Restore opened files between application restarts

[dail8859]

This is a first attempt at saving/loading a user's session between application restarts.

This feature is not enabled by default. This needs enabled through the preferences dialog.

This feature does not currently save temporary files (that will come later). This base functionality is needed before temporary files can be properly saved/loaded.

TODO:

• Make sure new files don't get named the same as existing files. E.g. since New 1 can be loaded from the session, File > New would then also create New 1
• Allow to files with the same name to be stored in the session. C:\dir1\test.txt and C:\dir2\test.txt both get saved as text.txt and will overwite each other.
• Remove commented out code

[mikelupe]

Very nice, will be my daily driver - thanks for your efforts.

One situation ("bug"):
0. Fresh start, no sessions apart "New 1"

1. "New 1" > type some text > "Save as.." test.txt
2. Double click to create a new tab > "New 1" > type some text > close NotepadNext w/o saving
3. Relaunch NotepadNext ; State: one tab "test.txt" (red with content), one tab "New 1" (red with content)
4. Again double click to create a new tab > "New 1" (blue empty)
5. On close and reopen, only the last "New 1" is kept, the original "New 1" (red) is ~overwritten

Basically: As long as a "New X" tab hasn't been saved, the next increment of new still is "New X", so no increment :)
I hope it's reproducable

kind regards

[dail8859]

@mikelupe Thanks for testing it out!

1. "New 1" > type some text > "Save as.." test.txt
2. Double click to create a new tab > "New 1" > type some text > close NotepadNext w/o saving

Just to make sure, in step 2 wouldn't it be "New 2" since the "New 1" document was already saved?

---

But yes this is one of the bugs, that you can't have two files with the same name currently. A couple points to this:

• If New 2 (or any other temp file for that matter) is loaded, then a new tab (e.g. File > New) should never be named that, so some logic would need added to keep incrementing the number in the name until one is found that doesn't exist.
• The same thing will happen if you have C:\dir1\test.txt and C:\dir2\test.txt since they both tried to get saved in the session folder both as test.txt. I've got an idea to fix this.

[mikelupe]

Just to make sure, in step 2 wouldn't it be "New 2" since the "New 1" document was already saved?

It is again "New 1", as the old "New 1" previously had been saved as "test.txt" in step 1

Thanks again for your effort, this will be epic :)

[mikelupe]

I checked your latest commit:

I had to remove the rm ~/.config/NotepadNext/NotepadNext.ini , otherwise I got a segfault :)

Unfortunately now it generates a "New 2" but then later on again another "New 2". Almost there

[dail8859]

otherwise I got a segfault :)

Yeah that makes sense, but would indicate some better error handling is needed incase the settings file gets modified or corrupted.

Unfortunately now it generates a "New 2" but then later on again another "New 2". Almost there

Yep the root issue was fixed so that even if you have two New 2 temp files they won't overwrite each other. Still need to fix the file name incrementing to prevent this.

Just curious since you are on a non-Windows machine, where exactly does it save the session files too? I'm assuming something like ~/.config/NotepadNext/NotepadNext/session/? I've only tested it on Windows.

[mikelupe]

I see, nice.

Re location - I had to find it first :) It saves it to "~/.local/share/NotepadNext/NotepadNext/session/" . so $HOME/.local/...

[dail8859]

It saves it to "~/.local/share/NotepadNext/NotepadNext/session/" . so $HOME/.local/...

Hmmm, ok. The Qt documentation for standard paths is a bit fuzzy, so it saved to a semi-sane location on Windows but didn't know what that would look like on other systems.

[mikelupe]

I think that's quite legit. ~/.config/NotepadNext/session/ would be ok as well. Eventually a config setting with the recent defaults could make sense.

But at the end of the day ~/.local/share/.. is ok, as it's nothing a user would ever like to move to another machine :)

edit: or rather: "It can be totally irrelevant to the user".

[mikelupe]

Nice

[mikelupe]

Thanks for your speedy work, and for the mention :) The latest build is becoming my driver.

There is one thing though, double clicking generates incremented "New X", but if closed w/o saving, on a new creation it still increments - so create "New 2" > close "New 2", create a new one gives "New 3" > close w/o saving > create a new one gives "New 4" etc.

Would it be easy to check on this, even if it's not really a show-stopper? It would make it even more consistent.

[dail8859]

There is one thing though, double clicking generates incremented "New X", but if closed w/o saving, on a new creation it still increments - so create "New 2" > close "New 2", create a new one gives "New 3" > close w/o saving > create a new one gives "New 4" etc.

This is actually a preexisting bug (not sure if this PR made it worse or not) but even in the official v0.5.6 release I can recreate it by:

1. Start a fresh instance, which just contains New 1
2. File > New creates New 2
3. File > Close All closes files and creates New 3
4. Repeat step 3, creates New 4 etc.

This was one of the bugs I ran across and thought I introduced it with these changes but there is at least some not-desirable behavior that already exists. Appreciate you testing things and providing feedback!

[mikelupe]

Let's be frank, It's not really a bug, maybe just some polishing.

Something else, would a dark mode be a lot of work? But this would extend it over original Notepad++'s features.

Thanks again for your work

[dail8859]

Let's be frank, It's not really a bug, maybe just some polishing.

Agreed

Something else, would a dark mode be a lot of work?

Yes and no. Getting something basic is easy, to really polish it would probably take a bit of time. There may be existing 3rd party dark theme css files that would work well but I haven't tested them. You can load custom css files: see #171 (comment)

Not something I'll be working on myself any time soon.

There are other non-Windows systems that have Qt theming built-in so it carries over to Notepad Next: #109 (comment)

[mikelupe]

Thanks for the hint.

As it's mainly about the editor background that would need to be dark, I'll be waiting. There really is no hurry.