Quick question if someone has a free sec...
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Notepad++ is a text editor, it is not a picture editor. Simple text files do not contain “straight lines” but they can contain sequences of characters that give the appearance of a straight line. So you can type a whole lot of equals (=) or hyphens (-) or underscores (_) and get horizontal lines such as
===============--------------_______________You can get vertical lines by using vertical bar (|) or exclamation point (!) or even the letter I (I) or the digit one (1). By using column mode (i.e. the alt plus drag) you can select a zero-width area as high as desired. Then typing a single character will enter that character on every line that the selection spans.
Hence it is reasonable easy to draw simple diagrams such as:
. +------------------+ . | | . | | . +==================+ . | | . | V . |======> . Example . <=====+ . A | . | | . +------------------+(I only added the dots (.) at the left to make it format correctly in this forum.)
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could it be that you are looking for the vertical edge line? (Settings->Preferences->Editing)
This is a global setting which would affect all documents and only one
vertical line at a specific column can be displayed.Cheers
Claudia -
You talking about a great feature in a great text editor: QEdit.
Qedit is, in my book, the greatest text editor of all time. It was the darling of the 1990s. It was the Memo editor of choice in dBaseIII+. Exception: Microsoft. M$ did their best (worst, actually) to kill, or at least undermine, QEdit. Alas! The command prompt QEdit is 16-bit only. I keep an old PC with 32-bit Windows just to run 16-bit legacy software apps that are still very useful.
Qedit can draw all kinds of rectangular shapes and lines. It simply prints on screen the corresponding ASCII characters. You can do it manually in Npp, but it is extremely tedious (via Alt+numeric pad).
It would be fairly easy to implement a line-drawing function in Notepad++ similar to that great function in the Q editor.
Unfortunately, the author of Npp is submerged in personal “programming pleasures” that lately do nothing useful. In fact, the inclination is really bad with the introduction of Document Peeker. It is so bad that users have serious complaints about Find / Replace especially in files. The author, in his defense, strongly recommends to leave that feature disabled. Well, then, why added the function? To create headaches? Even freebies may be liable…
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Here is a screenshot of lines and boxes drawn in QEdit. The design looks quite complex, but the process is very easy (after you learn the feature!) It represents also a great programming solution for menuing at the command prompt.
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Terrible post editor here!!! Edit allowed only within 180 seconds!!! New post allowed only after 1200 seconds!!!
Correct image link:
Draw lines, boxes in text editors -
The answer @AdrianHHH gave is spot-on. I’m just going to add a couple of things to think about. Wherever you ‘draw’ a vertical line, everything to the left of it gets padded with spaces. That’s fine if you’re done with your text file and you don’t want to edit it again. Once you start editing, you have to delete/add spaces to get the vertical bars to line up again. At that point you’re starting to get into ASCII art. If you’re going to be editing your text file a lot, you’re in for a world of hurt. And THAT, my friend, is why people don’t draw vertical lines in their text files.
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@cipher-1024 said:
draw vertical
Now, what you saying is playing sane to the doctors’ gathering. Draw ASCII characters — one at a time — via Alt+Numricpad-3-character-Char$ — to just draw one character of a box!
“Once you start editing, you have to delete/add spaces to get the vertical bars to line up again. At that point you’re starting to get into ASCII art.”
In other words, it is the art of escaping medication…
You CANNOT “draw vertical” — It is all horizontal, as in “6 feet underground….”
