Wasn’t I the one that said that change shouldn’t negatively impact anything (to @guy038)? :-)

@Ekopalypse Yea, it seems like you should put a bug report in on it.

@moon6969
I think I have found it. It is a “feature”.
When the name of the lexer comes before the “normal text” lexer, from the alphabetical point of view, it appears before “normal text”, but when it comes after that, it appears below it, but inside the Builtin lexers. Hmm.

I’d recommend pointing that out as a bug. I don’t know if they’ll fix it, but it should be officially documented.

how are you, I hope good.
One question, did you follow up on your lexer plugin?
If so, one question, where does your lexer appear in the language menu?

What I see so far is that external lexers appear since 7.?? above the builtin lexers.

Like here the nim lexer.
What is strange is that my VLang lexer does not do this.
I just can’t figure out what I’m missing. Do you have any ideas?

I don’t know if you are using PS, probably not but in case you do,
here a little script which would check if your plugin has the exports
and do act correctly.

import ctypes
from ctypes import wintypes

external_lexer = ctypes.WinDLL(r'D:\temp\GedcomLexer\GedcomLexer.dll')

GetLexerCount = external_lexer.GetLexerCount
GetLexerName = external_lexer.GetLexerName
GetLexerName.argtypes = [wintypes.UINT, 
                         wintypes.LPCSTR,
                         wintypes.INT]
GetLexerStatusText = external_lexer.GetLexerStatusText
GetLexerStatusText.argtypes = [wintypes.UINT,
                               wintypes.LPCWSTR,
                               wintypes.INT]

GetLexerFactory = external_lexer.GetLexerFactory  # ??

MAX_EXTERNAL_LEXER_NAME_LEN = 16 #+1
MAX_EXTERNAL_LEXER_DESC_LEN = 32 #+1

numLexers = GetLexerCount()
print('Lexers:{}'.format(numLexers))
lexName = ctypes.create_string_buffer(MAX_EXTERNAL_LEXER_NAME_LEN)
lexDesc = ctypes.create_unicode_buffer(MAX_EXTERNAL_LEXER_DESC_LEN)

for x in range(numLexers):
    GetLexerName(x, lexName, MAX_EXTERNAL_LEXER_NAME_LEN)
    print(lexName.value)
    GetLexerStatusText(x, lexDesc, MAX_EXTERNAL_LEXER_DESC_LEN)
    print(lexDesc.value)

Testing with Gedcom lexer returns

Lexers:1
GEDCOM
GEDCOM file

and a Npp pop saying that the GedcomLexer.xml is missing.

Not a surprise as I just loaded the dll but did not install the plugin at all.

Note, the GetLexerFactory is missing in the script.

The issue is probably my imperfect understanding of C++ - especially exports etc!

looks like this is added when your plugin is identified
as an lexer plugin. See here.

Edit: you need to provide an xml file which describes your lexer.

looks like I’m wrong, there is a way, npp knows something about external lexers.

Edit: and this.

The problem starts when you want to appear it in the settings dialog and want npp to interact with it.

All in all, you can make it work if you start subclassing everything npp offers.

I’ve been looking through it’s source, but I can’t figure out how it does it yet…