XBrackets Lite v1.4.0 has been released!

Vitalii Dovgan

We’ve been waiting so long - and finally this glorious day has come! XBrackets Lite v1.4.0 is here!

XBrackets Lite is:
https://github.com/d0vgan/npp-XBracketsLite

The version 1.4.0 brings:

Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!
enhanced Settings dialog
new manual option: Sel_AutoBr
new manual options: Next_Char_OK and Prev_Char_OK
internal improvements
updated to Notepad++ 8.8.2

Basically, the functionality of the manual option Sel_AutoBr in “XBrackets.ini” was something I had been lacking in Notepad++ and XBrackets Lite, hence the new version. Be sure to read “XBrackets.txt” for details. Personally I use Sel_AutoBr=4.

Get this version here:
https://github.com/d0vgan/npp-XBracketsLite/releases/tag/v140

Michael Vincent

@Vitalii-Dovgan

I saw your previous posts about questions for this so I knew you were developing it. I never used the previous version. Can you please explain in short what makes this different from Notepad++ “native” settings:

Cheers.

Lycan Thrope

@Michael-Vincent ,
Nothing, as far as I can see. Granted, maybe I don’t understand the purpose of this. I thought the new version was supposed to treat ' and " as brackets, but it, through testing doesn’t “brace match” those characters, which is why I tried it out.

In the dBASE UDL, we have a need for this brace matching of single and double quotes because complicated SQL statements are hard to isolate without being able to “brace match” those characters. The normal brace mathing works fine for the [, { and (, but SQL requires ' encapsulation, so when there are mutliple strings concatenated (using ' and ") that use different symbols to represent character strings, when trouble shooting an errant SQL statement, it helps to know where the start and end of particular string concatenations begin and end. I was hoping this would supply that need, but it doesn’t seem to work in my experiments…maybe I’m doing something wrong?

These are my settings in your dialog box, and the cursor is currently next to the last ' and it’s not matching. I tried it with , and ; separating file extensions, and with and without a ; at the end of the list. Nothing worked.

Vitalii Dovgan

The uniqueness of XBrackets is in its external simplicity and internal complexity.
Let me quote the plugin’s description from the XBrackets git page:
https://github.com/d0vgan/npp-XBracketsLite

XBrackets Lite for Notepad++ allows to autocomplete brackets ([{""}]) i.e. it inserts the corresponding right bracket when a left bracket is typed. 
The plugin uses "smart" brackets autocompletion:
- next character is analysed for ([{ brackets;
- next & previous characters are analysed for "" and '' quotes.

The manual option Sel_AutoBr allows to enclose (or disclose) the selected text with brackets.
See "XBrackets.txt" for details.

As far as I can see, Notepad++ already analyses next and previous characters before brackets and quotes auto-completion, so this exact part is no more unique for XBrackets plugin.
XBrackets additionally looks at file extensions and auto-complete brackets and quotes according to file extensions specified in its Settings dialog. This is still unique for XBrackets plugin.
The manual option Sel_AutoBr allows to enclose (or disclose) the selected text with brackets. Thus, a selected text abc may become "abc" when a single " is typed. To enable this, one needs to refer to “XBrackets.txt” and set the value of Sel_AutoBr according to the desired behavior. This is still unique for XBrackets plugin.

Finally, the plugin’s description does not say anything about brackets matching. It simply means that currently XBrackets does not perform any brackets matching operations such as finding a matching bracket.
The good news are: brackets matching ability is already in development and will be available in a form of new functions in XBrackets Lite plugin menu: GoToMatchingBracket, SelToMatchingBracket, GoToNearestBracket, SelToNearestBrackets.
GoToMatchingBracket and SelToMatchingBracket work when a caret is already at a bracket or quote character, e.g. "|abc".
GoToNearestBracket and SelToNearestBrackets work when a caret is not at a bracket or quote character, but somewhere between them, e.g. "ab|c".
The results are already very promising, you may always take a latest dev version here:
https://github.com/d0vgan/npp-XBracketsLite/tree/feature/GoToNearestBr

Michael Vincent

@Vitalii-Dovgan said in XBrackets Lite v1.4.0 has been released!:

The uniqueness of XBrackets is in its external simplicity and internal complexity.

Thank you. I get 3) from the SurroundSelection plugin. Notepad++ has “Go To Matching Brace” in Search menu, but I think it only includes { [ ( ) ] }, not quotes.

Cheers.