In version 8.6 a new style had been introduced: “Multi selected text colour”. The effect for me was, that in column-select mode the selection was shown only partially (last line only). It took me some time to find out what was my fault. I use a personalised style, where the default background colour happens to have the value “C0C0C0”, the same value as the background for this new style. Therefore I could not see the selection because it had the same bg-colour as the rest of my text. For “Selected text colour” I use the value “A0A0A0”; after applying this value to the new style, it worked again.

I know, it is really a very special case, but it may happen. A similar situation might arise with other changes in the future. For these cases it would help to have a backup for comparison.

@Saquib-Akhtar said in Notepad++ v8.8.9: Vulnerability-fix:

But it looks like next any upgrade can override this config and need to do it manually again.

Nope. It does not overwrite any information in the style or theme file (except where it tracks the model-file’s date). The styles that got the light-mode colors were styles that your theme was missing. It only adds missing information, and will not overwrite any style that already exists in your theme.

That’s why we don’t need to do the backup.

But it looks like next any upgrade can override this config and need to do it manually again.

Nope. It does not overwrite any information in the style or theme file (except where it tracks the model-file’s date). The styles that got the light-mode colors were styles that your theme was missing. It only adds missing information, and will not overwrite any style that already exists in your theme.

A backup wouldn’t be a bad idea. (And given the problems with the v8.8.9 version, I wish the backup had been there to begin with.) If @donho agrees, I can add the backup with just a couple lines of code.

As for a messagebox or other user prompt: I believe the majority of users would find it more annoying than helpful (given that there are users complaining about the 30-60ms that the current check adds, they would definitely complain about having to answer prompts for the langs and/or stylers/theme files). I am doubtful that @donho would want me to implement that – if he does, I could add it; but my guess is he’d say no to it.

I foolishly chose to set the colors

I think you’re being too hard on yourself.
The overall idea of the change is a good one and moves the Notepad++ code forward.
Sometimes it just happens that development takes 3 steps forward and 1 step back, for a net gain of +2. Thus, still a win.
Thank you for your contribution.

Sorry for the mess it has created. I highly recommend not triggering auto-update on this one.

No problem - as the author of theme system, I didn’t think of it while I was reviewing the PR either.

I should have the a PR today or tomorrow which will fix #17289

Take your time. It’s an annoying bug for sure, but I prefer that we think of every aspect to not run after another corner case after next release.

I understand what you wrote, but that still doesn’t explain the problem.

If it doesn’t explain the problem to you, then either you didn’t understand or I didn’t say enough.

PowerShell was just an example.

As it was for me.

Many of the themes are missing many of the languages, including Powershell. And even on the languages they do have, over time, new styles have been added to some of those languages. So your themes were missing many languages and many styles that Notepad++ supports. The reason that you didn’t notice in v8.8.8 and earlier is because the older versions of Notepad++ would just use the theme’s default FG/BG colors on any style or language that wasn’t defined… but it wouldn’t allow you to change them in the Style Configurator, because they would’t even be listed there. (For example, if you had originally installed v8.3.1 a couple years ago, and had upgraded through v8.8.8, you would not be able to use Style Configurator to set the IDENTIFIER or FUNCTION colors in Powershell, even though Notepad++ has supported those colors for a long time now.)

The new feature in v8.8.9 adds in those missing languages and missing styles, and that is working as designed. And with that, you can now set those colors to anything you want in the Style Configurator, as designed. The problem is that when it adds in the missing languages and styles, it had to pick a color of some sort… and I foolishly chose to set the colors to be the same colors that would be used in stylers.xml (ie, it matches the default light theme of Notepad++): this makes the jarring black-text-on-white-background for any of the languages or styles that were added into the theme by the new v8.8.9 feature.

