Community
    • Login

    Need the ability to have fixed-width line number column

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General Discussion
    19 Posts 4 Posters 10.3k Views
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • Michael VincentM
      Michael Vincent @Alan Kilborn
      last edited by

      @Alan-Kilborn said in Need the ability to have fixed-width line number column:

      change the width of the line number margin

      (face palm). I may have been thinking about this all wrong. If all we’re trying to do is make the Notepad++ line number margin a different width that’s easy (he says until he actually tries it).

      Using NppExec:

      SCI_SENDMSG SCI_GETMARGINWIDTHN 0
      ================ READY ================
      ECHO $(MSG_RESULT)
      32
      

      So the width of the Notepad++ line number margin is 32. Let’s just change it:

      SCI_SENDMSG SCI_SETMARGINWIDTHN 0 100
      ================ READY ================
      SCI_SENDMSG SCI_GETMARGINWIDTHN 0
      ================ READY ================
      ECHO $(MSG_RESULT)
      32
      

      Wait, what? I set it to 100 and it visibly didn’t change and querying it, it’s still 32. Let’s try margin 1, the bookmark margin:

      SCI_SENDMSG SCI_GETMARGINWIDTHN 1
      ================ READY ================
      ECHO $(MSG_RESULT)
      16
      ================ READY ================
      SCI_SENDMSG SCI_SETMARGINWIDTHN 1 100
      ================ READY ================
      SCI_SENDMSG SCI_GETMARGINWIDTHN 1
      ================ READY ================
      ECHO $(MSG_RESULT)
      100
      

      Yep, that worked and i can visibly see the margin is huge. I there some magic hocus pocus that is preventing resizing of the Notepad++ line number margin (margin 0)?

      Cheers.

      Alan KilbornA Michael VincentM 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • Alan KilbornA
        Alan Kilborn @Michael Vincent
        last edited by

        @Michael-Vincent said in Need the ability to have fixed-width line number column:

        Hmmm, worked for me! :

        74143e5d-619c-4840-9697-b725cdb95ae3-image.png

        Michael VincentM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
        • Michael VincentM
          Michael Vincent @Michael Vincent
          last edited by

          @Michael-Vincent
          NOTE: when I page way down to line 100,000, and query, the margin 0 returns a result of 56:

          ECHO $(CURRENT_LINE)
          129600
          ================ READY ================
          SCI_SENDMSG SCI_GETMARGINWIDTHN 0
          ================ READY ================
          echo $(MSG_RESULT)
          56
          

          So it is “dynamically” resizing as needed as we can see from OP and as I think we’ve all probably noticed. It would be nice to be able to “force” it to a fixed size wide enough to accommodate all line numbers in a given file (if we know the length).

          Cheers.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • Michael VincentM
            Michael Vincent @Alan Kilborn
            last edited by

            @Alan-Kilborn said in Need the ability to have fixed-width line number column:

            Hmmm, worked for me! :

            Outstanding! It may be a plugin I have that is causing issue? I have quite a few and some that muck with margins (like Changed Lines).

            Cheers.

            Michael VincentM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • Michael VincentM
              Michael Vincent @Michael Vincent
              last edited by

              @Michael-Vincent said in Need the ability to have fixed-width line number column:

              may be a plugin I have that is causing issue

              Weird - I just tried on portable N++ 7.8.3 64-bit with only NppExec (no other plugins) and it didn’t work for me - same results as I posted above. I also tried with N++ 7.7.1 32-bit with lots of plugins and same behavior. I didn’t bother getting 7.8.3 32-bit for apples to apples - this isn’t much of an issue for me, but interesting that yours works and mine doesn’t.

              As I said:

              DEBUG INFO
              Notepad++ v7.8.3 (64-bit)
              Build time : Jan 12 2020 - 19:09:49
              Path : C:\usr\bin\npp64\notepad++.exe
              Admin mode : OFF
              Local Conf mode : ON
              OS Name : Windows 10 Enterprise (64-bit)
              OS Version : 1809
              OS Build : 17763.1098
              Plugins : AutoSave.dll BetterMultiSelection.dll ChangedLines.dll CodeAlignmentNpp.dll ColumnTools.dll ComparePlugin.dll CsvQuery.dll DoxyIt.dll DSpellCheck.dll Explorer.dll GitSCM.dll HexEditor.dll JSMinNPP.dll MarkdownViewerPlusPlus.dll NppConsole.dll nppConverter.dll NppExec.dll NppExport.dll NppFTP.dll NppMenuSearch.dll Perl Indent.dll PluginManager.dll PreviewHTML.dll Python Indent.dll QuickText.dll SpeechPlugin.dll SurroundSelection.dll TagLEET.dll TagsView.dll XMLTools.dll ZoomDisabler.dll

              (lot’s of plugins …)

              but I did try a “clean” version with same non-working results:

              Notepad++ v7.8.3 (64-bit)
              Build time : Jan 12 2020 - 19:09:49
              Path : C:\Users\vinsworldcom\tmp\npp64\notepad++.exe
              Admin mode : OFF
              Local Conf mode : ON
              OS Name : Windows 10 Enterprise (64-bit)
              OS Version : 1809
              OS Build : 17763.1098
              Plugins : NppExec.dll

              Cheers.

