Welcome to IndentByFold documentation!¶

Contents:

Introduction¶

IndentByFold is a plug-in for Notepad++. It uses fold points to indent the code. So if the fold level increases or decreases, so should the indentation.

Installation Note¶

For the plug-in to work properly it is important to disable Notepad++’s built-in Auto Indent. Go to Settings - Preferences - MISC and untick Auto Indent.

History¶

In May 2011 Ben Bluemel released the first version of the IndentByFold plug-in. He released three version, up till 0.7. But since then he switched away from Notepad++ and stopped developing his plug-ins. In April 2013 Frank Fesevur took over the maintenance of the plug-in.

Frequently Asked Questions¶

Q: The plug-in works beautifully for HTML, but I couldn’t get it to work for Python. I open a new file, set the language to Python, start typing - no indenting. I use the Reindent File command - no indenting. What can I do to make it work?

A: Python has a bit of a conflict here, Python’s fold points are generated dependent on indentation, and this plug-in is dependent on fold points to know how to do the indentation. Not really much I can do about this I’m afraid. That’s why Reindent File is disabled for Python.

Q: In CSS, } brackets don’t indent left like they do in the C-styled languages. Between <style> tags in HTML, indentation doesn’t happen at all.

A: This is an issue with the CSS lexer in Scintilla [1], rather than in IndentByFold. It’s inconsistent in that it sets the next line’s fold level to be the same as the current.

Q: The Reindent File command doesn’t always work.

A: I investigated this quite thoroughly and think it has to do with caching in Scintilla [1] or Notepad++ itself, although I obviously don’t want to rule out that it is something in the plugin. See issue #2 for more details.

The easy work-around is to go to the last line of your file, run the command Reindent File from there and see that your file is reindented as expected.

Q: The plugin indents wrong in certain if else situations in various languages

My (JavaScript) code looks like this:

function myFunction(args) {
    if (checkSomething(arg)) {
        doSomething(arg);
    } else {
        doSomethingElse(arg);
    }
}

But after a Reindent File is looks like this:

function myFunction(args) {
    if (checkSomething(arg)) {
        doSomething(arg);
        } else {
        doSomethingElse(arg);
    }
}

TL;DR: Scintilla doesn’t understand your code style and it’s unlikely that I will fix it.

A: The whole idea of IdentByFold is to use the folding points that Scintilla [1] recognizes and tell Notepad++ to indent the code at those points. This makes the plugin almost completely language independent! When you look at the [+] or [-] in the left margin you can see want those parsers thinks are folding points.

All the points mentioned in the various question I got those folding point don’t exist in the situations mentioned. There simply is no [+] or [-] at those lines.

There are two solutions to this issue. The best would be that the folding points recognition by Scintilla is improved. This is an upstream fix for Scintilla that I don’t intend to develop.

The other is that the plugin will need to get languages specific solutions for those languages that can recognizes this special cases and work around the limitations of Scintilla. And I don’t see myself doing that any time soon.

To give a little background. The plugin was originally developed by Ben Bluemel in 2011. He abandoned it a little later and all I did was make sure it is still around today because I like it the way it is. It suits my coding style and it works good enough for me. The code has changed very little, in its core it is still Ben’s code. It doesn’t have much comment and there are many points in the code where I haven’t got a clue what exactly is happening.

I really need to dig in to try and solve a problem that I never run in to myself because I don’t use that code style or those languages. Knowing that I have many other projects (online and offline) that need my attention I don’t see that happen any time soon.

That all being said, I understand your problem. I will obviously gladly review and merge pull requests that solve these problems. See issue #1 for more details.

Know that when your style look like this, everything works as expected. Note that the } is not on the same line as a {.

function myFunction(args) {
    if (checkSomething(arg)) {
        doSomething(arg);
    }
    else {
        doSomethingElse(arg);
    }
}

[1]	(1, 2, 3) Scintilla is the source code editing component that Notepad++ is built around.

Building IndentByFold¶

To compile IndentByFold you can use Visual Studio. Project files for VS2019 are provided and actively used. Visual Studio Community Edition is enough to get the job done.

There is also a MinGW-w64 makefile, using both their 32-bit and 64-bit compilers. It can be used from Cygwin, MSYS2 and on Linux (including WSL).

Know that the MinGW version of the DLL can’t be loaded in Notepad++. For some reason Notepad++ says the DLL is not compatible.

Building the documentation¶

The documentation of IndentByFold is written in reStructuredText and hosted on Read The Docs.

