The allure of an editor that actually does things I want it to without having to write the editor part has me devoting all my spare time to developing this plugin. I was going to use it myself for a while so I could present it feature complete and bug free but a scan of Notepad++, Scintilla, Dev-C++, and other forums relating to editors indicate that people want these features right away and editor authors are too busy on other things to get to them.
Besides, I'm hoping the wild extent of the already available functions gets all your minds in gear to think of even more crazy things that editors should have been doing all along. Even better, some will want to help out.
Unfortunately I never work with non ANSI character sets so I don't know how to develop these plugin functions for anything other than 8 bit ANSI. Someday soon when the code is more complete I'll let the source out and some UNICODE maven can go through and fix things up. I also primarily develop in C style languages so support for other languages will be noticably poorer.
ftp://isisbst.no-ip.com/PRIVATE/NPPTextFX.htm
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Firstly many thanks for developing this great plugin. I am writing to see if you could update the HTML Tidy component of the plugin. I ask as I came across a bug that causes name attributes to be added to anchors (in XHTML 1.1 so it renders the code invalid) and changes the doctype from XHTML 1.1 to XHTML 1.0 transitional. I went to file a bug and noticed there have been many filed previously for what I believe this exact issue. The responses I saw state this has been dealt with previously and to get the latest version of the HTML Tidy plugin. When I went to do this I found HTML Tidy is only available from the CVS? I then realised that it would need to be compiled within the TextFX plugin and so here I am.
Cheers again
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But i found one bug: isn't something big but...
The bug is in "Autoclose HTML <Tag>" feature.
Everything works fine in general, but there is one special case. When i type php start + end tags:
'<?php' or '<?' and '?>' and there is nothing in between them except whitespaces (spaces, tabs, and newline chars) - they are autoclosed.
Anyway, plugin looks very nice - it will be very popular.
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One thing that would be really handy is a tool dialog window that you can open (functionslist has one) which contains html elements as buttons.
If you press the button with <em> on it the <em> tag is opened. If you select text and then press the <em> button the text is prefixed by <em> and suffixed with </em>
There should also be a button to add images and hrefs with a dialog.
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By the way, I see that you're using the Dev-C++ IDE. So far, I have not been successful making a Dev-C++ project file for NotePad++ -- when I try to compile/link, I get a cascading set of errors that ends up exhausting my patience before I get the last one solved. If you have a working Dev-C++ project file for NotePad++, would you kindly share it?
Regards.
Greg
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>'<?php' or '<?
All the autoclosers are set up so a single undo will remove any unwanted automatic action. I have disabled <% for ASP and <?php. Perhaps I should disable it for all non alpha tags since <!-- will be autoclosed improperly too.
>There should also be a button to add images and hrefs with a dialog.
Initially I'll be adding prefab HTML templates with blanks or dummies where the pictures and text go.
>a working Dev-C++ project file for NotePad++
It's up on the page now. I have edited the two sample plugins to compile with Dev-C++, generally cleaned up the code, deleted the executables and intermediates for smaller distribution, made the code dual personality: .c & .cpp, and implemented a few of my trouble savers that allow you to develop large plugins without constant maintenance. I may have slightly broken VC++ compatibility at the same time but someone else can fix that.
I have also created Dev-C++ project file addons for Scintilla and Notepad++ which work well enough to get Notepad++ up and running though I haven't done any heavy work in the MinGW compiled versions to know if they are bug free. As warned, because MinGW does not provide dynamic linking, the Dev-C++ compiled versions are substantially larger.
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> All the autoclosers are set up so a single undo will remove any unwanted automatic action.
Ok, i can go for single undo for now.
> I have disabled <% for ASP and <?php. Perhaps I should disable it for all non alpha tags since
> <!-- will be autoclosed improperly too
Actualy - no. You should disable autoclose for all tags that starts with '<%', '<?', '<!' or '</' (if i manualy write the closing tag). Non alpha characters ARE possible in XML with namespaces (a colon), also it is perfectly legal to use '_' and '-' in XML tags, so i dont think that dissabling all non alpha tags would be a good idea.
Oh and, one more thing - could you rename that option to 'Autoclose HTML/XML tags' - because it works with XML too.
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The link is still up and I'm up to about 10 downloads per day so I know it works. Because it's an FTP link instead of an HTTP link, you may have your FTP PASV settings wrong. Turn PASV transfers on. The D-Link router usually handles FTP-PASV address injection properly.