              Alan KilbornA 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Alan KilbornA
                Alan Kilborn @Michael Vincent
                last edited by Alan Kilborn

                @Michael-Vincent

                …and I’m sitting here now annoyed by a wide margin and thinking I should change it back. :-)

                Since you showed me yours I’ll show you mine:

                Notepad++ v7.8.5 (32-bit)
                Path : …\notepad++.exe
                Admin mode : OFF
                Local Conf mode : ON
                OS Name : Windows 10 Enterprise (64-bit)
                OS Version : 1809
                OS Build : 17763.1039
                Plugins : BetterMultiSelection.dll ColumnTools.dll Explorer.dll linefilter2.dll LocationNavigate.dll MarkdownViewerPlusPlus.dll mimeTools.dll NppConverter.dll NppEditorConfig.dll NppExec.dll NppExport.dll NppMenuSearch.dll NppToolBucket.dll PythonScript.dll XMLTools.dll

                Michael VincentM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • Michael VincentM
                  Michael Vincent @Alan Kilborn
                  last edited by Michael Vincent

                  @Alan-Kilborn
                  Hmm, very similar except for the 32 vs 64 bit and you’re latest 7.8.5. Many similar plugins and I see you have LocationNaviagte which mucks with margins as does my Changed Lines (based on LocationNav).

                  I’m probably not going to pursue why this doesn’t work me, but thanks for your help.

                  Incidentally, the default is 32 at “line 1” so presumably you’d be able to:

                  SCI_SENDMSG SCI_SETMARGINWIDTHN 0 32
                  

                  and all should be well. Although it’d be interesting to see if that would force yours to 32 and when you scroll to larger line numbers, would the margin auto-expand as it should?

                  Cheers.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • guy038G
                    guy038
                    last edited by guy038

                    Hi, @thompsop, @alan-kilborn, @michael-vincent and All,

                    May be I’m missing something obvious, but why not simply disable the line number margin, by UN-ticking the option Settings > Preferences > Editing > Display line number ?

                    Best Regards,

                    guy038

                    P.S. :

                    @michael-vincent, in your Wikipedia link to the XY problem, I particularly like this example :

                    Gene Woolsey described a famous example of solving the wrong problem. Management was concerned about complaints that people had to wait too long for elevators, and so spent a lot of time and money researching how to schedule elevators to reduce the wait times.
                    Woolsey pointed out that they were trying to solve the wrong problem. The real problem was that “people were complaining”. The installation of large mirrors in the lobby gave people something to do, and the complaints were drastically reduced !!!

                    Michael VincentM Alan KilbornA 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • Michael VincentM
                      Michael Vincent @guy038
                      last edited by

                      @guy038 said in Need the ability to have fixed-width line number column:

                      Wikipedia link to the XY problem

                      I got that link from Perl Monks where I used to spend a lot of time and that sort of thing came up with many questions it was documented in a node.

                      Cheers.

                      Alan KilbornA 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • Alan KilbornA
                        Alan Kilborn @Michael Vincent
                        last edited by Alan Kilborn

                        @Michael-Vincent

                        Hmmm, well here I go with a big facepalm of my own. You know how sometimes you do something a long time ago, and forget about it?

                        Well, apparently I run with line numbers disabled in the Preferences, and then I do this in my Pythonscript startup:

                        for e in (editor1, editor2): e.setMarginWidthN(0, e.textWidth(STYLESCOMMON.LINENUMBER, "_999999"))

                        This gives me a wider margin for the line numbers, right out of the box.

                        By turning off Notepad++'s control of the line numbers, I don’t see the behavior that you do, specifically, that Notepad++ is constantly resetting it.

                        This also allows me to deduce that if Notepad++'s control of line numbers is disabled, Notepad++ sets the margin for the numbers to have zero width ONCE and then leaves it alone.

                        Big sorry for the confusion on this. Sheepish grin.

                        Additional reference: https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/17907/adding-leading-zeros-or-additional-leading-space-for-line-numbers

                        Michael VincentM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                        • Alan KilbornA
                          Alan Kilborn @guy038
                          last edited by

                          @guy038 said in Need the ability to have fixed-width line number column:

                          May be I’m missing something obvious, but why not simply disable the line number margin

                          Well, because it is too valuable to disable. :-)

                          I joined a new group at work, and was stunned to find that nobody has line-numbers turned on in the Visual Studio we use.
                          When I asked why, I was met with “meh” and “that’s the Visual Studio default” (meaning line numbers off).
                          Of course I couldn’t take it that way for very long, so I turned line numbers on in my Visual Studio.

                          So many people just use the default settings in the programs they use. Sad.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                          • Michael VincentM
                            Michael Vincent @Alan Kilborn
                            last edited by

                            @Alan-Kilborn said in Need the ability to have fixed-width line number column:

                            Well, apparently I run with line numbers disabled in the Preferences, and then I do this in my Pythonscript startup:

                            THAT’S AWESOME! And for us Python impared:

                            “PerlScript”:

                            for $e (editor1, editor2) { $e->setMarginWidthN(0, editor->textWidth($SC_STYLE{STYLE_LINENUMBER}, "_999999")); }
                            

                            Cheers.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                            • Alan KilbornA
                              Alan Kilborn @Michael Vincent
                              last edited by

                              @Michael-Vincent said in Need the ability to have fixed-width line number column:

                              (Scintilla multiedge)

                              You mentioned “multiedge” briefly above; I agree that this could definitely help the OP. And, it appears a native multiedge capability is coming soon to Notepad++ !

                              See https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/pull/8107 and :

                              f8d30148-91ff-48c1-a887-3c9de23250d5-image.png

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                              • First post
                                Last post
                              The Community of users of the Notepad++ text editor.
                              Powered by NodeBB | Contributors