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  • Announcements regarding our community
    288 Topics
    5k Posts
    hdtythgd sgxgxvbH

    @PeterJones
    Thanks.

  • Frequently Asked Questions and Guides (about Notepad++ and this Forum)

    37 Topics
    62 Posts
    PeterJonesP

    You have likely found this page, or been directed to this page, because you were wondering about how to

    The list of Operating Systems (OS) that Notepad++ supports is published at https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/blob/master/SUPPORTED_SYSTEM.md

    There is a footnote regarding Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, both of which are officially unsupported: The last release of Notepad++ that worked on those ancient OS versions was Notepad++ v8.4.6. However, the footnote indicates, “The current version of Notepad++ built by GCC can be run under Vista & Server 2008”. Some users, who are interested in preserving historic computing, or have working hardware that is old enough to only be able to run such old OS, are confused by that statement, or wonder how they can get “the current version of Notepad++ built by GCC”. (Two examples of such posts are here and here.)

    When updates are pushed to the Notepad++ repository, a slew of versions are built, including some built by the GCC compiler instead of Microsoft’s compiler used by Visual Studio. Those versions are not used in the published releases of Notpead++, however, they are built from the same source code, so have all the same functionality.

    Main Steps

    The steps for installing the newest Notepad++ onto Vista or Server 2008 are as follows:

    Install the newest Notpead++ normally, or unzip the newest portable edition of Notepad++, noting whether you are using the 32-bit or 64-bit Notepad++. Verify that notepad++.exe doesn’t run on your computer. (If it does, you don’t need to follow the remaining steps.) Obtain the notepad++.exe built by GCC using one of the two sections below: Recent Release or Older Release Replace your installed or portable notepad++.exe with the executable downloaded in step 3. Run the replaced notepad++.exe, and verify it does run on your computer. Artifacts

    When the GCC builds are automatically run on the GitHub servers, the executables are kept for up to 90 days from the time of the build; however, that retention period is also influenced by how many artifacts a project generates: Notepad++ generates a lot of artifacts, so sometimes the artifacts for a release are not available for the full 90-day period.

    If the artifacts are still retained for the most recent release, then you can follow the procedure in Recent Release (below) to obtain the GCC-built executable. If those artifacts are gone, you will have to use the similar procedure in Older Release, though make sure you read that section thoroughly for unique .

    Recent Release Go to https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/releases/latest where it has the little -o- icon and 7-9 hex digits, click on that hex number
    2c11d2fe-18e2-4f48-b7d2-50e3ff54dc41-image.png It should have a green checkmark (or less likely, a red X): click it
    82185f3a-d05b-47c9-893c-1d2cfbac6305-image.png In the popup, click any of the Details links (it doesn’t matter which one)
    b116fae8-972b-4796-a0db-c3f4c3d97b88-image.png Click on the Summary button
    c5d81331-849f-4c5e-82aa-e57d54f088ce-image.png Scroll down to the Artifacts at the bottom of that Summary page, and pick the …GCC.i686.Release if you want 32-bit Notepad++, or …GCC.x86_64.Release if you want the 64-bit Notepad++
    0d0757f8-b8a1-4709-8c8b-05e5a237afe8-image.png That downloaded artifact will be a zipfile containing a single (unsigned) notepad++.exe

    Once you have unzipped the artifact, you can continue with step 4 in the Main Steps

    Older Release

    If the artifact from the most recent release is no longer stored in GitHub, you can instead grab the most-recent build. However, you need to understand that builds made since the most recent release have code in them that has never gone through the Release Candidate verification: it passes all the automated testing, but there may be edge cases that have not yet been found or fixed. One should only use the most-recent build instead of a release build when those risks are understood.