To build you need Python Sphinx and the Sphinx RTD Theme.

You can build it with native Python Sphinx on Windows, WSL or Cygwin.

Use make html in the docs directory to generate the documentation. Other forms of output are not used, but might work.

You can also build it is use the included Dockerfile.

Run docker build -t python-sphinx . to build the image and use docker run --rm -ti -v "%CD%":/docs python-sphinx make html to build the docs.

Wish list¶

Reindent a selection.
Integrate Python Ident plugin
Check if the Auto Indent checkbox in the Notepad++ settings has been unchecked. Use TinyXml2 to parse the config.xml file and check <GUIConfig name="MaitainIndent">.
Maybe add a menu item to see if the plug-in is active. Depends on checking the Auto Indent checkbox.
Sometimes the plug-in changes a file after opening it. Not sure when that happens exactly.

Contact¶

The plug-in’s web page can be found at https://github.com/ffes/indentbyfold/. The downloads and issue tracker can be found there as well.

If you have problems with, questions about or suggestions for IndentByFold and you want to contact me directly, you can send me an email at fesevur@gmail.com

License¶

This plug-in is published under the GPL-2 license. See GNU General Public License for the full license agreement. You can find the sources of the latest version or the lastest developments at GitHub.

Changelog¶

Next Version (YYYY-MM-DD)¶

Added a FAQ item that the plugin indents wrong in certain if else situations in various languages.
Added a FAQ item that the command Reindent File fails in certain situations.

Version 0.7.3 (2019-11-10)¶

Fix how version numbers were retrieved. In the v0.7.2 DLLs it still said v0.7.1. Now the version numbers are completely based upon the git repository. The version in the documentation still need to be updated manually, but that is probably not possible due to the automatic processing by Read The Docs.

Version 0.7.2 (2019-11-07)¶

Provide a 64-bit version of the plug-in.
Converted the documentation from DocBook to reStructuredText. The documentation is now hosted at Read The Docs.

Version 0.7.1 (2013-04-17)¶

Frank Fesevur has taken over the maintenance of this plug-in.
Fixed: Reindent file is now one undo action.
Fixed: Disabled Reindent File for Python, see the FAQ for more details.
Restructured the source files to personal preference.
Solution files for VS2005 are provided as well.
Started to write documentation using DocBook. This is the first result. The current FAQ is based upon issues posted on Ben’s BitBucket page. The revision history until version 0.7 was taken from the forum post about this plug-in.

Version 0.7 (2011-09-18)¶

This release fixes issues with certain lexers that notify on the following line (Ruby, HTML, Lisp, Lua, Pascal, XML). For these lexers you need to have a line following the one you are typing on.
The following screencast shows it in use and how it works: http://screencast.com/t/tUD2nfeLX

Version 0.6 (2011-06-19)¶

This changes IndentByFold to more heavily rely on the SC_MOD_CHANGEFOLD notification from Scintilla.

This means that when you end a fold (e.g. with a } ) it will unindent to the same level as the start of the fold.
One Bonus feature of this handles } else {, in that it will unindent at the }, and when you have else {, it will know that the fold has increased again, so will on the next line increase the indent.

NOTE: This can only do it in one go (i.e. you can’t go onto a line with }, and type in else {, and expect it to be indented on the next line, as it won’t have known that it unindented for the }. I may be able to work around this at some point, so we shall see, but hopefully not too much of an issue.
Same goes for the Reindent file, because it doesn’t actually have a logged decrement of the fold at } else {, it looks to the reindent code that it’s remained at the same level ( so won’t decrement the indentation for } else { )

Version 0.5 (2011-05-21)¶

Idea behind this plug-in is rather simple, if the fold level increases or decreases, so should the indentation.
Using C-like languages as an example:

Typing in { and pressing enter, will mean the line you are now on, has 1 more level of indent than the {.

Typing in } and pressing enter, will match the indentation of { line, so the } is now lined up properly.
There is also an option in the plug-in menu to reindent the file based on the fold levels.

GNU General Public License¶

Preamble¶

The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software - to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation’s software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too.

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.

To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.

For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.

We protect your rights with two steps:

copyright the software, and
offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.

Also, for each author’s protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors’ reputations.

Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone’s free use or not licensed at all.

The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION¶

Section 0¶

This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The “Program”, below, refers to any such program or work, and a “work based on the Program” means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term “modification”.) Each licensee is addressed as “you”.

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Section 1¶

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NO WARRANTY Section 11¶

BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

Section 12¶

IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS