Once again, you’re completely right. Although the two functions Insert Blank Line Above/Under Current came with a recent N++ version
( v6.4.4 ), I should have looked around the different N++'s features, before posting :-(

Indeed, your solution behaves exactly like mine. So, my post was, therefore, useless !

Cheers,

guy038

Invoking this command creates an empty line below the current line (obviously), but more importantly seems to always leave the caret/cursor in column 1, regardless of the indentation of the line above (the one that the caret was on when this was invoked).

Thus, no macro needed! Although, holding down all those modifiers is a bit of a challenge…solution: remap to something simpler.

You can emulate a “hard” Enter, which ALWAYS moves cursor on column 1, very easily :-) This could be a work-around !

• Open your shortcuts.xml file, with an OTHER editor than Notepad++ ( Microsoft Notepad or Wordpad or any other simple editor … )

• Depending of your N++ installation, the shortcuts.xml file may be located

  • in the %AppData%\Roaming\Notepad++ folder
  • in the same folder than Notepad++.exe

• Inside the macro section of shortcuts.xml, just add these five lines, below, which defines a new macro, that I called Cursor at column 1. Of course, you can choose any other text !

    <Macro name="Cursor at column 1" Ctrl="yes" Alt="no" Shift="yes" Key="13">
        <Action type="1" message="2170" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="&#x000D;" />
        <Action type="1" message="2170" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="&#x000A;" />
        <Action type="0" message="2395" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
    </Macro>
  

The value 2395 comes from the Scintilla.h file, found in the archive npp.6.7.9.src.zip, in the folder notepad-plus-plus-master\scintilla\include ( #define SCI_DELLINELEFT 2395 )

It’s not very difficult to guess what that simple macro does, isn’t it !

I associated the shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + Enter to that macro, because I think it’s not used on N++ default configuration. Just verify on your own configuration. If necessary, choose the menu option Macro - Modify Shortcut/Delete Macro, to change it.

Well, now, :

• Write some spaces or tabulations, followed by any text, in a new tab

• If you end this text by a hit on the Enter key, you’ll get, as expected, the previous indentation

• Now type, again, some text and end this line, using the shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + Enter => Your cursor is back to column 1

• Then, hit, repeatedly, on CTRL + SHIFT + Enter => You still get some pure blank lines

• And, as soon as you hit the Enter key, ONLY, you’ll obtain, again, the previous indentation !

Hope it may be useful to someone, anyway !

Best Regards,

guy038

P.S. :

Very soon, with the Christophe Meriaux’s PullRequest ( see below ), it won’t be necessary to use an other editor to change the shortcuts.xml file. You’ll just change it from inside N++, then stop and restart N++ to get the changes :-)

https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/pull/70