NppFileSettings

NppFileSettings is plug-in for Notepad++ that tries to recognize VIM modelines and adjust settings for that file accordingly.

Currently supported

Support for VIM modelines

• tabstop, ts: set the width of tabstops
• expandtab, et: tab key produces spaces
• noexpandtab, noet: tab key produces tabs
• filetype, ft, syntax, syn: specify the syntax highlighting used for the file
• fileformat, ff: force the line ending to unix, dos or mac.
• fileencoding, fenc: support the following file encoding, based on the vim docs
  • latin1
  • utf-8
  • utf-16
  • utf-16le

Planned

• Support more VIM modelines options, if possible
  • wrap and nowrap to wrap or don't wrap lines
  • textwidth, tw (at what column does the text wrap, default to SCI_GETEDGECOLUMN)
  • shiftwidth, sw can probably be mapped to SCI_SETINDENT
  • spell and nospell to enable or disable the spelling check
  • spelllang to set the spelling language

The wrap options need some work. This is a global setting in Notepad++ and it needs to be preserved when switching between files.

The DSpellCheck plugin first needs to have an API to support the spell check related properties.

Not planned

vim modeline encoding

There will be no support for encoding in vim modelines, which is different from fileencoding, because the vim documentation clearly states

This option cannot be set from a |modeline|. It would most likely corrupt the text.

Notepad++ modeline format

I have no intention to create yet another modeline variant especially for Notepad++. There are already too many of them.

Wish List

• Support the modeline concept found in other places

  • Emacs File Variables, see #3
  • Kate Editor
  • Sublime Text
  • jEdit
  • PEP 263, see #4

• Add a dialog to show which settings are active for the current document.

• Modeline Generator to add a modeline, compatible with your editor of choice, to the current file or edit the existing one.

Caveats

• Every time a file is activated (like when switching tabs), the plug-in will do its thing, not just when the file is opened. When a file is saved the plug-in is not activated (yet).

• The modeline parser is very basic. The fact that this plug-in recognizes something doesn't mean it is valid for vim. So when you add a modeline be sure to check its syntax with the real thing.

• If your vim doesn't recognize the modelines, you probably need to enable it. Add these lines to ~/.vimrc:

  set modeline
  set modelines=5

Known Issues

• This plug-in could cause unexpected results if you use it together with the EditorConfig plug-in. When both plug-ins are installed and a .editorconfig file exists and sets tabs and a VIM modeline with tab settings is opened, it depends on the order the are found in the Plugins menu of Notepad++ which plug-in does its thing first. To fix this these two plugins need to become aware of each other most likely with the message NPPM_MSGTOPLUGIN. EditorConfig should be applied first (global) and the modeline after that (local).

History

This plug-in used to be called NppFileMagic. It was also able to set the language of a file based on the first line of the file. But since v6.8.4 Notepad++ recognizes many languages by itself by parsing the first line of a file. The detection was not that great, so I contributed some of my code and knowledge upstream and now that part of the plug-in was not needed anymore. Therefore I decided to remove that code and rename to plug-in.