Notepad++ 7.6 & new Plugins Admin

dinkumoil

The reason why plugins are no longer installed to %ProgramFiles% is according to this comment of @donho the following:

The reason of installation to <Userprofile>\AppData\Local\Notepad++\plugins<plugin-name> is Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform. A UWP package is immutable so there’s no way to install plugins into Notepad++ installation directory.

It seems like he wants to publish its own Windows Store App variant of Notepad++, thus there is no way back to installing plugins (even partially) to %ProgramFiles%.

pnedev

@dinkumoil said:

The reason why plugins are no longer installed to %ProgramFiles% is…

Thanks for explaining that, it seems I’ve missed (or forgotten) Don’s post.

Fran Favorini

@dinkumoil said:

@AJ-Stevens

The reason why plugins are no longer installed to %ProgramFiles% is according to this comment of @donho the following:

The reason of installation to <Userprofile>\AppData\Local\Notepad++\plugins<plugin-name> is Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform. A UWP package is immutable so there’s no way to install plugins into Notepad++ installation directory.

It seems like he wants to publish its own Windows Store App variant of Notepad++, thus there is no way back to installing plugins (even partially) to %ProgramFiles%.

I would suggest if Notepad++ can write to %ProgramFiles%, it should. If not, fall back to %ProgramData% or %LocalAppData%, as configured. If there’s ever an issue with loading plugins from multiple places, it should pick the first one it finds in %ProgramFiles%, %ProgramData%, or %LocalAppData%, in that order. User versions of plugins should no be able to replace admin-specified versions.

László Botka

Hi @donho ,

Unfortunately here the plugins subfolder in the install folder contains in addition to the disabled subfolder the Images subfolder for the Bookmarkmanager. So if the plugins subfolder is removed in a new version, I have to recreate it copying the bookmark manager marker images - presumably the plugin needs to be modified.
I do not know if there is any other solution now.

donho

@László-Botka said:

Hi @donho ,

Unfortunately here the plugins subfolder in the install folder contains in addition to the disabled subfolder the Images subfolder for the Bookmarkmanager. So if the plugins subfolder is removed in a new version, I have to recreate it copying the bookmark manager marker images - presumably the plugin needs to be modified.
I do not know if there is any other solution now.

Then you have to modify your plugin to adapt the new plugin folder structure. There’s no way back for this point. OTOH, I can promise you that such policy will be remained. So you won’t modify your code all the time.

Marshal-Kilgore

@donho
First I’d like to thank you for all the work you’ve put into this great program and your patience with humble user requests.

I’ve thought about the issue and would suggest to make the relevant paths user configurable, including the location of the standard configuration files.
For the current installation of Notepad++ 7.6, this would be:

Config folder: %AppData%\Notepad++
Plugin folder: %LocalAppData%\Notepad++\plugins
Plugin config: %AppData%\Notepad++\plugins\Config

or %ProgramData%\Notepad++\plugins, should you decide to change it.
System administrators and experienced users could tweak these paths to match their backup strategies, security concepts, etc.
A portable installation would simply use:

Config folder: .\
Plugin folder: .\plugins
Plugin config: .\plugins\Config

relative paths being relative to the installation folder, of course.
Developers could have multiple parallel installations of Notepad++ in 32bit and 64bit, using custom folders like:

Config folder: %AppData%\Notepad++-32bit-testing
Plugin folder: %LocalAppData%\Notepad++-32bit-testing\plugins
Plugin config: %AppData%\Notepad++-32bit-testing\plugins\Config

or

Config folder: %SCRATCH%\Notepad++-64bit-beta
Plugin folder: %SCRATCH%\Notepad++-64bit-beta\plugins
Plugin config: %SCRATCH%\Notepad++-64bit-beta\plugins\Config

The effort would be an extra configuration file (that resides in the installation folder) and should satisfy most grumblers. >;-)

ManiacJoe

Windows 10.1709

Notepad++ 7.6, 64-bit, build 2018-11-13 00:12:05

Admin plug-in dialog, update tab:
three items listed
select one or more
click update button
It tries to download Notepad++ 7.5.9 when it should be downloading new plug-ins.

dinkumoil

@ManiacJoe

Which list items (plugins) did you select? How do you determine that it downloads Notepad++ v7.5.9?

I have tested it with v7.6 (32 bit) on Windows 7 x64 and can not confirm this behaviour. It worked like expected and updated the selected NppSaveAsAdmin plugin.