It's on a ratty old Dell behind a cable modem so it may go down from time to time but it works most of the time. Over the last few days I've not written any new code but only performed the requested fixes but I've been hard at work porting mine and the original two plugins to all the compilers found in Code::Blocks in both C and C++ where applicable. Compatibility with every major compiler should minimize complaints. I know I was quite put off to find out that MSVC was the only project provided then really ticked when my first attempt at compiling in MinGW32 failed.
As noted in my sources not yet released, you are welcome to steal any and all plugins with source and integrate them into Notepad++. One catch though, I didn't write them in C++ because it makes no more sense to use C++ than other mishmash languagues that don't translate directly to assembly like Pascal and Visual Basic. strcpy() and sprintf() are what I like.
What's nice is that CodeBlocks offers Microsoft Visual C++ 2003 Toolkit Free as one of the compilers and now I have Notepad++ and Scintilla projects built for MSVC and MinGW32. MSVC compiles fast and the code size is about the same as the code size produced from your commercial compiler. It shouldn't be too long before I determine why MinGW executables are so much larger than MSVC executables. Any developers wanting to work on Scintilla or Notepad++ are free to develop in either compiler, perhaps even the rest of them if you get the ambition to fix up the code for them.
I'm disappointed I haven't received any more complaints or feature requests. There are lots of arbritrary buffer sizes I'd raise and restrictions that I'd relax if someone would show me where and why.
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> What's nice is that CodeBlocks offers Microsoft Visual
> C++ 2003 Toolkit Free as one of the compilers...
Yes, I saw your "Dev-C++ and CodeBlocks project addons", I'll test it and integret in the project as I have time.
> I'm disappointed I haven't received any more complaints or feature requests.
Please don't. The experience of developing Notepad++ project over 1 year tells me that if there's no bug, the users don't give the feedback, they just use it.
Don
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>I'm disappointed I haven't received any more complaints or feature requests.
Very modest of you to discount the possibility that the plugin is working pretty much perfectly as is. :-)
I'm sure I'm not the only one who is thrilled with the plugin, but who will need time to employ many of its features outside of the demo.
In addition, although this isn't why I haven't had more feedback for you yet, I might speculate that some wording in the plugin menus may reduce some feedback. That is, several of the menu group items have the suffix "(debug)", which to me suggests (perhaps incorrectly) that the developer may already be aware of some problems in those features. Thinking that, some users might be less inclined to report problems to avoid inundating you with superfluous reports.
Anyway, I'm sure the feedback will continue.
Regards.
Greg
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Select TextFX (debug) -> About and it explains why it is a debug version. There is a lot of extra checking going on to ensure that things are being calculated correctly to both prevent crashes and let me know what needs to be fixed. When I'm confident the routines work well then the debug stuff can be disabled.
As for features, they should all work though the language support may be less than desirable or extra features could be added that haven't been noticed. I know the menu layout is sloppy and the wording is not that great.
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1) There are many escape/unescape options in the menu, but some are missing:
I didn't find options to escape ' to \' and to unescape \' to ' (wich would be very useful for PHP developers).
2) I think it would be useful to have:
escape ' and " to \' and \"
unescape \' and \" to ' and "
3) I already reported the bug about writing <?php(some whitespaces here)?> - it is autoclosed as a regular html or xml tag.
4) Menu option Autoclose ({[brace]}) should be changed to "Autoclose ({[ brace" because it doesn't add opening brace when you write a closing brace.
5) I would like to suggest a feature for "Autoclose ({[ brace". Before this plugin, i was writing all braces myself, because Notepad++ didn't have this feature. Now, that there is a plugin that autocloses the braces for me - i still write the closing brace myself sometimes (you can call it a habbit). My code ends up having doulble closing brace... So i wanted to make a suggestion. Maybe, if "Autoclose ({[ brace" is on, you should check for the next character that user writes after the opening brace character - if it's closing brace - ignore it. For example:
i write (literaly):
if(
if()
with the "ignore closing bracket if autoclosed" option, in both cases i would have the same code:
if()
now, that there isn't such option, i get:
if()
if())
wich is bad.
Ok enough for today! Good luck man! Your plugin rocks - your sorting and escaping functions saved me and my co-workers a lot of time. Thanks!