    Go to https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/actions and find the most-recent commit to the master, and click on that row. Look for the Artifacts at the bottom. Find the link with “GCC” in the name with the right version (64-bit is x86_64, 32-bit is i686, or ARM64) – assuming you have 64-bit Vista, then it would be Notepad++.GCC.x86_64.Release. Click the appropriate artifact, which will download a zipfile. Open the zipfile and extract the executable from it

    Once you have unzipped the artifact, you can continue with step 4 in the Main Steps

    Build Your Own

    The Notepad++ repository includes BUILD instructions for GCC, so if you follow those instructions, you can build your own GCC-based Notepad++ from the source code. You will obviously need the GCC compiler (you will have to find and install that on your own, as such a procedure is beyond the scope of this FAQ or this Forum).

    Once you have the GCC compiler ready, you can download the source code for Notepad++: it is up to you whether you want to download the source code from the latest release, which will give you a snapshot of the code at the time it was released; or whether you want to grab the most recent commit from the main development branch of the repo which can have code/features that have been added since the last release.

    Building your own copy of Notepad++ using GCC is intended for people with coding experience, and experience with GCC in particular, and who know how to use GitHub and git – if this doesn’t describe you, you may wish to gain experience before trying to build your own using GCC.

    Caveat: This is Unsupported

    Rememeber: using Notepad++ on Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 is not officially supported for new Notepad++ versions. If you can happen to get newer Notepad++ to work on those OS versions by following these instructions, that’s great for you.

    Otherwise, the best recommendation is to use an older version of Notepad++ that was officially tested on those operating systems – with v8.4.6 being the newest Notepad++ to be verified with those OS. Having been verified, it should work for you; however, there will never be any updates to the v8.4.6 code, so any bugs or security issues present in v8.4.6 will remain unfixed for you. (The same is true for most applications that stop supporting older OS, so this is not unique to Notepad++.)

  • Notepad++ discussions that don’t fit in other Categories

    4k Topics
    22k Posts
    PeterJonesP

    @pbarney said in Need clarification about "built-in" language lexers:

    But I just noticed that I don’t have the language file for Python installed.

    If you think it’s an individual file for each language, which “language file” are you talking about? I’ll come back to this point

    I must have deselected it on install. It’s not listed under Languages → P.

    Then, at some point, you probably went to Preferences > Languages and moved Python to Disabled Items. Note that when it’s in the Disabled Items list, it doesn’t actually disable that language from doing syntax highlighting, it just removes it from the visible Languages > … menu, to declutter your menu from languages you don’t use; if you open a file that has the right extension (like .py for Python files), then it will recognize it and automatically choose Python, even though you don’t see Python in the menu. You will notice, even in your current state, that Settings > Style Configurator’s Language pulldown still has Python available, and when you choose it, there are still colors defined for Python’s various styles.

    So I asked ChatGPT why,

    Why would you believe that atrocity?

    Scintilla’s underlying lexer library SciLexer.dll has it’s own built-in lexers that are available to NPP even if you don’t explicitly install them in NPP.

    Yes. And no. That random text generator only listed 53, but as is obvious from the user manual, there are around 90. So it’s underreporting by almost a factor of 2.

    then why would NPP even include language files for these languages?

    You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how Notepad++ and Scintilla work together.

    Scintilla – or, more accurately, Lexilla – provides the code (the logic) that does the lexing. Notepad++ decides which of the Lexilla lexers it enables from the library. Lexilla has many lexers which Notepad++ doesn’t enable; and Notepad++ can actually use the same lexer for many languages (if the lexer is designed that way; for example, XML and HTML and some others are all done by the same lexer) The langs.xml is used to define the default extensions for a language (the ones that show up in the Style Configuator’s Default ext.: box:
    1a5226fd-4204-4708-8d16-c896063858f0-image.png The langs.xml is also used to define the default lists of Keywords for some of the styles (like the KEYWORDS style in Python):
    d601bfd0-e210-43cf-8ba5-0d5d662814b9-image.png The stylers.xml or themes\<ThemeName>.xml is used to store which colors are assigned to each style for a given language The functionList\<languageName>.xml is used to determine what things show up if you have View > Function List panel visible The autoCompletion\<languageName>.xml is used to determine which keywords are available for easy auto-completion, and which function parameters are know for function-parameter auto-completion