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Hello, @go2to and All,
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Open a new tab, in N++
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Choose, if necessary, the UTF-8 encoding ( Menu option Encoding > Convert to UTF-8 BOM )
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Choose, if necessary, the default Courier New font ( Menu Settings > Style Configurator… > Global Styles > Default Style )
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Choose, if necessary, the default zoom value (
Ctrl + Num. /) -
Paste the text, below, with box drawing elements, which is identical to go2to’s image :
╒════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╕ │ Select the function: │ ├─────┬────────────────────────────────╥─────┬────────────--─────────────────────┤ │ F │ FFG: N trials from p & DC ║ E │ 'Exactly' M successes in N trials │ ├─────┼────────────────────────────────╫─────┼───────────────────────────────────┤ │ C │ Degree of Certainty (DC) ║ L │ 'At Least' M successes in N trials│ ├─────┼────────────────────────────────╫─────┼───────────────────────────────────┤ │ P │ Probability for Median & N ║ M │ 'At Most' M successes in N trials │ ├─────┼────────────────────────────────╫─────┼───────────────────────────────────┤ │ D │ Standard deviation ║ N │ Normal Probability rule │ ├─────┼────────────────────────────────╫─────┼───────────────────────────────────┤ │ H │ Hypergeometric Distribution ║ W │ 'Win At Least' Lotto & PowerBall │ ├─────┼────────────────────────────────╫─────┼───────────────────────────────────┤ │ H │ Hypergeometric Distribution ║ W │ 'Win At Least' Lotto & PowerBall │ ├─────┼────────────────────────────────╫─────┼───────────────────────────────────┤ │ O │ Calculate Lotto Odds ║ S │ Miscellanea (Sums, Shuffle, N!) │ ╘═════╧═══════════════╤═════╤══════════╩═════╧═════════════════╤═════════════════╛ │ X │ Exit This Fantastic Application! │ ╘═════╧══════════════════════════════════╛Et voilà !
Refer to the complete Unicode Box drawing block ( between
\x{2500}and\x{257F}), at the address, below :http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2500.pdf
Here is, below, four tables, containing all the Box drawing characters of the Courier New font. It may help you, with some copy-paste operations, to create text, as above ! ( The hexadecimal code-point of each box-drawing character is added ! )
2554 2566 2557 250C 252C 2510 ╔═══════ 2550 ═══════╦═════════ 2550 ══════╗ ┌─────── 2500 ───────┬───────── 2500 ──────┐ ║ ║ ║ │ │ │ ║ ║ ║ │ │ │ 2551 2551 2551 2502 2502 2502 ║ ║ ║ │ │ │ ║ ║ ║ │ │ │ 2560 ╠═══════ 2550 ═══════╬═════════ 2550 ══════╣ 2563 251C ├─────── 2500 ───────┼───────── 2500 ──────┤ 2524 ║ ║ 256C ║ │ │ 253C │ ║ ║ ║ │ │ │ ║ ║ ║ │ │ │ 2551 2551 2551 2502 2502 2502 ║ ║ ║ │ │ │ ╚═══════ 2550 ═══════╩═════════ 2550 ══════╝ └─────── 2500 ───────┴───────── 2500 ──────┘ 255A 2569 255D 2514 2534 2518 2553 2565 2556 2552 2564 2555 ╓─────── 2500 ───────╥───────── 2500 ──────╖ ╒═══════ 2550 ═══════╤═════════ 2550 ══════╕ ║ ║ ║ │ │ │ ║ ║ ║ │ │ │ 2551 2551 2551 2502 2502 2502 ║ ║ ║ │ │ │ ║ ║ ║ │ │ │ 255F ╟─────── 2500 ───────╫───────── 2500 ──────╢ 2562 255E ╞═══════ 2550 ═══════╪═════════ 2550 ══════╡ 2561 ║ ║ 256B ║ │ │ 256A │ ║ ║ ║ │ │ │ ║ ║ ║ │ │ │ 2551 2551 2551 2502 2502 2502 ║ ║ ║ │ │ │ ╙─────── 2500 ───────╨───────── 2500 ──────╜ ╘═══════ 2550 ═══════╧═════════ 2550 ══════╛ 2559 2568 255C 2558 2567 255B
IMPORTANT : Although text, in reverse video, does not seem correctly aligned, once you paste the text in N++, it should be OK !!
Best Regards,
guy038
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Guy,
The vertical lines in your box are not continuous as in the original created in QEdit. It’s like a translation of Guy de Maupassant compared to the original. Ça va?
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Hi, @go2to and All,
Of course, I agree that, with some zoom values, lines are discontinuous :-((
On my Windows XP screen, the “good” values of N++ zoom seem to be :
-3 , -2 , 0 (
Ctrl + Num. /), +3 , +6 , +8 , +11Cheers,
guy038
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Wow…you guys are awesome!! Sorry for the late reply. Been trying to find a host for my sites. The world is literally insane btw. Lol. Anyway thanks everyone for the help. I knew there had to be away. You guys are all amazing. I was a little hesitant to ask this question knowing what a wanted to do wasn’t a normal Notepad task. You all were very kind and kept on point and i appreciate that as well. I know I’ll be back if even if it’s just to drop by and roam (lurk) around. Lol. Take care everyone and until next time ^^GoDsPeEd^^
