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    Announcing Perl-based automation of Notepad++

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Notepad++ & Plugin Development
    perlautomation
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    • PeterJonesP
      PeterJones
      last edited by

      @Michael-Vincent,

      I had never really gotten into REPL – never found one that I liked enough to frequently use – but I think App::PerlShell might be the one that starts me down that road, especially with this solution for NppConsole to embed the REPL in Notepad++. (If I ever get around to the v2.0 features – specifically, writing a wrapper Notepad++ plugin and thus enabling the notifications – I will probably try to use a combination of NppConsole as the starting code and @Ekopalypse’s experiments with embedding perl in a plugin, and include App::PerlShell as the default REPL for the plugin. That said, I have to get from early versions into a sold v1.0 before I work on v2.0 feastures. :-) )

      Speaking of working toward v1.0: I am working on documenting the hashes that are used for holding the message name/value pairs, and the argument name/value pairs (equivalent to PythonScript’s enum documentation). But I’m wondering if I should change from having just a couple hashes with messages and message-arguments intertwined (%nppm, %nppidm, and %scimsg) into having a different named hash for the messages compared to the arguments (pythonscript uses a separate enum/class for each type of argument). Or maybe go the other direction, and have a big hash-of-hashes like %enum = ( NPPMSG => { … } , SCINTILLAMSG => { … } , MENUCMD => { FILE_CLOSE => …, …}, … ), so if you were going for the FILE_CLOSE, it would be $enum{MENUCMD}{FILE_CLOSE}.

      I had originally kept them as just those three hashes, because that was easy from my convert-.h-to-hash method. But since I’m moving over to manual .pm for the messages/arguments, to allow for easier POD documentation of those hashes, now seems like a good time to make changes to the structure, if it makes sense.

      So, if it were up to you(*), would you prefer just the enums as they are, split into multiple separate hash variables, or combined into one mega hash-of-hashs? Or should I just do all three (I could easily build the existing-three out of individual variables, and the mega hash-of-hashes could actually just embed the individual variables.

      *: “up to you”, where “you” is defined as @Michael-Vincent , or anyone else who is likely to use Win32::Mechanize::NotepadPlusPlus as more than a one-or-two-time curiosity. :-)

      Michael VincentM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • Michael VincentM
        Michael Vincent @PeterJones
        last edited by

        @PeterJones said in Announcing Perl-based automation of Notepad++:

        So, if it were up to you(*)

        Let me give it think. My first instinct is to keep them separate instead of a single big hash-of-hash. To me that just makes more sense grouping N++, messages and Scintilla with their like instead of mixing.

        More on App::PerlShell - if you read the POD, there are other REPL’s for Perl that excel at certain aspects of REPL - one duplicates Python look and feel, another uses PPI for correct Perl parsing at the expense of many dependencies, etc. I wanted one that behaved more like a shell (e.g., bash, Powershell) but took Perl commands and none did that. That said, my implementation is probably pretty poor, rough around the edges and makes a multitude of assumptions. All this to say, happy for you to use it, that’s what it’s there for … but “production ready” it may not be like say Devel::REPL.

        Cheers.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • PeterJonesP
          PeterJones
          last edited by

          v0.002 released to CPAN

          • Reorganize the hash variables for easier and clearer use going forward (#13)
          • editor->getLine() on an empty line will now correctly return an empty string, not “\0” (fixed #14)
          • update API for getNumberOpenFiles to correctly use the constants (#17)
          • add notepad->getNppVar() for accessing the “user variables”, like FULL_CURRENT_PATH and CURRENT_WORD (#19)
          • improve documentation internal links (#20)
          • make the editor->hwnd() a public method (instead of using editor()->{_hwnd})
          • make the notepad->hwnd() a public method (instead of using notepad()->{_hwnd})
          • add helper editor->getEOLString(): convert EOL Mode integer to a string
          • editor->getFileEndPosition(): gives the end position of the whole document
          • improve test coverage: add encoding names and getLanguageName coverage to npp-buffer.t
          • examples/ folder: adding more example usages
          • improve Editor documentation on ->findText and some other methods, and clean up set/get pairs, so they share the same information
          • improve Notepad documentation, especially fixing the link for menuCmdID source file
          PeterJonesP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
          • PeterJonesP
            PeterJones @PeterJones
            last edited by

            v0.003 released to CPAN

            The user-centric changes that were made:

            • some of the Scintilla v4.2.0 messages that were implemented in Notepad++ v7.8 were missing, so add them (#29: thanks @Michael-Vincent for pointing this out!)
            • runPluginsCommand() = fixed command cache feature and improved test (#30)
            • added version notes, to say which messages and “enums” (hashes/keys) require NPP v7.8 (because these are the Scintilla v4.2.0 updates)

            I keep trying to improve this, and make it more usable. Suggestions and bug reports welcome.

