How to define a custom language

AP2024Npp

I’ve tried going around the custom language definition menu and the result I wouldn’t even consider it a result.

I would like to define some languages and group them in the same submenu.
I would like all occurrences of “T1|” at the beginning of the line to be formatted, the T1 in red and the pipe in gray. The rest of the line will have to follow any other rules.
I also have files with the rows structured as the F character followed by a string and a json. I would like to replace F with an emoji and highlight the various json entries in different colors, while the parentheses will have to be in bold.
I would like a third language that highlights strings contained between quotes in italics and some keywords in red.
Can I obtain this in N++? How?

Mark Olson

The language you’re describing seems like it would require a lexer written in C++, which is probably a lot more work than you want to do. The key problem here is that your lexer would require a JSON lexer as a subcomponent.

One thing that you might find somewhat helpful here is the JsonTools plugin, which has a Select all valid JSON command that could extract all the JSON from your document.

PythonScript might also be helpful, I suppose.

PeterJones

@AP2024Npp said in How to define a custom language:

I would like to define some languages and group them in the same submenu.

Notepad++ currently has no way of adding a sub menu for specific UDLs

I would like all occurrences of “T1|” at the beginning of the line to be formatted, the T1 in red and the pipe in gray. The rest of the line will have to follow any other rules.

UDL cannot handle that natively. The EnhanceAnyLexer Plugin could add regex to accomplish that part

I also have files with the rows structured as the F character followed by a string and a json. I would like to replace F with an emoji and highlight the various json entries in different colors, while the parentheses will have to be in bold.

As @Mark-Olson said, that part would require you to write a custom lexer

I would like a third language that highlights strings contained between quotes in italics and some keywords in red.

That’s easy: put the keywords in Keywords1 group, and use Delimiter1 with quote as open and close symbol, and apply the right Styler settings to each

Can I obtain this in N++? How?

1/3 ain’t bad?

wonkawilly

For grouping I am not able to help but to define the first language you could follow the following indications:

How to:

open Menu > Language > User Defined Languages > Define Your Language Dialog
Give the new language the custom name you like
than in “Open” under folding in code 1 style “T1”
click on the Styler button
and from the dialog that shows up, choose your Foreground color (or the Background one if it better matches your needs)
Than confirm clicking on ok btn
Now type the pipe symbol into “Open” under Folding in code 2 Style
and repeat the rest of the steps to give the needed color

You are ready. Now close the dialog (not mandatory) and then just click on the menu > Languages > TheNameYougaveToYurNewStyle

A screenshot follows with the result:

PeterJones

@wonkawilly ,

It should be noted that @AP2024Npp’s phrasing implied they wanted T1| formatted only if it’s at the beginning of the line. Your suggestion of using Folding In Code will cause it to format even later in the line, as shown in this screenshot.

Further, by using the “Folding in Code” settings, it introduces the folding, which wasn’t part of the original request. Also, because there is no “close” setting, it means that folding one of those will fold everything that comes after, to the end of the file.

If all you wanted was red T1 and blue/gray |, and you didn’t care where those went, you could use actual Keyword and Operator styling, rather than using the Fold In Code, as those are the styles that are meant for such things. This gets the same results as yours, without the folding:

But I don’t think it meets the original request, which is why I suggested EnhanceAnyLexer plugin, because that can ensure that the T1| happens at the beginning of the line, but not elsewhere:

(my example was with the default “Define Your Language” without naming it… if you had named it, it would have come up with [NameOfUDL] instead of [udf] for the .ini-section-header.

wonkawilly

@PeterJones
You are right and also the Npp built-in dialog in that text control doesn’t seem to support new lines not in the format \r\n and not regex to use the begging of a string token

AP2024Npp

Sorry for the delay, I was expecting email notifications.

@Mark Olson
I guess it’s impossible to do what I’m asking

@PeterJones said in How to define a custom language:

It should be noted that @AP2024Npp’s phrasing implied they wanted T1| formatted only if it’s at the beginning of the line. Your suggestion of using Folding In Code will cause it to format even later in the line, as shown in this screenshot.
… and more

Correct, also any other T2, T3, etc. remain of the same style.

