Direct calls to Scintilla

Some one asked me recently how to work with Scintilla directly and I wanted to write a simple example to explain that. But I understood it is difficult to do without knowing how jN and Scintilla are woking internally. For Scintilla there is very good documentation page. This page should do this for jN.

Prerequisites

Encoding

Keep in mind that scintilla works with UTF-8 encoded strings and jN uses MultiByte strings (constraint of used Scripting Engine). Hence every time you need to provide a string to Scintilla you have to convert it to UTF-8 first.

Wrapper

I have begun a simple wrapper around scintilla ([scintilla.js](../blob/master/deploy/[Notepad%2B%2B Directory]/plugins/jN/lib/Scintilla.js)). Today it contains collection of constants and one method Call. The constructor expects a handle of scintilla's window. In our case it is handle property of view.

   var sci = new Scintilla(currentView.handle);
   var bytesOfDoc = sci.Call("SCI_GETLENGTH", 0, 0);
   alert(bytesOfDoc);

Snippets

How to show autocompletition list box

The next example shows how to prepare entries of autocompletition list and show them.

(function(){

require("lib/scintilla.js")
require("lib/Kernel32.dll.js")

function toUtf8(str){
	// determine necessary count of bytes 
	var newlen = Kernel32.WideCharToMultiByte(65001, 0, str, str.length, 0, 0, 0, 0); // 65001 means UTF-8

	// prepare buffer
	var buf = Kernel32.NativeLibrary.alloc(newlen+1); // returns javascript string of newlen+1
	Kernel32.NativeLibrary.writeByte(buf, newlen, 0); // terminate encoded string with 0

	// encode string as UTF-8
	var reallen = Kernel32.WideCharToMultiByte(65001, 0, str, str.length, buf, newlen, 0, 0);
	return buf;
}

showAutoComplete = function(arr){ // Global scope
	var sci = new Scintilla(currentView.handle);

	var currentSep = String.fromCharCode(sci.Call("SCI_AUTOCGETSEPARATOR",0,0));
	var list = arr.join(currentSep);
	var listEncoded = toUtf8(list); // because Scintilla is working internally with UTF-8 
	
	sci.Call("SCI_AUTOCSHOW", 0, listEncoded);
}
})();

showAutoComplete(["hello","world"])

Be aware it is only an example without taking care about sort order, escaping of separator and so on. Read the documentation first :)

Folding of foldable region

Following code snippet shows how to fold a foldable region using javascript.

require("lib/Scintilla.js") // do it only once 
var sci = new Scintilla(currentView.handle);

// following call folds region beginning at line 17
sci.Call("SCI_TOGGLEFOLD", 17 - 1, 0);

Learn more from Scintilla documentation.

Retrieve "Is Modified" flag of current file

Following code snippet shows how to get information if current document in first view is modified.

require("lib/Scintilla.js") // do it only once 
var sci = new Scintilla(firstView.handle);

var modified = sci.Call("SCI_GETMODIFY", 0, 0);

alert("modified "+(modified != 0))

Due to get collection of modified files one should iterate over all opened files of view, activate them temporarily and call "SCI_GETMODIFY".

Scroll line with cursor into visible view

Following code snippet scrolls view until the line with caret is visible

require("lib/scintilla.js") // do it only once 

var sci = new Scintilla(currentView.handle);
sci.Call("SCI_SCROLLCARET", 0, 0);

Documentation SCI_SCROLLCARET

Change font rendering technology

Following code snippet switches the font rendering technology of the current view. The change happens between two alerts. I can recognize the difference between them and I like the default one :).

require("lib/scintilla.js") // do it only once 

var sci = new Scintilla(currentView.handle);
alert("Previous redering technology " + sci.Call("SCI_GETTECHNOLOGY", 0, 0));
sci.Call("SCI_SETTECHNOLOGY", Scintilla.prototype.Const.SC_TECHNOLOGY_DIRECTWRITE, 0);
alert("New redering technology " + sci.Call("SCI_GETTECHNOLOGY", 0, 0));

Documentation SCI_SETTECHNOLOGY