Maintain Indent While Pasting Multiple Lines

Dennis Bareis

Hi,

If I have an indent and enter some text-1, follow it by ENTER and type Text-2, it will line up with the same indent.

I think it is a bug that NPP doesn’t do this if I paste in the same text, but perhaps there is a plugin or setting to fix this? Thanks for any help :-)

That is each newline is replace with newline followed by the original indent, and add any intending of the pasted lines to that initial indent (to maintain formatting).

Mark Olson

@Dennis-Bareis
Without some actual examples (photos or preferably text snippets) showing what you want and what you got, it will be difficult for anyone to help you.

mkupper

I’ll take a guess at what @Dennis-Bareis is referring to but don’t think there’s a solution. Let’s say I key in tab 1 enter 2 enter 3 enter then the 1-2-3 plus the cursor will be indented:

	1
	2
	3
	(cursor)

Let’s say I have 4\r\n5\r\n6\r\n in the copy/paste buffer and do a paste. I’ll see

	1
	2
	3
	4
5
6
(cursor)

Pasted end-of-line characters are not handled the same as the <enter> key in terms of the auto-indent logic. I have always shrugged and fixed the indentation on lines 5 and 6.

gstavi

@mkupper said in Maintain Indent While Pasting Multiple Lines:

I’ll take a guess at what @Dennis-Bareis is referring to but don’t think there’s a solution.

Pasting and typing is not the same thing.

The vast majority of users would want pasted multiline text to look exactly like it used to look in the source where is was copied from. Up to tab width which may be different.

Basically the requirement is for a paste-special variant which will be paste-as-type. However the original copied text will usually already have its own tab chars inside that will conflict with whatever indenting scheme is active (and if the original text is indented with spaces it would be even worse). This is the kind of feature that nobody is happy with. It is always just almost right and never exactly right. Any attempt to fix it for one user makes it worse for other users.

Fixing pasted text with block indenting is good enough.

Alan Kilborn

See:

Doing what the OP desires is (perhaps) deceptively non-trivial.
I’ve had a script doing it for a long time now for my personal use; I’ll clean it up for general consumption and post it here soon…

Dennis Bareis

@gstavi said in Maintain Indent While Pasting Multiple Lines:

@mkupper said in Maintain Indent While Pasting Multiple Lines:

I’ll take a guess at what @Dennis-Bareis is referring to but don’t think there’s a solution.

Pasting and typing is not the same thing.

The vast majority of users would want pasted multiline text to look exactly like it used to look in the source where is was copied from. Up to tab width which may be different.

Yes, exactly, npp doesn’t do that.

Basically the requirement is for a paste-special variant which will be paste-as-type. However the original copied text will usually already have its own tab chars inside that will conflict with whatever indenting scheme is active (and if

Imbedded tabs in the copied text is irrelevant for the initial indenting level EXCEPT where it starts a line.

What npp currently does now is a solution that no one is happy with, what I want is a solution that most people will be happy with.

Dennis Bareis

@mkupper said in Maintain Indent While Pasting Multiple Lines:

Pasted end-of-line characters are not handled the same as the <enter> key in terms of the auto-indent logic. I have always shrugged and fixed the indentation on lines 5 and 6.

Yes you have it correct, that is what npp should do. However if your pasted line 4 started with 2 tabs then those 2 tabs plus the initial indent would be used (plus the 2 extra tabs for line 4) so that the pasted text looks exactly like that copied except for any FURTHER indenting as defined by the initial line where the pasting occurs.

@Mark-Olson

If   Line 1 {
     line 2
     if   line 3
          line 4
     line 5
}

The above would look the same if pasted after lets say a tab or ‘x’ spaces:

          If   Line 1 {
               line 2
               if   line 3
                    line 4
               line 5
          }

Dennis Bareis

@Alan-Kilborn said in Maintain Indent While Pasting Multiple Lines:

See:

https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/15791

https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/5923

https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/796

None of those were answered well or even in my option understood. I even replied to the second one yesterday.

Doing what the OP desires is (perhaps) deceptively non-trivial.
I’ve had a script doing it for a long time now for my personal use; I’ll clean it up for general consumption and post it here soon…

The OP (me) has done exactly what I suggest in a program of mine (powerful preprocessor), It is deceptively simple. It is little more than a one line of code to replace newline with newline followed by the initial indent.

There is no language specific processing involved. I haven’t mentioned non-leading whitespace in the pasted text as I’m happy they remain exactly as they exist in the copied text. However that could be where my suggestion could be enhanced, perhaps controlled by a new npp option.