@PeterJones
I’ve installed EnhanceAnyLexer but I’m not sure how to use it: should I create a script for each file I intend to open? Replacing the ini file each time?

Reading your examples and documentation I managed to do something with (complicated) regular expressions.
However, I could not figure out:

how and when you apply the script: sometimes by clicking on the file to highlight, sometimes by saving the ini, but sometimes it doesn’t work at all
what do you mean by NameOfUDL?
can I associate the highlighting I define with a language?
why does it change the text font?
the IDs
on one occasion the file I was trying to highlight came up as modified.
I once reopened the ini and, yes, it contained my additions, but it had also restored things I had deleted

I would like to define a language (or script) once and then have it activated automatically when I select the matching language, to avoid highlighting files that are not needed but also avoiding having to paste the script each time. There are 3 types of files I need to highlight, so it is convenient to have 3 scripts associated with 3 languages.

PeterJones

I would like to define a language (or script) once and then have it activated automatically when I select the matching language, to avoid highlighting files that are not needed but also avoiding having to paste the script each time.

That’s the way it works.

why does it change the text font?

It doesn’t. EnhanceAnyLexer only changes foreground color.

I once reopened the ini and, yes, it contained my additions, but it had also restored things I had deleted

I’ve never seen that happen.

on one occasion the file I was trying to highlight came up as modified.

EnhanceAnyLexer just changes colors; it does nothing with the text / contents in the highlighted file, so it does not edit the file. The plugin would not cause a file to “come up as modified”.

how and when you apply the script

what do you mean by NameOfUDL?

can I associate the highlighting I define with a language?

EnhanceAnyLexer works by hooking in to the activated lexer language, whether it’s one of the built-in languages, or one of the UserDefinedLanguages (UDL).

So to make it work:

Define a UDL for your language. You will give it a name: my example was NameOfUDL.
Set the Language of the current file to NameOfUDL
- under normal circumstances, you could make Notepad++ do it automatically, based on file’s extension, in the UDL definition
- but you’ve indicated you want to turn this on or off at will (or to change it between one of three languages), instead of having it automatic based on extension
EnhanceAnyLexer > Enhance Current Language
- this will allow you to set up the color / regex mappings for NameOfUDL
- while you are initially setting them up, you might see some weird things, like sometimes highlighting and sometimes not; it behaves differently while you’re actively editing EnhanceAnyLexer.ini than it does when you’re just using it
- you have to save it once you are done, otherwise your changes to EnhanceAnyLexer.ini will be lost; it’s a file, just like any other
- you only have to do this step once per Language
- once it’s saved, you can close the EnhanceAnyLexer.ini . If not all the enhancements show up in the active file, and it’s got NameOfUDL as the active language, you may have to switch to a different tab and back, or close and re-open the file to get EnhanceAnyLexer to take control.

So, if you have three separate languages that you’ll want to apply for your use-case, you will need to create three different UDLs (User Defined Languages) – I’ll call them NameOfUDL1, NameOfUDL2, and NameOfUDL3. Then you will have to Enhance Current Language once for each of those (or do it once, and copy/paste into three different sections in EnhanceAnyLexer.ini, making sure to have the correct name of each section. Then the next time you activate one of NameOfUDL1, NameOfUDL2, or NameOfUDL3 for a given file, it will apply the enhancements defined for the chosen UDL.

Here’s an example:

file:

T1| otherstrings
something
but not T1| otherstrings here

Excerpt from Languages menu:

Excerpt from EnhanceAnyLexer.ini:

[nameofudl1]
#
0x0000FF = ^T\d(?=\|)
0x00CC00 = ^T\d\K\|

[nameofudl2]
#
0xC0C000 = ^T\d(?=\|)
0x00CC00 = ^T\d\K\|

[nameofudl3]
#
0xFF00FF = ^T\d(?=\|)
0x00CC00 = ^T\d\K\|

For this simple example, they are highlighting the same regex, but with different colors, just so you can see it is applied. All I had to do to change which EnhanceAnyLexer config was active was change the selection in the Language menu.

Here are screenshots with four different Language menu entries selected:

Selected Language	Screenshot
Normal Text
NameOfUDL1
NameOfUDL2
NameOfUDL3