Starting in the next version, if it finds a language or style entry that is missing from your theme, instead of using the light-theme’s equivalent color, it will populate any missing colors using your theme’s default FG/BG colors, so it will behave more like v8.8.8-and-earlier, but with the improvement that you will now be able to edit those previously-missing colors in the Style Configurator, and they will be saved in the theme file going forward (neither of which v8.8.8-and-earlier did for you).

Thank you for your reply. I understand what you wrote, but that still doesn’t explain the problem. PowerShell was just an example. This also applies to other languages, like Python. But anyway. Up to version 8.8.8, this problem didn’t exist. In this version, only ‘Black board’ causes problems, but all the other styles look good and don’t have the issues that were present in version 8.8.9.

Add ability to update users’ langs.xml & stylers.xml from model XML files.

Sorry for the mess it has created. I highly recommend not triggering auto-update on this one.

I should have the a PR today or tomorrow which will fix #17289

To be safe, I unpacked the portable version on a clean reference system, and the effect was immediately there. So it wasn’t an upgrade. The only style that works is ‘DarkModeDefault’

Replacing any files didn’t help. Even if I replace all files except for notepad.exe, nothing changes.

Only 12 of the 22 themes have Powershell defined: DansLeRuSH-Dark, DarkModeDefault, HotFudgeSundae, khaki, Monokai, MossyLawn, Navajo, Obsidian, Plastic Code Wrap, Solarized-light, Solarized, and Zenburn. So in the portable version 8.8.9, andy of those 12 should be colored reasonably.

Here are a few examples of powershell highlighting working in the portable:

But as you can tell by the entries, even in those screenshots, even if the theme defines powershell, it doesn’t always have all its styles defined for that language, and the v8.8.9 theme updater grabbed the colors from the default stylers.xml for the missing colors, which makes it jarring for many of the themes. (As I said, it was a bad decision on my part, and the next release should use a better default color, so things at least blend in.)

But all the style entries are there for you now, so you should be able to choose the theme you want to use when editing Powershell files, then go through each of the Style entries for Language: PowerShell: any that have a Background colour of White, you could either manually set to a color that fits with your theme, or you can right-click the Background colour box, and it will inherit the backgroud color from the theme’s Default background, which will be less jarring.

@donho After recent update there is some issue with Theme or Style as now, I see 1 White Column additionally between Margin & Line Number separator. Please see image. It actually makes look like as if something is missing & distracts attention.

It’s actually two columns (Bookmark margin and Change History margin), and it was missing information in your theme file; v8.8.9 tried to fill in the missing information, but I made a bad decision on what color values to use to populate the missing information for v8.8.9. (In the next version, it will hopefully make default color decisions that will be less annoying to people… but that won’t help anyone who has already run v8.8.9).

For your issue, the fix is easy enough: it looks like you are on khaki theme, so I will give example colors accordingly. The quick thing for those two columns is to go to Settings > Style Configurator, leave Language at Global Styles, and the Style: box,

1. scroll down to Bookmark Margin, click on Background Color and More Colors, and set the colors to Red=175, Green=175, Blue=135, then OK
2. scroll down to Change History Margin, click on Background Color and More Colors, and set the colors to Red=175, Green=175, Blue=135, then OK

But since there might be other colors missing from yours that might be jarring later, if you haven’t done a lot of color or user-keyword customization, what I recommend is to exit Notepad++, then use Explorer to go to %AppData%\Notepad++\: If there’s a themes\ subdirectory, delete khaki.xml from %AppData%\Notepad++\themes\. When you restart Notepad++, it will use the version of khaki.xml from the installation directory rather than from your AppData hierarchy, )(Notepad++'s installer overwrites the installation\themes*.xml when you install or upgrade, so that one should be up-to-date and include the correct values for those margins.)

[those instructions assume you have a “normal installation”, using the %AppData% hierarchy for settings and c:\program files\notepad++ for your installation directory; if you have a non-standard installation, files will be in a different location, and I’d need to see your full ?-menu’s Debug Info to give customized instructions.]