Alan Kilborn

@Dennis-Bareis said:

None of those were answered well or even in my option understood…

That was not the point of citing the links.
The point of citing them was to simply share (or bind together) common history on the topic at hand.

I haven’t mentioned non-leading whitespace in the pasted text as I’m happy they remain exactly as they exist…

So right there something that makes you happy would make many others unhappy if this was an applied solution. Sure, you go on to say how this could be “enhanced” but you don’t admit that this further complicates your easy solution.

It is deceptively simple. It is little more than a one line of code to replace newline with newline followed by the initial indent.

So… if you’re going to say something like that, put your code in a Notepad++ context and share it as a working solution.
In other words, put your money where your mouth is.

mkupper

In thinking about it, an option for “Paste as typing” could be interesting but let’s look at some edge cases.

Should autocomplete be honored? For example, sometimes I have accepted autocomplete by typing tab. But, what if autocomplete offers a drop down list. Should down arrows or drill-down letters be accepted?
Normally we press the <enter> key when typing. Copy/pasted text often has CR LF pairs for the end of line. CR used to be Ctrl+M and LF is Ctrl+J. Notepad++'s default shortcut mapper has Ctrl+M assigned to the Mark dialog box and Ctrl+J assigned to Edit / Line Operations / Join Lines. To be literal about this, we would expect Ctrl+M and Ctrl+J to be processed as marking and joining. Marking is useful as that would allow for a form of scripting much like that ghost typing feature that Notepad++ already has.

Thus, while Paste-as-typing seems interesting I can see how people’s expectations of what it should do will differ as I think @Dennis-Bareis wants Paste-as-cooked-typing while I just described Pasted-as-raw-or-ghost-typing. There may well be medium rare typing variants.

Are plugins allowed to inject keystrokes into the message stream? It may well be that the pasting variants can be handled by a plugin.

Alan Kilborn

@mkupper said :

an option for “Paste as typing” could be interesting

I think I see where you’re going with this, but we should probably ignore that direction (for now at least) because all indications from the OP are that that’s not what he’s interested in.

Are plugins allowed to inject keystrokes into the message stream?

Such a thing might be a “bad idea”.
:-)

It may well be that the pasting variants can be handled by a plugin.

A “pasting variant”…(what I would call a “paste special”)…can be supported as follows:

write plugin/script code to insert text at the caret position (doing whatever needs to be done to the text in the clipboard–or even the document itself–before actually inserting it into the doc)
provide the above to the user as a plugin menu first-level option, or as a script off of a scripting plugin’s first-level menu (thus in either case the execution is “shortcut mappable”)
user unassigns his default system “paste” shortcut from Ctrl+v and points Ctrl+v at the plugin command or script (or, as maybe I’d suggest: creates a special keycombo, e.g. Ctrl+Shift+v ??) to run this new functionality

The script that I’ve yet to have time to tidy up and post will follow this model…

gstavi

With respect to the original issue, @Dennis-Bareis presents a self-centered approach that does not acknowledge the fact that different users use the product differently. His issue is basically: “I am too lazy to do block indent after paste, fix it for me and to hell with everyone else”.

The cool thing with paste-as-type is that indent rules can be different for different users.
If 5 users paste-as-type the same text into their document they can get 5 different results based on the indent rules that they are currently using, It is kind of a selective code-beautification. And since it does not change normal pasting it does not break users experience.

I still don’t think that it is worth the effort. I still stand by my original claim that implementation details will always slightly miss expectations of some of the users. But there is some coolness to it.

Dennis Bareis

@gstavi What npp does now is the worst possible solution to the problem that helps no-one. My suggestion would suit most users who are often copying/pasting their own code.

Some languages have blocks that rely on indentation to work, so forgetting to indent a line is a critical mistake, not a relatively minor formatting issue. For those copying other people’s code the solution is still way better than what npp does, so I’d say this is a major improvement that eliminates major problems with npp auto indentation.

As for lazy, I assume you don’t use notepad because like me, you are too lazy to do all the formatting manually?

PeterJones

@Dennis-Bareis said in Maintain Indent While Pasting Multiple Lines:

worst possible solution to the problem that helps no-one

In your opinion.

If Notepad++ started behaving like you seem to want it when I paste into Notepad++, it would completely and totally and utterly disrupt my workflow having to fix what it messed up.