ManiacJoe

@dinkumoil

Started with an install of 7.5.9.
Updated to 7.6 on top of it.

Now only two entries in the update tab:
DSpellCheck 1.4.7
Npp Converter 4.2.1

selected Npp
UPDATE

“Select YES to quit Notepad++ and continue the operations”
YES

“An update package is available, download it?”
YES

“Downloading npp.7.5.9.installer.exe”
ABORT

dinkumoil

@ManiacJoe

What is your installation directory for Notepad++? Did you select the option “Do not use %APPDATA%” during installation?

ManiacJoe

@dinkumoil

This one-post-per-20-minutes limit on us newbies is a killer…

I did an uninstall and re-install. This cleared up the problem.

To answer the questions:

the install folder is the default.
the appdata usage is allowed (unchecked).

László Botka

@donho said:

Then you have to modify your plugin to adapt the new plugin folder structure. There’s no way back for this point. OTOH, I can promise you that such policy will be remained. So you won’t modify your code all the time.

I like this new policy, unfortunately Bookmarkmanager isn’t my plugin, I’m not a programmer, just a simple user.
I tried to say, that to see the markers during Edit, I have to copy the “images” folder to the plugins folder ( “C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\plugins”) in my case, if you (the Notepad++ installer) remove it from there.
Hopefully the plugin author will modify the plugin.

Andrew S. Baker

@donho There seems to be a bug in this version that does not accurately count the number of characters in a file.

I have several large script files that now show a discrepancy between the size reflected in Windows (at a CMD prompt) and with Notepad++

Other text utilities reflect the correct file size with Windows. All of them used to be in harmony just a week ago, prior to this update.

-ASB

Meta Chuh

@Andrew-S.-Baker

please make a local test copy of one of the script files where the reported length in the notepad++ status bar doesn’t match neither the reported size in cmd nor in the explorer properties.
make sure it is on a local disk and not on a network drive.
make sure it is not in a compressed folder !

then open this copy in notepad++ and check the size comparing np++ length and cmd bytes

if the sizes still differ:
open this copy in notepad++
in the np++ menu go to:
encoding > convert to ansi (or utf-8 if needed)

this makes sure no additional bom header is written to the file

optionally go to:
edit > eol conversion > unix (LF)
and then back to
edit > eol conversion > windows (CR LF)

this eliminates mixed line endings, in case some of your files have inconsistent end characters (mixed 2 byte crlf and either 1 byte cr or lf in some lines, as it happens if you are using different editors on different platforms for the same file.

please report back and let us know whether the sizes match after above steps or not.

Meta Chuh

one thing i forgot to mention:
make sure you are able to save the test copy after converting the encoding before rechecking the size.
in some rare cases you’ll see a greyed out save button after the encoding change, then please convert back and forth between ansi and utf-8 to make the save button accessible

Andrew S. Baker

@donho said:

OK, I see. How about an empty file pluginsForAllUser.xml makes Notepad++ load from %ALLUSERSPROFILE% ?

It would be better to load from both locations. That we, if there are shared/global plugins they will be read from the All Profiles locations + the user-specific location where they will have unique plugins.

No need for the extra file to trigger the behavior.

AJ-Stevens

@dinkumoil said:

@AJ-Stevens

The reason why plugins are no longer installed to %ProgramFiles% is according to this comment of @donho the following:

The reason of installation to <Userprofile>\AppData\Local\Notepad++\plugins<plugin-name> is Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform. A UWP package is immutable so there’s no way to install plugins into Notepad++ installation directory.

It seems like he wants to publish its own Windows Store App variant of Notepad++, thus there is no way back to installing plugins (even partially) to %ProgramFiles%.

Oh a Windows Store App variant? Urgh… I’d rather an MSI installer for the regular Windows Notepad++ application.

Fran Favorini

@AJ-Stevens said:

Oh a Windows Store App variant? Urgh… I’d rather an MSI installer for the regular Windows Notepad++ application.

Agreed.

mathcalvo

Where can I find the new Plugins Admin tool? After fresh install (32 or 64 installer), the plugin menu is missing and no Plugins Admin tool. After coping some plugins in the %localappdata%\Notepad++\plugins in can see the plugin menu, but not the new Plugins Admin tool.
Where to find it? I am missing something?

Max Brante

A question that has been asked a few times in keeps getting ignored: Me and a few others have made a fresh install of 7.6 and we dont’t get a plugins menu or the plugins admin is nowhere to be found.
How to troubleshoot this?