I also have problems with the styles here, depending on which file was opened (e.g., ps1):

To be safe, I unpacked the portable version on a clean reference system, and the effect was immediately there. So it wasn’t an upgrade. The only style that works is ‘DarkModeDefault’

Replacing any files didn’t help. Even if I replace all files except for notepad.exe, nothing changes.

It seems there is no way to solve the problem on my part; in any case, I can’t think of any further solution.

Have a nice day.

I wondered why you updated to an out-of-date version…

You actually updated to 3.12, in #17242 .

I don’t really understand how/why I did this error.
It’s too late for the release note, but at least it’s fixed in both:
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/downloads/v8.8.9/
&
https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/27298/notepad-v8-8-9-vulnerability-fix

Thank you for your heads up.

if the active theme has a dark background by default I could look up the Default Style’s foreground and background for that theme, and assign those as the foreground and background colors for all new style entries (so that all the new styles will be completely unnoticed by the user, and they won’t ever notice that the feature brought in the new styles).

I think it’s “the way to go”.

So the first makes it jarring, but noticeable; the second won’t be as jarring, but people might not know that they’ve got a lot of new style colors that they could set to their liking to get better highlighting in many languages (and a few new GUI colors).

The reason of “the way to go” is, if users don’t need to change anything, just let these features sleep.
As I said, a good tool is a tool transparent: user opens it, get jobs done, then closes it, without noticing or being bothered by anything unsual.

I could change it to the second: it’s a bit more effort, but it’s doable.

Thank you. Then it’ll be in the next release.

My Theme’s file size changed and my “first” load, however, displayed the “default” style and this confused/shocked me!
I copied over a backup of my Theme, the file size changed again, but now it works…

All fine now, it seems.
Sorry for my false positive!

My own theme file is overwritten every time I load it…
This just happens since Notepad++ was updated to 8.8.9.

Could you be more specific? v8.8.9 should update your theme to include any styles it is missing, but it does not delete any of your customizations.

But just to make sure, please explain in detail what your problem is: is your “own theme” just a customized version of one of the built-in themes? Do you put it in the AppData hierarchy, or in the Program Files hierarchy? Could you share your Debug Info? If it’s losing any of your custom colors that you’ve defined, could you show us the “before” and “after” – the whole file is too big to paste here, obviously… but if you can show us the section where your information was lost (so show what it was in the old theme, and then what it became in the overwritten theme), that would be helpful.

My own theme file is overwritten every time I load it…
This just happens since Notepad++ was updated to 8.8.9.

It worked flawless 8.8.9!
Means my own theme does no longer work with 8.8.9?

Nevermind, it works now!
Sorry for bothering you!

Update to nlohman json 3.11.3. (Update #15041 )

I wondered why you updated to an out-of-date version…

You actually updated to 3.12, in #17242.

@Denny-89 said in Notepad++ v8.8.9: Vulnerability-fix:

stylers.xml surprisingly stayed the same old version.

Not surprising, to me. The new feature updates the just the active theme, so if you’ve got any theme other than Default (stylers.xml) chosen, any changes will have been saved in the themes\XYZ.xml file, not in stylers.xml. Since you are using one of the dark themes, you would have to look at that theme’s file for the change date, not stylers.xml.

Thank you. I didn’t know the default dark theme is treated like a custom theme instead as a native color scheme like in other light/dark mode software, so i didn’t check the Style Configurator menu.

First i’ve changed just the history margin color, but then just decided to replace the whole themes folder with the one from 8.8.9 portable because there may be even more changes since May 2021 when my old DarkModeDefault.xml was created.

stylers.xml surprisingly stayed the same old version.

Not surprising, to me. The new feature updates the just the active theme, so if you’ve got any theme other than Default (stylers.xml) chosen, any changes will have been saved in the themes\XYZ.xml file, not in stylers.xml. Since you are using one of the dark themes, you would have to look at that theme’s file for the change date, not stylers.xml.