Alan Kilborn

@PeterJones said in Maintain Indent While Pasting Multiple Lines:

it would completely and totally and utterly disrupt my workflow having to fix what it messed up

I think you should hold judgement and wait on the script – I don’t know how saving some reformatting after a paste would disrupt a workflow, except making it smoother because you don’t have to do some steps… :-)

PeterJones

@Alan-Kilborn ,

Possibly. Since I don’t remember seeing the differently-indented first line from a multi line paste, perhaps I don’t ever paste multiple lines on an already-indented line, so maybe it wouldn’t affect me at all.

But since the status quo works for me, and with all the problems of recent “improvements”, I would be reluctant to see it implemented, with the fear that the implementation, even if not the basic idea, messes up my workflow.

As a script, it wouldn’t be a problem: if it helps me, great; if it does nothing or messes me up, I would just not use it. But as a feature of the app, if it messed me up, I’d have to lobby for a new zero byte config file, and I don’t want to have to do that.

Dennis Bareis

@Alan-Kilborn said in Maintain Indent While Pasting Multiple Lines:

@PeterJones said in Maintain Indent While Pasting Multiple Lines:

I think you should hold judgement and wait on the script – I don’t know how saving some reformatting after a paste would disrupt a workflow

I could be wrong but I took it as sarcasm 😀

Alan Kilborn

@Dennis-Bareis said in Maintain Indent While Pasting Multiple Lines:

I could be wrong but I took it as sarcasm

PJ is rarely sarcastic (as a moderator here he is somewhat required to be “even keel”). Usually, the farthest he’ll go is something like this:

…recent “improvements”…

StoopidoMan

I would really want this too
I posted about it on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/notepadplusplus/comments/1cp6r8x/apply_autoindent_on_multiline_paste_is_there_away/

I keep a lot of notes on Notepad++ and I use the Auto-indent feature a lot but it doesn’t work when you paste text.

for example:

How to do X?
                            1) just do the X
                            2) Blah Blah X

When I paste something from the clipboard I expect it to look like this:

How to do X?
                            1) just do the X
                            2) Blah Blah X 
                             Random copied text from internet line 1
                             Random copied text from internet line 2
                                    Random copied text from internet line 3
                                    Random copied text from internet line 4

but it get pasted like this:

How to do X?
                            1) just do the X
                            2) Blah Blah X 
                            Random copied text from internet line 1
Random copied text from internet line 2
       Random copied text from internet line 3
       Random copied text from internet line 4

So since I pressed enter and pasted the text, the first pasted line respect the auto-indent, but the subsequent lines does not.

I think this would be a nice optional feature to add on top of Notepad++ Auto-indent setting, as Follow auto-indent on paste

☐ Auto-indent 
       ☐ follow auto-indent on paste

guy038

Hello, @stoopidoman and All,

The example provided by @stoopidoman is not clearly explained ! I suppose that what he wants to say is :

I have this text in a new tab, after hitting the Enter key right after the X char and the trailing space, of the second line :

How to do X?
                            1) just do the X
                            2) Blah Blah X

So, the cursor is presently right before the 2) string, but on the third line, after some tabulation or space chars

Be aware that some plugins may change the default indent behaviour of Notepad++, like, for example, the Elastic Tabstops plugin. In this case, before doing the test, simply disable the plugin !

Now, I pasted the text , below, from Internet :

Random copied text from internet line 1
Random copied text from internet line 2
       Random copied text from internet line 3
       Random copied text from internet line 4

When I paste the above text in my new tab, I get the following text :

How to do X?
                            1) just do the X
                            2) Blah Blah X 
                            Random copied text from internet line 1
Random copied text from internet line 2
       Random copied text from internet line 3
       Random copied text from internet line 4

However, I would have expected this kind of text :

How to do X?
                            1) just do the X
                            2) Blah Blah X 
                            Random copied text from internet line 1
                            Random copied text from internet line 2
                                Random copied text from internet line 3
                                Random copied text from internet line 4

How to get this last behaviour with pasted text ?

Best Regards,

guy038

IMPORTANT POINT :

To respect the same displaying as the @stoopidoman’s one, I had to do the following operation, too :

Edit > Blank Operations > TAB to Space

Thus, all this story is a bit tricky !

Certainly, @stoopidoman, previously configured his N++ installation as :

Go to Settings > Preferences... > Language > Tab Settings
In the list, choose the Normal option
Uncheck the Use Default Value option
Don’t change the Tab size option
Check the Replace by space option