;$00808080

still has entries set up with Notepad++ 7.9.5.

I also have 100 130 set in n++ own preferences, but when n++ starts, the lines are gone. If I re-enter 100 130 in preferences, they re-appear. If I open and close the ExtSettings dialog, they are gone again.

If I enter just 100 in preferences WITHOUT background mode and open/close ExtSettings dialog, it changes from a line to background mode highlighting at 100.

All was well in 7.9.5…