UDL Line Comment Position Bug

Lycan Thrope

I know there has been mention about this elsewhere, and there might be a discussion on Github where I’m not a member, but here goes my findings and documentation if it is of any help.

After noticing one our users code snippets using the * as multiplication and the information was color highlighted commented out, I started investigating, found the conflict with the operators which I thought I had fixed earlier, but anyway, I moved two other comment smbols to the Comment 2 box using ((EOL)) for closing them, and clicked the Line Comment Position to Force at beginning of line. I then started making some tests on it and found the bug whereby when initially writing the comment, at first it showed properly, then after moving around a bit, it reverted to standard text styling.

I have to attribute this to the buffer being redrawn. I played a bit, got pictures and a better understanding of what might be going on here. This shows the text, just written behind an asterisk comment at beginning of line:

This shows it freshly typed, several cr/lf characters after without the screen redrawing. When I click the tab of another file and then come back, without it being saved, it shows this:

All working nicely like it’s supposed to. So I thought, oh it’s stil having a problem with the operators colliding, so earlier I figured out while looking at the text this should be a comment. I spent timea in the UDL Define your language dialog box clicking a change in the operator box color, font, whatever, and watched as the line comment changed back and forth with the change of the operator box.

So…this, if not a multifaceted issue isn’t a drop dead problem so far, but at this point, I’m documenting for anyone else having the issue letting them know about it. When I had this earlier, there didn’t seem to be a conflict when I was testing prior to my recent version of NPP:

Notepad++ v8.1.9.3 (64-bit)
Build time : Dec 6 2021 - 19:21:37
Path : C:\Program Files\Notepad++\notepad++.exe
Command Line : C:\Users\camilee\AppData\Local\Temp\calc_size.prg
Admin mode : OFF
Local Conf mode : OFF
Cloud Config : OFF
OS Name : Windows 10 Home (64-bit)
OS Version : 2009
OS Build : 19043.1415
Current ANSI codepage : 1252
Plugins : ComparePlugin.dll mimeTools.dll NppConverter.dll NppExport.dll NppXmlTreeviewPlugin.dll XMLTools.dll

I’m not saying it produced it, I’m just saying when developing the UDL earlier with former editions, the conflict didn’t show, but the Forced to begining of line wasn’t selected either. That it didn’t show in the multiplication when I was developing it earlier, is the puzzling part, but at best it seems that until I found this conflict, and then tried to address it, this bug had not shown itself.
I tried the different spaces, newlines…to see if that changed it and came to the conclusion that until the text is redrawn, it doesn’t display right, and MAY coincide with operators in languages that do dual duty as comment symbols and operator symbols.

For troubleshooting puposes, though, it seems to me to have shown as either one of both, buffer redraw issue and/or operator collision issue.

I hope this helps explain for anyone else find this issue that isn’t on github.

Lee