            Michael VincentM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
            • Michael VincentM
              Michael Vincent @PeterJones
              last edited by

              @PeterJones

              Saw your N++ commit updating Perl keywords and the autocomplete API. BRAVO!!! I had an updated perl.xml autocomplete, but yours is way more complete and I’ve started using it this morning to test.

              Thanks for keeping Perl updated in N++!!

              Cheers.

              PeterJonesP 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • PeterJonesP
                PeterJones @Michael Vincent
                last edited by

                This post is deleted!
                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • PeterJonesP
                  PeterJones @Michael Vincent
                  last edited by

                  @Michael-Vincent,

                  I was trying to figure out if I had a place to reply with that link, or whether I’d have to create a new post. I guess here was as good a place as any. Since Don accepted the PR, it should be in the next official release! (This is my first contribution to the main Notepad++, rather than just documentation or UDL, so I’m happy about that!)

                  I basically wrote a regex to trim out just the functions (=item) and the brief summary line (=for Pod::Functions) from perlfunc.pod, then used another few regex to merge those together into the auto-complete format; that way, I am hopeful I didn’t miss any functions from v5.30.

                  Michael VincentM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Michael VincentM
                    Michael Vincent @PeterJones
                    last edited by

                    @PeterJones said in Announcing Perl-based automation of Notepad++:

                    I basically wrote a regex

                    I did mine by hand. Happy to throw that away for your more complete and automated creation solution. I’ll be grabbing 7.8.7 when officially released.

                    Cheers.

                    PeterJonesP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • PeterJonesP
                      PeterJones @Michael Vincent
                      last edited by

                      v0.005 released to CPAN

                      The user-centric changes that were made:

                      • replace %ENCODINGKEY with %BUFFERENCODING, because the old hash had wrong values that didn’t match getEncoding()'s return values (#50)
                      • add setEncoding() command to call NPPM_SETBUFFERENCODING as the logical pair to getEncoding() (#51)

                      I had apparently missed announcing v0.004 and bugfix 0.004001, so for historical purposes, quoting from my CHANGES file

                      v0.004001 2020-Jun-20

                      • fix bug in notepad->prompt(), which only used two of the three
                        arguments, in wrong order (#47); test suite verifies default
                        values for title and default when they aren’t used
                      • added new examples/pasteSpecial.pl to show how to paste a
                        clipboard entry other than CF_TEXT into Notepad++

                      v0.004 2020-Jun-04

                      • fix bug in propertyNames() which deleted final char (#45)
                      • implemented helper methods: forEachLine, deleteLine, replaceWholeLine,
                        replaceLine, flash, getWord, getCurrentWord, getUserLineSelection,
                        getUserCharSelection (#15)
                      • make setTarget an alias of setTargetRange, and write an alias of
                        addText, for PythonScript compatibility (#15)
                      • implemented new auto-wrapper to get searchInTarget and similar calls
                        to work right (#42)
                      • fixed replaceTarget() and replaceTargetRE() replacing target with the
                        empty string (#41)
                      • fixed length bug in getTargetText() (#40)
                      • fixed bug in editor->setText(‘’) which had empty strings
                        cause crash (#39)
                      PeterJonesP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • PeterJonesP
                        PeterJones @PeterJones
                        last edited by

                        v0.007 released to CPAN

                        • Update Editor object for the Notepad++ 7.9.4 update to Scintilla v4.4.6

                        And, again, I had forgotten to announce last month:

                        v0.006 2021-Mar-06

                        • add getSettingsOnCloudPath() with test (#54)
                        • add getLineNumberWidthMode(), setLineNumberWidthMode(), and the %LINENUMWIDTH enumeration with test (#54 addendeum)
                        • test suite bug: with v7.9.1 and newer, replaceTargetText() changes the selection/getTargetText() value, so update the readback to be version agnostic (#57)
                        • documentation error: fox %NPPIDM description in Notepad.pm (#53)
                        • meta fix: make test suite pass on cpantesters smoke testers, even if smoke tester machine doesn’t have Notepad++, or has an old, incompatible version (#56)

                        v0.006001 2021-Mar-07

                        • meta fix: turn off the auto-download on smoke tester machines, because it was causing fails
                        PeterJonesP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                        • PeterJonesP
                          PeterJones @PeterJones
                          last edited by

                          v0.008 released to CPAN

                          • add notepad->showDocList, notepad->isDocListShown, and notepad->docListDisableColumn for working with the Document List panel (previously “Doc Switcher” panel)
                          • incorporate the new messages and menu commands thru v8.1.4 (#80)
                          • add notepad->getStatusBar(), which will get the text of one of the sections of the status bar (#65)
                          • add notepad->getDebugInfo(), which (for new-enough Notepad++) includes the ‘Command line’ entry from Debug Info (#74)
                          • add %WINMSGBOX for use with notepad->messageBox (#73)
                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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