    So, to sum up:

    there is no one “file” for a given built-in language you purposefully removed Python from the menu at some point (and presumably forgot about it), but that doesn’t disable the Python lexer, it just removes it from the menu you mistakenly believed a random number generator that “predicts” the next word in its response based on statistics on the words that came before could actually provide you with facts or truth. If you’re lucky, an LLM like ChatGPT might point you in the right direction – you just weren’t lucky
  • 10k Topics
    53k Posts
    mathlete2M

    @MidnightGarden in addition to the configuration the @Terry-R mentioned, I usually have the Type column visible in my File Explorer windows: when you sort the view by Type, all files of the same type (TXT, CSV, XML, HTML, etc.) are grouped together. You should also be able to search for a specific extension, though the files will likely be presented in a different manner than you’re used to seeing.

  • Technical discussion of building or contributing to Notepad++ or Plugin codebases

    1k Topics
    9k Posts
    Vitalii DovganV

    @Coises
    Yes.
    This is why CNppExec::convertSciText uses the actual Scintilla’s encoding nSciCodePage to convert Scintialla’s text to a desired encoding:
    https://github.com/d0vgan/nppexec/blob/develop/NppExec/src/NppExec.cpp#L2516

  • Security shouldn't be the privilege of rich people
    59 Topics
    267 Posts
    donhoD

    @MichellesCode

    The image that I am seeing. I wasnt able to get the URLs, apologies. I am based in US.

    If you happen to see them again, please send the link(s) to don.h@free.fr.

  • All the issues (publications/questions) about binary translation
    73 Topics
    465 Posts
  • Say fuck to Notepad++ here, and only here
    91 Topics
    520 Posts
    Walter CookW

    @Travis-Owens231 Thank You, Travis

    It’s like boycotting the Google because you don’t like the political views of your neighbor because he delivers mail to an executive the works for Google! I can promise you, if you lived like that you would never be able to use anything.

    I guess we better start checking the political opinions of whomever is administering each server between our computers and every site we visit!

    People, Just Chill!

    Walter Cook

  • No support request and bug report here, only unconditional praise and worship

    1 Topics
    3 Posts
    T

    @martaisty I agree, this is a pretty awesome idea! I actually forgot there was a war going on.

    I’m a new user of Notepad++ and I already love it very much, both the politics and the software itself.

    It’s nice to see Don Ho has provided several ways I can help stop this damn war.

    As he suggested, I wanted to donate to one of the reliable organizations “Dronators” which is to help Ukraine assemble an army of drones but that project is already over and it’s no longer possible to donate.

    Anyways, I don’t think they will need my $50 as the project has collected $1,443,157,017! Impressive, but the war didn’t stop, what a bummer!

    In the end I chose to donate to the National Bank of Ukraine which is reliable as it is the national bank of Ukraine. Don Ho says this is to “help people suffering” and funding the military always leads wars to stop, eventually.

  • Share personal tips and cool uses for Notepad++, and similar

    58 Topics
    217 Posts
    guy038G

    Hi, All,

    As many of you are probably planning your summer vacations, here is a website that should keep you entertained while you relax on the beach. Provided, of course, that you don’t forget your cell phone at home !

    https://regexcrossword.com

    To get the general purpose of this site, go first on the https://regexcrossword.com/about page

    And to whet your appetite, here is an example of puzzle to solve, which I have transcribed below :

    https://regexcrossword.com/challenges/palindromeda/puzzles/0eef9c22-d204-4704-81b6-86c556b242b1

    (ENT|NTE|NET)+ [WEAR]+ [R-Z]E+[M-R] (T|E|N)+ N E T (.)+W+\1 E W E [LENT]+ T E N

    Visit also the https://regexcrossword.com/howtoplay page

    Enjoy and happy holidays to everyone !

    Best regards,

    guy038

  • Computer/Programming Jokes are welcome here

    56 Topics
    179 Posts
    Lycan ThropeL

    @donho ,
    I’m not sure this is humor for it’s own sake, or a veiled attempt at sarcasm. Either way, I don’t want govenment, especially the UN in anything, period. :-)