Backspace Unindents

astrosofista

Haven’t read all this thread, but in case you want to make a comparation, the Extended Settings plugin provides a similar feature. Works fine, by the way.

Cheers.

Alan Kilborn

@astrosofista

the Extended Settings plugin provides a similar feature

Sure; I’m actually quite surprised no one earlier in the thread mentioned that.
If I used Extended Settings plugin, I’d like to think I would have mentioned it.
At the time the plugin came out, I already had most of its functionality, thru scripts.

I even had a backspace-unindenter script (different from the one above); not realizing that Scintilla provided the function, my script did it manually and was tied to the Backspace key binding.
(In some ways I liked my earlier script better than Scintilla’s function!)

guy038

Hello @alan-kilborn and All,

OK ! When doing tests, the TAB key was set to write a four positions TAB character and I principally did tests with leading tab chars ! But never mind, now, I understood the whole thing :

First, from the Scintilla documentation, I saw that there a similar message to BackspaceUnindents, which is TabIndents. Note that, by default Notepad++ starts with the TabIndents message activated and with the BackspaceUnindents message deactivated !

So, I created an other python script, called TabIndents.py, in order to activate/deactivate the TabIndents message. I get absolutely no credit because it’s just a copy/paste of the Alan’s script !

from Npp import editor, notepad, NOTIFICATION

class TabIndents(object):

    def __init__(self):
        self.activated = True
        notepad.callback(self.callback_for_bufferactivated, [NOTIFICATION.BUFFERACTIVATED])
        self.callback_for_bufferactivated(None)  # set it for the currently active document

    def callback_for_bufferactivated(self, args):
        # this document property won't automatically be applied to newly created tabs; adjust for that:
        editor.setTabIndents(self.activated)

    def is_activated(self): return self.activated

    def set_activated(self, b):
        self.activated = b
        self.callback_for_bufferactivated(None)

if __name__ == '__main__':

    try:
        tab_indents
    except NameError:
        tab_indents = TabIndents()
        notepad.messageBox('TabIndents installed and activated')
    else:
        if tab_indents.is_activated():
            tab_indents.set_activated(False)
            notepad.messageBox('TabIndents deactivated')
        else:
            tab_indents.set_activated(True)
            notepad.messageBox('TabIndents activated')

Then I played around, with a sample line of mixed TAB and SPACE chars, both, in the leading part and further on, between usual characters :

Activating / deactivating the TabIndents.py and/or the BaskspaceUnindents.py messages
Choosing, either, 1 TAB char of 4 positions long OR 4 SPACE chars, when you hit the TAB key, for language normal, in Preferences... > Language > Tab Settings > normal
Moving caret within the leading blank chars OR in subsequents blanks ranges, further on, in current line

And, here is, below, a summary of my observations :

Regarding the BACKSPACE key behaviour :

If caret within the leading blank range of chars AND BackspaceUnindents message activated [ NEW backspace behaviour ] :
- If setting TAB to 4 SPACE chars, a hit on the BACKSPACE key :
  - Deletes previous char(s) to get the previous indentation level
  - Normalizes all preceding blank chars, till beginning of line, to SPACE chars
  - Moves the caret after the last leading SPACE char
- If setting TAB to 1 TABchar of 4 positions long, a hit on the BACKSPACE key :
  - Deletes previous char(s) to get the previous indentation level
  - Normalizes all preceding blank chars, till beginning of line, to TAB chars
  - Moves the caret after the last leading TAB char
If caret outside the leading blank range of chars OR BackspaceUnindents message deactivated OR by DEFAULT, a hit on the BACKSPACE key :
- Deletes previous char to get the correct or previous indentation level
- Leave the caret at current position

Regarding the TAB key behaviour :

If caret outside the leading blank range of chars, whatever the status of the TabIndents message :
- When setting TAB to 4 SPACE chars, a hit on the TAB key :
  - Adds up to 4 SPACE char(s) to get the next indentation level
  - Leave the caret right after these added SPACE char(s)
- When setting TAB to a 1 TAB of 4 positions long , a hit on the TAB key :
  - Adds a TAB char to get the next indentation level
  - Leave the caret right after the added TAB char
If caret within the leading blank range of chars :
- If the TabIndents message is activated OR by DEFAULT :
  - When setting TAB to 4 SPACE chars, a hit on the TAB key :
    - Adds up to 4 SPACE char(s) to get the next indentation level
    - Normalizes all preceding blank chars, till beginning of line, to SPACE chars
    - Moves the caret after the last leading SPACE char
  - When setting TAB to a 1 TAB of 4 positions long , a hit on the TAB key :
    - Adds a TAB char to get the next indentation level
    - Normalizes all preceding blank chars, till beginning of line, to TAB chars
    - Moves the caret after the last leading TAB char
- If the TabIndents message is deactivated [ NEW tab behaviour ] :
  - When setting TAB to 4 SPACE chars, a hit on the TAB key :
    - Adds up to 4 SPACE char(s) to get the next indentation level
    - Leave the caret right after these added SPACE char(s)
  - When setting TAB to a 1 TAB of 4 positions long , a hit on the TAB key :
    - Adds a TAB char to get the next indentation level
    - Leave the caret right after the added TAB char

Best Regards,

guy038

Alan Kilborn

Based upon @guy038’s in-depth treatment just ABOVE, and some experimentation on my own based upon it, I decided that I think I don’t like how Scintilla’s backspace-unindents works. :-(

So I am getting rid of the script I posted above, and going back to the script I had previously (where I did things much more “manually”), which did more of what I want/expect. :-)