Enabling block caret for the OVR mode.

SalviaSage

URL: https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/4467

Hi everyone. Before, I was able to make the caret appear as a block caret, that is, encompassing the whole letter.
By default, it is just a small red line under the letter.

With the PythonScript plugin, I could do it with the following code:

CARETSTYLE_OVERSTRIKE_BLOCK = 16
editor.setCaretStyle(CARETSTYLE_OVERSTRIKE_BLOCK)

However, this code now just makes the caret disappear instead.
Does anyone know how to fix it?

I do know it has to do with the fact that a more recent version of Scintilla is being used in the more recent
versions of Notepad++ and that that broke this code which was working before.

Alan Kilborn

As pointed out HERE, a solution to this is to change the code to:

editor.setCaretStyle(editor.getCaretStyle() | CARETSTYLE.OVERSTRIKE_BLOCK)

PeterJones

@SalviaSage ,

And in case you couldn’t tell from Alan’s post, Python Script defines the CARETSTYLE enum, with the CARETSTYLE.OVERSTRIKE_BLOCK value already defined for you, so you don’t need to define your own CARETSTYLE_OVERSTRIKE_BLOCK = 16 variable.

Any time you feel you need to define a constant in a PythonScript script to reference a particular value that you need to set in a Scintilla message (ie, any time the Scintilla documentation for that message has a table of values), check the PythonScript enums documentation – and the vast majority of the time, you will see that the PS author has already given you an enum with that value defined with an appropriate name.

Alan Kilborn

@PeterJones

check the PythonScript enums documentation

Perhaps at the time @Ekopalypse wrote the original script for @SalviaSage, the PythonScript structures and docs hadn’t “caught up” with potentially newer Scintilla features? And thus Eko would have had no choice but to hardcode a value. Just a guess, I’m not going to take the time to verify that.

Alan Kilborn

BTW, here’s my cheezy little script that mines these enumerations:

from __future__ import print_function

import Npp

console.clear()
for item in dir(Npp):
    try:
        d = eval('Npp.' + item + '.values')
        for k in d:
            print('{0}.{1} : {2} / 0x{2:X}'.format(item, d[k], k))
        print('-' * 80)
    except AttributeError:
        continue

This prints output to the PythonScript console window for easy copying to another file to save for future ref; here’s a sample of some of the output:

ACCESSIBILITY.DISABLED : 0 / 0x0
ACCESSIBILITY.ENABLED : 1 / 0x1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALPHA.TRANSPARENT : 0 / 0x0
ALPHA.NOALPHA : 256 / 0x100
ALPHA.OPAQUE : 255 / 0xFF
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ANNOTATIONVISIBLE.HIDDEN : 0 / 0x0
ANNOTATIONVISIBLE.STANDARD : 1 / 0x1
ANNOTATIONVISIBLE.BOXED : 2 / 0x2
ANNOTATIONVISIBLE.INDENTED : 3 / 0x3
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ekopalypse

I hardly know what I did last week, much less what I was thinking 3 years ago when I wrote this ;-)

SalviaSage

Thanks to everyone for their replies.
Again, we fixed this issue.