Getting the Most Out of Notepad++

[Zeus]

Wonderful - thanks for sharing. Doesn't seem to come out as vibrantly for me than on your screenshot - played with colours and fonts for a while but couldn't quite get it right for me. Which font are you using ?

Oh, and a small bug-ette is in the Plugins menu there is an FGII Lua Lexer -> About... option which crashes NPP for me. My workaround is simple though - don't click it

Thanks again,
Ben

I use Verdana. I may have also bolded some of the Style groups e.g. INSTRUCTION WORDS

Not sure why opening the About dialog is causing it to crash for you. Its just a simple MsgBox with some text, nothing more. Seems odd as it opens fine for me. Which version of NPP are you running. I'm on v5.8.6 (Unicode).

[phantomwhale]

I use Verdana. I may have also bolded some of the Style groups e.g. INSTRUCTION WORDS

Not sure why opening the About dialog is causing it to crash for you. Its just a simple MsgBox with some text, nothing more. Seems odd as it opens fine for me. Which version of NPP are you running. I'm on v5.8.6 (Unicode).

Here's a weird thing - retried the About dialog, and it works now. But when I click it, it also removes the 4-5 lines previous to where the cursor is sitting ?!?! A quick Ctrl-Z undoes the deletion, but that is VERY odd behaviour (NPP 5.8.6 Unicode as well).

Again, the workaround of not pressing it is fine !

[EDIT - solved my own problem here] Sorry, had a problem with comment highlighting, but realised I'd left a space between the -- and [[, and that the highlight colour for single line comments is a darker green that the block comments, a green so dark that my slight colour blindness could not really see it !

Ben

[Zeus]

Here's a weird thing - retried the About dialog, and it works now. But when I click it, it also removes the 4-5 lines previous to where the cursor is sitting ?!?! A quick Ctrl-Z undoes the deletion, but that is VERY odd behaviour (NPP 5.8.6 Unicode as well).

Again, the workaround of not pressing it is fine !

[EDIT - solved my own problem here] Sorry, had a problem with comment highlighting, but realised I'd left a space between the -- and [[, and that the highlight colour for single line comments is a darker green that the block comments, a green so dark that my slight colour blindness could not really see it !

Ben

That is indeed odd behaviour for the About window. I can't seem to reproduce it though, so until someone else rocks on up with the same problem I am going to have to assume its something local to your system. I haven't so far seen anything in the code to explain it, but then again I am quite new to C++ and NPP plugin behaviour, so who knows.

I'm glad the highlighting is corrected now. Happy trails.

[Zeus]

For those of you who are using my custom FGIILua lexer for Notepad++, take note that FunctionList v2.1 has been released and whilst its still a little unstable now and again, its working with Plugin based languages, including the FGIILua language the lexer uses.

What you need to do, to get it to work is as follows:

• Close NPP, if open.
• Download v2.1 of the FunctionList plugin from Sourceforge here
• Copy the v2.1 plugin files to the Plugins subfolder in the NPP Program Folder
• Now add the following Language Rule to the FunctionListRules.xml file in your users NPP app data folder (for me it was C:\Users\Zeph\AppData\Roaming\Notepad++\plugins\Co nfig) and save the file

<Language name="FGIILua" imagelistpath="">
   <CommList param1='&quot;' param2='&quot;' />
   <CommList param1="&apos;" param2="&apos;" />
   <CommList param1="--" param2="" />
   <CommList param1="--\[\[" param2="\]\]" />
   <Group name="FUNCTION" subgroup="" icon="0" child="0" autoexp="0" matchcase="1" fendtobbeg="" bbegtobend="\&lt;do\&gt;|\&lt;if\&gt;|\&lt;function\&gt;" keywords="">
        <Rules regexbeg="^[-\s]*function\s+" regexfunc="[\w_:.]+" regexend="\s*\([\w_,.\s]*\)" bodybegin="" bodyend="\&lt;end\&gt;" sep="" />
        <Rules regexbeg="^[-\s]*" regexfunc="[\w_:.]+" regexend="\s*=\s*function\s*\([\w_,\s]*\)" bodybegin="" bodyend="\&lt;end\&gt;" sep="" />
        <Rules regexbeg="^" regexfunc="[\w_]+" regexend="\s*=" bodybegin="\{" bodyend="\}" sep="" />
    </Group>
</Language>

Now restart NPP, open a FGII Lua script, set the Language to FGIILua and open the FunctionList window (if not open already). It should now list all the Functions in the script and operate as per the Lua language.

Note: Attempting to edit FunctionList language rules using the provided gui interface usually results in a NPP crash. The author is aware f the problem and is working on a fix. In the meantime I would suggest making changes to rules (if you need to that is) directyly via editing the FunctionListRules.xml file in your user app data folder.

[phantomwhale]

I followed the steps, but found no FunctionListRules.xml file in the user directory.

So I opened and closed NPP, and then a FunctionList.ini file appeared, but still no rules xml file.

So then I created a brand new FunctionListRules.xml file, copied in the data you provided, and tried loading up an FGII LUA script, setting my language to FGII Lua.

A quick press of ctrl+shift+alt+L bought up the function list sidebar, but it said no rules were defined.

Would play around to work out how to use the plugin, but the ever-crashing GUI makes it tricky. Do you have an example of a complete FunctionListRules.xml file I might copy, as perhaps the entry you've provided needs to sit within a larger block of XML ?

[SpudmanWP]

I use a portable version of NPP, found the "FunctionListRules.xml" file and made the changes.

No dice as it says "No Rule Defined" when I open the sidebar.

I will continue to test.

Thanks.

--edit--

I may have found the problem. The dates on those files are 2/17/2010.

Is it supposed to be newer?

[Zeus]

The should be a default FunctionListRules.xml file in the programs folder/plugins/Config, use that to first create the FunctionListRules.xml file in your user app data folder. You need to then add a copy of the block I defined above into the XML along with the other language definitions.

Aside from that you given you are running a portable version, find the Plugin/Config folder NPP is using to hold the definitions for configuration.

[Zeus]

--edit--

I may have found the problem. The dates on those files are 2/17/2010.

Is it supposed to be newer?

Yes. When NPP closes it should update the config xml files, therefore the modified date should be updated to the present date.

[Zeus]

Here's a screenie of what it should look like (if you edit the correct FunctionListRules.xml file):



You can see the file is set to the FGIILua language as the FGII specific global packages and one of my custom user packages is highlighted on line 17

[phantomwhale]

Ok, I got my default rules file in place, added in FGIILua block as shown, but was still only getting the plugin working with the Lua language, not the FGIILua language (it was still saying "No Rule Defined" on the panel when FGIILua language was loaded, whereas it says "100%" for Lua).

That said, it was "kinda" working; you could change the sort from A->Z to natural ordering, and the functions would appear.

Nonetheless, I googled around and found this forum post which basically advised me to go into Settings -> Preferences..., into the Language Menu/... tab and deselect "Make Language menu compact".

This fixed it up, and now it works as advertised. A quirk of FunctionList plugin, I'm guessing ?

So, great, another improvement to my FGII coding life ! Thanks Dr Zeuss for the useful tips. Better play with these for a while, and add my global functions into the lexer settings as I go.