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Hi. I like the general idea, but it's annoying that it automatically closes braces, brackets and HTML tags. It would be awesome if there was an option to make it not modify your text, but still have the functions it did. Thank you.
IntellEJent
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A config dialog is a bit hard for me. My only work interacting with screens and windows was all created for me by Borland C++ Builder and when you get use to that, having to mange it all yourself seems too silly to bother with. I'm not much of a Windows programmer.
As for autoclose braces, I've noticed that { doesn't put a } on the next line if there is text after it, such as inserting a { before a comment:
if (condition) /* insert a { before this comment */
Then I got to thinking that maybe some or all of the braces shouldn't be autoclosed if not at end-of-line. Which ones? I'm thinking all which I'll implement if that's OK. I'd rather not have yet another check mark for this.
Since I haven't made NPPTextFX into a Code::Blocks plugin in I unfortunately haven't been able to use NPPTextFX heavily during development. I mainly load and modify code with NPPTextFX when it is easier to load N++ than to do some tough transoform by hand.
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The link on top is still giving me the same error... I will try it on my home computer tonight... If it doesn't work, I will try using my FireFox, I will let you know the outcome.
-Doug
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The allure of an editor that actually does things I want it to without having to write the editor part has me devoting all my spare time to developing this plugin. I was going to use it myself for a while so I could present it feature complete and bug free but a scan of Notepad++, Scintilla, Dev-C++, and other forums relating to editors indicate that people want these features right away and editor authors are too busy on other things to get to them.
Besides, I'm hoping the wild extent of the already available functions gets all your minds in gear to think of even more crazy things that editors should have been doing all along. Even better, some will want to help out.
Unfortunately I never work with non ANSI character sets so I don't know how to develop these plugin functions for anything other than 8 bit ANSI. Someday soon when the code is more complete I'll let the source out and some UNICODE maven can go through and fix things up. I also primarily develop in C style languages so support for other languages will be noticably poorer.
ftp://isisbst.no-ip.com/PRIVATE/NPPTextFX.htm
Firstly many thanks for developing this great plugin. I am writing to see if you could update the HTML Tidy component of the plugin. I ask as I came across a bug that causes name attributes to be added to anchors (in XHTML 1.1 so it renders the code invalid) and changes the doctype from XHTML 1.1 to XHTML 1.0 transitional. I went to file a bug and noticed there have been many filed previously for what I believe this exact issue. The responses I saw state this has been dealt with previously and to get the latest version of the HTML Tidy plugin. When I went to do this I found HTML Tidy is only available from the CVS? I then realised that it would need to be compiled within the TextFX plugin and so here I am.
Cheers again
Thanks for a plugin.
Would like to ask to implement support MS-DOS OEM-866 of the coding.
There's only two words i can say... WOW DUDE! :O
But i found one bug: isn't something big but...
The bug is in "Autoclose HTML <Tag>" feature.
Everything works fine in general, but there is one special case. When i type php start + end tags:
'<?php' or '<?' and '?>' and there is nothing in between them except whitespaces (spaces, tabs, and newline chars) - they are autoclosed.
Anyway, plugin looks very nice - it will be very popular.
Great looking plugin.
Here's an idea for the webdevelopers edition
One thing that would be really handy is a tool dialog window that you can open (functionslist has one) which contains html elements as buttons.
If you press the button with <em> on it the <em> tag is opened. If you select text and then press the <em> button the text is prefixed by <em> and suffixed with </em>
There should also be a button to add images and hrefs with a dialog.
Great work, Chris. Thanks!
By the way, I see that you're using the Dev-C++ IDE. So far, I have not been successful making a Dev-C++ project file for NotePad++ -- when I try to compile/link, I get a cascading set of errors that ends up exhausting my patience before I get the last one solved. If you have a working Dev-C++ project file for NotePad++, would you kindly share it?
Regards.
Greg
>'<?php' or '<?
All the autoclosers are set up so a single undo will remove any unwanted automatic action. I have disabled <% for ASP and <?php. Perhaps I should disable it for all non alpha tags since <!-- will be autoclosed improperly too.
>There should also be a button to add images and hrefs with a dialog.
Initially I'll be adding prefab HTML templates with blanks or dummies where the pictures and text go.
