Announcing Perl-based automation of Notepad++

PeterJones

I had never really gotten into REPL – never found one that I liked enough to frequently use – but I think App::PerlShell might be the one that starts me down that road, especially with this solution for NppConsole to embed the REPL in Notepad++. (If I ever get around to the v2.0 features – specifically, writing a wrapper Notepad++ plugin and thus enabling the notifications – I will probably try to use a combination of NppConsole as the starting code and @Ekopalypse’s experiments with embedding perl in a plugin, and include App::PerlShell as the default REPL for the plugin. That said, I have to get from early versions into a sold v1.0 before I work on v2.0 feastures. :-) )

Speaking of working toward v1.0: I am working on documenting the hashes that are used for holding the message name/value pairs, and the argument name/value pairs (equivalent to PythonScript’s enum documentation). But I’m wondering if I should change from having just a couple hashes with messages and message-arguments intertwined (%nppm, %nppidm, and %scimsg) into having a different named hash for the messages compared to the arguments (pythonscript uses a separate enum/class for each type of argument). Or maybe go the other direction, and have a big hash-of-hashes like %enum = ( NPPMSG => { … } , SCINTILLAMSG => { … } , MENUCMD => { FILE_CLOSE => …, …}, … ), so if you were going for the FILE_CLOSE, it would be $enum{MENUCMD}{FILE_CLOSE}.

I had originally kept them as just those three hashes, because that was easy from my convert-.h-to-hash method. But since I’m moving over to manual .pm for the messages/arguments, to allow for easier POD documentation of those hashes, now seems like a good time to make changes to the structure, if it makes sense.

So, if it were up to you(*), would you prefer just the enums as they are, split into multiple separate hash variables, or combined into one mega hash-of-hashs? Or should I just do all three (I could easily build the existing-three out of individual variables, and the mega hash-of-hashes could actually just embed the individual variables.

*: “up to you”, where “you” is defined as @Michael-Vincent , or anyone else who is likely to use Win32::Mechanize::NotepadPlusPlus as more than a one-or-two-time curiosity. :-)

Michael Vincent

@PeterJones said in Announcing Perl-based automation of Notepad++:

So, if it were up to you(*)

Let me give it think. My first instinct is to keep them separate instead of a single big hash-of-hash. To me that just makes more sense grouping N++, messages and Scintilla with their like instead of mixing.

More on App::PerlShell - if you read the POD, there are other REPL’s for Perl that excel at certain aspects of REPL - one duplicates Python look and feel, another uses PPI for correct Perl parsing at the expense of many dependencies, etc. I wanted one that behaved more like a shell (e.g., bash, Powershell) but took Perl commands and none did that. That said, my implementation is probably pretty poor, rough around the edges and makes a multitude of assumptions. All this to say, happy for you to use it, that’s what it’s there for … but “production ready” it may not be like say Devel::REPL.

Cheers.

PeterJones

v0.002 released to CPAN

Reorganize the hash variables for easier and clearer use going forward (#13)
editor->getLine() on an empty line will now correctly return an empty string, not “\0” (fixed #14)
update API for getNumberOpenFiles to correctly use the constants (#17)
add notepad->getNppVar() for accessing the “user variables”, like FULL_CURRENT_PATH and CURRENT_WORD (#19)
improve documentation internal links (#20)
make the editor->hwnd() a public method (instead of using editor()->{_hwnd})
make the notepad->hwnd() a public method (instead of using notepad()->{_hwnd})
add helper editor->getEOLString(): convert EOL Mode integer to a string
editor->getFileEndPosition(): gives the end position of the whole document
improve test coverage: add encoding names and getLanguageName coverage to npp-buffer.t
examples/ folder: adding more example usages
improve Editor documentation on ->findText and some other methods, and clean up set/get pairs, so they share the same information
improve Notepad documentation, especially fixing the link for menuCmdID source file

PeterJones

v0.003 released to CPAN

The user-centric changes that were made:

some of the Scintilla v4.2.0 messages that were implemented in Notepad++ v7.8 were missing, so add them (#29: thanks @Michael-Vincent for pointing this out!)
runPluginsCommand() = fixed command cache feature and improved test (#30)
added version notes, to say which messages and “enums” (hashes/keys) require NPP v7.8 (because these are the Scintilla v4.2.0 updates)

I keep trying to improve this, and make it more usable. Suggestions and bug reports welcome.

