#2424 SciTE v5.4.0 - Only Sc1 has "Markdown" as a language

[Olav R. Birkeland]

I tested SciTE v5.4.0 to see how far the markdown highlighting has come, and observed that only Sc1 ( https://www.scintilla.org/Sc540.exe ) had "Markdown" as an option for language, SciTE ( https://www.scintilla.org/wscite540.zip ) did not.

Screenshots attached.

[Olav R. Birkeland]

This seems to be the case with v5.3.9 ( https://www.scintilla.org/wscite539.zip ) too, so not a recent regression.

While the unofficial Flathub version ( https://flathub.org/apps/org.scintilla.SciTE ) v5.3.9 on Pop!_OS has markdom as an option.

[Neil Hodgson]

I don't see this myself with 5.4.0.

Its possible this is due to changing properties.

[Neil Hodgson]

The set of properties files excluded is set with imports.exclude so examine the value of this property by executing something like echo $(imports.exclude) in the output pane. If this list includes "markdown" then that is the cause. "markdown" was removed from the distributed imports.exclude 19 months ago. Check that your SciTEGlobal.properties gets updated and that there is a markdown.properties file present in the same directory

[Olav R. Birkeland]

This list did not include markdown for me.

echo $(imports.exclude)
>echo abaqus ada asciidoc asl asn1 au3 ave avs baan blitzbasic bullant caml cil cmake cobol coffeescript csound d dataflex ecl eiffel erlang escript flagship forth fortran freebasic fsharp gap haskell hex hollywood inno kix latex lot lout maxima metapost mmixal modula3 nim nncrontab nsis opal oscript pov powerpro ps purebasic r raku rebol rust sas scriptol smalltalk sorcins spice specman tacl tal txt2tags verilog vhdl visualprolog
abaqus ada asciidoc asl asn1 au3 ave avs baan blitzbasic bullant caml cil cmake cobol coffeescript csound d dataflex ecl eiffel erlang escript flagship forth fortran freebasic fsharp gap haskell hex hollywood inno kix latex lot lout maxima metapost mmixal modula3 nim nncrontab nsis opal oscript pov powerpro ps purebasic r raku rebol rust sas scriptol smalltalk sorcins spice specman tacl tal txt2tags verilog vhdl visualprolog
>Exit code: 0

[Neil Hodgson]

Is there an Open markdown.properties entry in the Options menu or a markdown.properties file in the same directory as global options?

[Olav R. Birkeland]

Neither actually. Just downloaded 5.4.1, same there.

[Neil Hodgson]

Examining https://www.scintilla.org/wscite541.zip with the Windows built-in ZIP viewer or expanding it shows a markdown.properties for me.

[Olav R. Birkeland]

Yes, the markdown.properties file exists, but Markdown is not an option in neither:

• Toolbar -> Language
• Toolbar -> Options

[Olav R. Birkeland]

I used "Process Monitor" from SysInternals and saw that when I launched SciTE from the newly extracted downloaded ZIP on my desktop, it loaded some data from %ProgramData%\SciTE%, rather than from the same directory I ran SciTE from. Looks like some leftovers from previous testing, maybe with the unofficial SciTE MSI installer from ebswift.com. But it was years ago, I don't remember.

After I deleted said directory, Markdown is now an option in SciTE.

Is this intended behavior?

[Neil Hodgson]

Is this intended behavior?

The behaviour of the ebswift.com installer is defined by them. It may produce an environment with directory overrides for SciTE in the registry. Its difficult-to-diagnose behaviour like this that discourages me from developing an installer.

[Michael Heath]

After I deleted said directory, Markdown is now an option in SciTE.

@Olav,

I hope you actually uninstalled. As the uninstaller does remove some entries of concern that may cause future problems.

The installer sets both SciTE_USERHOME and SciTE_HOME in the environment. The uninstaller removes these entries. If they are still there, then I doubt you uninstalled from years ago. These Environmental Variables may affect SciTE.exe located anywhere on the system as being set in the registry. As the installer adds a contextmenu handler and such, I will not give any advice less then to uninstall it properly.

You can check the environment of SciTE in Windows by typing set into the output pane and press return key to check if the names SciTE_USERHOME or SciTE_HOME exist.

As for scite-5.4.1x64.msi from ebswift.com that I tested, it is missing markdown.properties, so it seems the install script is old and may not include the latest of files added to SciTE. It is also missing raku.properties as just checked with a SciTE local repo. So the author of the msi can do some updating with their install script. The permissions of %ProgramData%\SciTE is granted to the user and denied for admin which is not normal inheritance so gives the user the ability to delete modify the installed folders contents, a concerning thought with the initial quote.

[Olav R. Birkeland]

Yeah, you're right. Wrongful assumption on my part, as I also found a directory inside %appdata% that said it was from 2019.

I uninstalled it, yes. Delete got blocked. So there were some env vars that redirected, got it. Will use the official version instead then.