[New plugin] Columns++
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@wonkawilly said in [New plugin] Columns++:
Is it a feature/wanted behavior?
It’s not so much a “feature” as a “known side-effect.”
In the Columns++ | Profile… dialog there is a setting:
Apply monospaced font optimizations (Yes, No or Best estimate)
and beneath that, a check box:
Don’t show expanded mnemonics for non-printing characters when monospaced.The defaults are Best estimate and checked.
Don’t show expanded mnemonics… only applies when the first setting is Yes, or when it is Best estimate and the best estimate is Yes.
What that setting does is to replace the reversed-type black boxes for non-printing characters, like BEL or NBSP, with a single
!
in a black box. The reason is that “monospaced font optimizations” depend on every character being the same width; they speed up processing in larger files if that is true, but things get even slower than they would be without the optimizations if there are characters (like the black blobs with control character mnemonics) that aren’t the same width as everything else.I don’t know why the CR and LF are converted to C and L instead of being an exclamation point, like all other non-printing characters, but that’s what happens. I know of no way to change that while still controlling the width of other non-printing characters.
Knowing that it’s not abnormal, if this still bothers you, there are two things you could do to avoid it:
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If your files rarely or never contain non-printing characters (except end-of-line characters), you can uncheck Don’t show expanded mnemonics for non-printing characters when monospaced and the display of line-ending characters will return to normal.
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I’ve recently discovered that monospaced font optimizations are only necessary if you do not have Use DirectWrite checked in the Notepad++ options at Settings | Preferences… | MISC.. Recent versions of Notepad++ default that setting to checked (it was unchecked when I first released Columns++). Starting with version 1.1, Columns++ will always use “No” as the Best estimate when DirectWrite is enabled. In version 1.0.6, if you have DirectWrite enabled, or if you never enable elastic tabstops on files that are large enough to make response sluggish, you could set Apply monospaced font optimizations to No.
The nature of the Plugins Admin in Notepad++ is that the plugins listing is only updated when Notepad++ is updated (and even then, with some lag, depending on how long it takes to finalize a release). In the Columns++ | Help/About… dialog you’ll find links to the “newest” and “latest stable” releases, which you can install directly. Right now, 1.0.6 is latest stable; newest, 1.1.1, incorporates the DirectWrite/Best estimate fix along with some other significant fixes and improvements. I expect to release a 1.1.2 version within a day or two. If all goes well that version will be promoted to stable in time to get it into the Plugins Admin list for the next release of Notepad++.
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@Coises said in [New plugin] Columns++:
1.0.6
I understand it now, thank you so much for the explication.