Michael Vincent

@PeterJones

Saw your N++ commit updating Perl keywords and the autocomplete API. BRAVO!!! I had an updated perl.xml autocomplete, but yours is way more complete and I’ve started using it this morning to test.

Thanks for keeping Perl updated in N++!!

Cheers.

PeterJones

This post is deleted!

PeterJones

@Michael-Vincent,

I was trying to figure out if I had a place to reply with that link, or whether I’d have to create a new post. I guess here was as good a place as any. Since Don accepted the PR, it should be in the next official release! (This is my first contribution to the main Notepad++, rather than just documentation or UDL, so I’m happy about that!)

I basically wrote a regex to trim out just the functions (=item) and the brief summary line (=for Pod::Functions) from perlfunc.pod, then used another few regex to merge those together into the auto-complete format; that way, I am hopeful I didn’t miss any functions from v5.30.

Michael Vincent

@PeterJones said in Announcing Perl-based automation of Notepad++:

I basically wrote a regex

I did mine by hand. Happy to throw that away for your more complete and automated creation solution. I’ll be grabbing 7.8.7 when officially released.

Cheers.

PeterJones

v0.005 released to CPAN

The user-centric changes that were made:

replace %ENCODINGKEY with %BUFFERENCODING, because the old hash had wrong values that didn’t match getEncoding()'s return values (#50)
add setEncoding() command to call NPPM_SETBUFFERENCODING as the logical pair to getEncoding() (#51)

I had apparently missed announcing v0.004 and bugfix 0.004001, so for historical purposes, quoting from my CHANGES file

v0.004001 2020-Jun-20

fix bug in notepad->prompt(), which only used two of the three
arguments, in wrong order (#47); test suite verifies default
values for title and default when they aren’t used
added new examples/pasteSpecial.pl to show how to paste a
clipboard entry other than CF_TEXT into Notepad++

v0.004 2020-Jun-04

fix bug in propertyNames() which deleted final char (#45)
implemented helper methods: forEachLine, deleteLine, replaceWholeLine,
replaceLine, flash, getWord, getCurrentWord, getUserLineSelection,
getUserCharSelection (#15)
make setTarget an alias of setTargetRange, and write an alias of
addText, for PythonScript compatibility (#15)
implemented new auto-wrapper to get searchInTarget and similar calls
to work right (#42)
fixed replaceTarget() and replaceTargetRE() replacing target with the
empty string (#41)
fixed length bug in getTargetText() (#40)
fixed bug in editor->setText(‘’) which had empty strings
cause crash (#39)

PeterJones

v0.007 released to CPAN

Update Editor object for the Notepad++ 7.9.4 update to Scintilla v4.4.6

And, again, I had forgotten to announce last month:

v0.006 2021-Mar-06

add getSettingsOnCloudPath() with test (#54)
add getLineNumberWidthMode(), setLineNumberWidthMode(), and the %LINENUMWIDTH enumeration with test (#54 addendeum)
test suite bug: with v7.9.1 and newer, replaceTargetText() changes the selection/getTargetText() value, so update the readback to be version agnostic (#57)
documentation error: fox %NPPIDM description in Notepad.pm (#53)
meta fix: make test suite pass on cpantesters smoke testers, even if smoke tester machine doesn’t have Notepad++, or has an old, incompatible version (#56)

v0.006001 2021-Mar-07

meta fix: turn off the auto-download on smoke tester machines, because it was causing fails

PeterJones

v0.008 released to CPAN

add notepad->showDocList, notepad->isDocListShown, and notepad->docListDisableColumn for working with the Document List panel (previously “Doc Switcher” panel)
incorporate the new messages and menu commands thru v8.1.4 (#80)
add notepad->getStatusBar(), which will get the text of one of the sections of the status bar (#65)
add notepad->getDebugInfo(), which (for new-enough Notepad++) includes the ‘Command line’ entry from Debug Info (#74)
add %WINMSGBOX for use with notepad->messageBox (#73)