>a working Dev-C++ project file for NotePad++
It's up on the page now. I have edited the two sample plugins to compile with Dev-C++, generally cleaned up the code, deleted the executables and intermediates for smaller distribution, made the code dual personality: .c & .cpp, and implemented a few of my trouble savers that allow you to develop large plugins without constant maintenance. I may have slightly broken VC++ compatibility at the same time but someone else can fix that.
I have also created Dev-C++ project file addons for Scintilla and Notepad++ which work well enough to get Notepad++ up and running though I haven't done any heavy work in the MinGW compiled versions to know if they are bug free. As warned, because MinGW does not provide dynamic linking, the Dev-C++ compiled versions are substantially larger.
> All the autoclosers are set up so a single undo will remove any unwanted automatic action.
Ok, i can go for single undo for now.
> I have disabled <% for ASP and <?php. Perhaps I should disable it for all non alpha tags since
> <!-- will be autoclosed improperly too
Actualy - no. You should disable autoclose for all tags that starts with '<%', '<?', '<!' or '</' (if i manualy write the closing tag). Non alpha characters ARE possible in XML with namespaces (a colon), also it is perfectly legal to use '_' and '-' in XML tags, so i dont think that dissabling all non alpha tags would be a good idea.
Oh and, one more thing - could you rename that option to 'Autoclose HTML/XML tags' - because it works with XML too.
Chris,
I'm just back from holidays, the link is not available anymore.
Could you point me out another link to download your plugin?
Thanks in advance
Don
The link is still up and I'm up to about 10 downloads per day so I know it works. Because it's an FTP link instead of an HTTP link, you may have your FTP PASV settings wrong. Turn PASV transfers on. The D-Link router usually handles FTP-PASV address injection properly.
It's on a ratty old Dell behind a cable modem so it may go down from time to time but it works most of the time. Over the last few days I've not written any new code but only performed the requested fixes but I've been hard at work porting mine and the original two plugins to all the compilers found in Code::Blocks in both C and C++ where applicable. Compatibility with every major compiler should minimize complaints. I know I was quite put off to find out that MSVC was the only project provided then really ticked when my first attempt at compiling in MinGW32 failed.
As noted in my sources not yet released, you are welcome to steal any and all plugins with source and integrate them into Notepad++. One catch though, I didn't write them in C++ because it makes no more sense to use C++ than other mishmash languagues that don't translate directly to assembly like Pascal and Visual Basic. strcpy() and sprintf() are what I like.
What's nice is that CodeBlocks offers Microsoft Visual C++ 2003 Toolkit Free as one of the compilers and now I have Notepad++ and Scintilla projects built for MSVC and MinGW32. MSVC compiles fast and the code size is about the same as the code size produced from your commercial compiler. It shouldn't be too long before I determine why MinGW executables are so much larger than MSVC executables. Any developers wanting to work on Scintilla or Notepad++ are free to develop in either compiler, perhaps even the rest of them if you get the ambition to fix up the code for them.
I'm disappointed I haven't received any more complaints or feature requests. There are lots of arbritrary buffer sizes I'd raise and restrictions that I'd relax if someone would show me where and why.
Very impressive plugin you made!
> It's on a ratty old Dell behind a cable modem so it may go down from time to time but it works most of the time.
Yes, it works now.
> As noted in my sources not yet released, you are
> welcome to steal any and all plugins with source and
> integrate them into Notepad++.
I would like to put this plugin on Notepad++ site download section :
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/download.php
As well include it in the installer.
Please let me know If it's ok with you.
> What's nice is that CodeBlocks offers Microsoft Visual
> C++ 2003 Toolkit Free as one of the compilers...
Yes, I saw your "Dev-C++ and CodeBlocks project addons", I'll test it and integret in the project as I have time.
> I'm disappointed I haven't received any more complaints or feature requests.
Please don't. The experience of developing Notepad++ project over 1 year tells me that if there's no bug, the users don't give the feedback, they just use it.
Don
>I'm disappointed I haven't received any more complaints or feature requests.
Very modest of you to discount the possibility that the plugin is working pretty much perfectly as is. :-)
I'm sure I'm not the only one who is thrilled with the plugin, but who will need time to employ many of its features outside of the demo.
