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NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

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Re: NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

#231
post #5

Awesome. When I moved to linux a few years ago notepad++ was one of the harder apps to find a replacement for. I ended up sticking with Kate Edit: Kate is great, give it a shot!

https://kate-editor.org

Link for the lazy

Looks like an IDE more than a notepad, with the side bar browser, but then I suppose it's a small step up from NP++ (with syntax highlighting and ftp^W git support already built in) to a fully fledged programming environment. Spotted the all-important keyword "vi bindings" also. I should give this a try!

Bit sad it won't work on remote systems (without inefficient X forwarding at least), but I've been looking to try out a new editor and e.g. not having to deal with things like O timeout (apparently that looks indistinguishable from the start of an escape sequence and so the command line has to wait to see if the rest of the sequence follows) has advantages as well

Re: NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

#232
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, unfortunately it seems that the Scintilla codebase is far from async-ready which will make it a challenge to support new stuff like LSP. We might get tree-sitter parsing support, though.

What's LSP?

LSP (Language Server Protocol) a way for editors to talk to language tools to provide auto complete, warnings errors etc. this means the language tools can be written once and then any editor that has LSP support can use it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Server_Protocol

Re: NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

#233
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, unfortunately it seems that the Scintilla codebase is far from async-ready which will make it a challenge to support new stuff like LSP. We might get tree-sitter parsing support, though.

What's LSP?

Language Server Protocol.

It's more or less a way for standaline plugins/programs to provide language-specific functionality like autocompletions, syntax-highlighting, and diagnostic errors (like type errors) independently of a specific editor.

The idea is that standalone programs are made called language servers which can provide these features. Editors tend to communicate with them using JSON-RPC over stdin. So one can only write a language-specific parser once and integrate it with any editor.

Usually (at least in VS Code), there's a third part which is an editor-specific plugin which contains custom code to connect the editor to the language server, but this part is meant to be a thin layer.

Re: NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be the modern way, and normal on mobile apps, and I can't stand it. Why would I want the computer to save what I wrote without asking? I like being asked. I dislike computers trying to be clever.

This happened to me yesterday: I had to complete a resiliency test on our infrastructure and submit it to auditors for compliance reasons. I ran the tests, got the results, and I have to put it into a report. The report is like 30 pages long or more, but very little changes between each test (we do them quarterly). So I only usually change a few tables with the new report results, and freeflow some commentary in the…

That's really annoying, but not quite the same as what Notepad++ (and presumably others) do.

Notepad++ just saves a cached version of the file without touching the original until you explicitly hit "Save". If you close the file in Notepad++ (not exit Notepad++, but tell Notepad++ to close the file thus deleting the cache), it will ask whether you want to save your work.

Re: NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

#235
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but this is more general, allowing you to use it in more cases. For instance, I use it heavily when converting old JavaScript to modern ES/TS. Using "var" everywhere? Replace them all with let. Using anonymous functions instead of lambdas, easy to change those all over (provided there's no "this" dependencies) Have two thousand strings which all need the same edits? No need to do a find/replace operation, you can…

How do you select those two thousand strings?

Using VS Code: select whatever you want to match, then Ctrl+Shift+L

Re: NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

#236
post #12

honest question - why was there a need to start a new repo? Would you be ok to merge yours with notepad++'s official repo[0] (both are in c++). Did this cross your mind before and what happened? Not saying that they would allow but it'd help the community as a whole with less duplication of work and deliver more features. https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus

Was wondering the same. Of course a lot of code is going to need to be new, moving away from Windows-specific APIs, but that's only a lower layer (or so it seems to me). Everything from the versatile search and replace (e.g. regex engine), the macros system, the syntax highlighting, the session management... all that code needn't have been rewritten, people clearly like it working the way it is

Re: NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

#237
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I love npp, really all I need is sessions, tabs and spellcheck. Maybe a few other minor features. I've been wanting/meaning to make a new text editor using SciTE as a base, just adding in that core functionality that I need, but I haven't got around to it. If this NPN uses flatpacks I'm not really interested though. I want something super lightweight and fast that can be run as close to standalone as possi…

And formatting! Don't forget language-aware formatting and maybe even syntax coloring.

Very true, very important!

Re: NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I love npp, really all I need is sessions, tabs and spellcheck. Maybe a few other minor features. I've been wanting/meaning to make a new text editor using SciTE as a base, just adding in that core functionality that I need, but I haven't got around to it. If this NPN uses flatpacks I'm not really interested though. I want something super lightweight and fast that can be run as close to standalone as possi…

> I want something super lightweight and fast that can be run as close to standalone as possible. Unfortunately, I don’t really see how you could make a standalone GUI app of meaningful scope on Linux, given the platform that “standalone” is usually defined with respect to doesn’t include a widget toolkit or even a font handling library (it does on Windows). I guess going it alone with an OpenGL viewport would work,…

> Unfortunately, I don’t really see how you could make a standalone GUI app of meaningful scope on Linux, given the platform that “standalone” is usually defined with respect to doesn’t include a widget toolkit or even a font handling library (it does on Windows).

Fair point. I meant able to run without needing any special libraries above those that can be assumed to be installed on a standard linux desktop.

Re: NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

#239
post #202
post #197

Cool! Notepad++ was one of the apps that I missed the most when I switched to Linux. Besides games, it was the number one reason that I kept rebooting into another OS. After a while, I learned emacs, then vim, and the rest is history. Today, I would probably have switched to Codium. As long as we agree not to use Sublime Text anymore.

I transitioned recently to Mac on new job and I was surprised to find the most painful thing was not havig Notepad++ and was super amazed I did not find comparable software on Mac.

TextAdept is a cross platform, minimal, fast, and extensible text editor that might be a good candidate.

Re: NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

#240
post #5

Awesome. When I moved to linux a few years ago notepad++ was one of the harder apps to find a replacement for. I ended up sticking with Kate Edit: Kate is great, give it a shot!

Have you ever heard of https://cudatext.github.io/ . It's certainly faster than Kate.

it's much uglier though
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