In addition, although this isn't why I haven't had more feedback for you yet, I might speculate that some wording in the plugin menus may reduce some feedback. That is, several of the menu group items have the suffix "(debug)", which to me suggests (perhaps incorrectly) that the developer may already be aware of some problems in those features. Thinking that, some users might be less inclined to report problems to avoid inundating you with superfluous reports.
Anyway, I'm sure the feedback will continue.
Regards.
Greg
Select TextFX (debug) -> About and it explains why it is a debug version. There is a lot of extra checking going on to ensure that things are being calculated correctly to both prevent crashes and let me know what needs to be fixed. When I'm confident the routines work well then the debug stuff can be disabled.
As for features, they should all work though the language support may be less than desirable or extra features could be added that haven't been noticed. I know the menu layout is sloppy and the wording is not that great.
So you want some more feedback? Ok...
1) There are many escape/unescape options in the menu, but some are missing:
I didn't find options to escape ' to \' and to unescape \' to ' (wich would be very useful for PHP developers).
2) I think it would be useful to have:
escape ' and " to \' and \"
unescape \' and \" to ' and "
3) I already reported the bug about writing <?php(some whitespaces here)?> - it is autoclosed as a regular html or xml tag.
4) Menu option Autoclose ({[brace]}) should be changed to "Autoclose ({[ brace" because it doesn't add opening brace when you write a closing brace.
5) I would like to suggest a feature for "Autoclose ({[ brace". Before this plugin, i was writing all braces myself, because Notepad++ didn't have this feature. Now, that there is a plugin that autocloses the braces for me - i still write the closing brace myself sometimes (you can call it a habbit). My code ends up having doulble closing brace... So i wanted to make a suggestion. Maybe, if "Autoclose ({[ brace" is on, you should check for the next character that user writes after the opening brace character - if it's closing brace - ignore it. For example:
i write (literaly):
if(
if()
with the "ignore closing bracket if autoclosed" option, in both cases i would have the same code:
if()
now, that there isn't such option, i get:
if()
if())
wich is bad.
Ok enough for today! Good luck man! Your plugin rocks - your sorting and escaping functions saved me and my co-workers a lot of time. Thanks!
Hi. I like the general idea, but it's annoying that it automatically closes braces, brackets and HTML tags. It would be awesome if there was an option to make it not modify your text, but still have the functions it did. Thank you.
IntellEJent
Look through the menu options...In TextFX (debug) 2, turn off Autoclose.
Just like the braces, brackets, etc.
Would be nice if quotes could be autoclosed too.
And I know it's beta, but a config dialog would be nice too.
Rico
A config dialog is a bit hard for me. My only work interacting with screens and windows was all created for me by Borland C++ Builder and when you get use to that, having to mange it all yourself seems too silly to bother with. I'm not much of a Windows programmer.
As for autoclose braces, I've noticed that { doesn't put a } on the next line if there is text after it, such as inserting a { before a comment:
if (condition) /* insert a { before this comment */
Then I got to thinking that maybe some or all of the braces shouldn't be autoclosed if not at end-of-line. Which ones? I'm thinking all which I'll implement if that's OK. I'd rather not have yet another check mark for this.
Since I haven't made NPPTextFX into a Code::Blocks plugin in I unfortunately haven't been able to use NPPTextFX heavily during development. I mainly load and modify code with NPPTextFX when it is easier to load N++ than to do some tough transoform by hand.
I have tried to download this plugin from the above link and I get the following error:
Cannot view XML input using XSL style sheet. Please correct the error and then click the Refresh button, or try again later.
What do I need to do?
-Doug
It's too bad I must violate standards to please the non compliant Internet Exspyware. I've fixed it so IE renders properly.
Chris,
I am sorry to dissapoint you with my stock WinDoze lowly-IE, but it usually works fine.
I clicked the link again and I am still getting the same error. This is the complete error message I am receiving is below:
A semi colon character was expected. Error processing resource 'ftp://isisbst.no-ip.com/PRIVATE/NPPTextFX.htm'. Line 34, P...
-Doug
The lone ampersand is fixed. Maybe I should "Submit HTML to W3C Validator" more often?
Chris,
The link on top is still giving me the same error... I will try it on my home computer tonight... If it doesn't work, I will try using my FireFox, I will let you know the outcome.
-Doug
Worked at home... go figure.
-Doug
I don't have any meta tags and it's a static content page so your browser will cache it to the max. Ctrl-F5 in IE will force it to reload fully.