Notepad++ Changed Lines

Author: Michael J. Vincent

Description

Taken from Location Navigate: https://sourceforge.net/projects/locationnav/

Original

This plugin basically replicates the change markings in the margin and a simple circular stack to track places in the document where navigated to. The original Location Navigate plugin was causing crashes for me in 32-bit and I had to build my own 64-bit version which did not work well at all. Hence, this plugin which takes the change marking logic and does just that.

Current

As of Notepad++ 8.4.6, native Scintilla Change History has been incorporated and rendered this plugin basically redundant at best. I have removed the plugin change tracking component and instead added ability to customize the native Notepad++ Change History.

The Enable Plugin Features only enables / disables the plugin features, it does NOT turn on / off the Notepad++ Change History feature.

Compiling

I compiled with MS Visual Studio Community 2017 and this seems to work OK.

For 32-bit:

    [x86 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2017]
    C:\> set Configuration=Release
    C:\> set Platform=Win32
    C:\> msbuild

For 64-bit:

    [x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2017]
    C:\> set Configuration=Release
    C:\> set Platform=x64
    C:\> msbuild

Installation

NOTE: This plugin only works with Notepad++ 8.4.6 or newer.

Copy the:

32-bit: ./Release/Win32/ChangedLines.dll
64-bit: ./Release/x64/ChangedLines.dll

to the Notepad++ plugins folder:

In N++ >=7.6, in a directory called ChangedLines in the plugins/ folder (plugins/ChangedLines/)

Make sure to enable from the menu Plugins->Changed Lines->Enable Plugin Features.

Usage

As of Notepad++ 8.4.6, Scintilla Change History provides margin markers to track changes in documents while editing. This plugin allows some customization of the Change History feature and provides a panel to visually see the changed lines.

As you navigate through opened Notepad++ documents, ChangedLines will record the document name and line number and store that in a previously visited location stack. This is done based on "lingering" in a document position long enough for SCN_MODIFIED to fire and the linger timer (2 seconds) to elapse. This is not perfect, but it suits my needs 90% of the time.

Navigation

There are plugin menu options, shortcuts and a docking panel to help you navigate through your changes.

Shortcut keys - by default, CTRL+ALT+Z and CTRL+ALT+Y are mapped to the previous and next document positions respectively. This can be changed with Notepad++ Settings => Shortcut Mapper...
Margin
- Double-clicking:
  - Next Change = double-clicking
  - Previous Change = SHIFT+double-click
  - Next Change (changes only) = CTRL+double-click
  - Previous Change (changes only) = SHIFT+CTRL+double-click
  - Next Change (saves only) = ALT+double-click
  - Previous Change (saves only) = SHIFT+ALT+double-click
- Right-click: Popup menu for change navigation

Docking Panel

There is a Notepad++ docking panel that shows a list of the changes in the current document. Double-clicking, Enter or Spacebar will go to the beginning of selected line. Escape will switch focus to the current document at the current position without navigating.

The "Previous Position" and "Next Position" toolbar buttons will move to the previous and next saved document positions respectively.

Limitations

Position tracking is not perfect!
- It will only track across saved files (i.e., not "new 1" unsaved documents).
- It will not remove closed files - so navigating to a position of a previously opened but not closed file will reopen the file (providing it still exists).
- As lines are inserted and deleted, previously saved positions are not updated so while you will return to the exact line number saved, it may no longer be the line you think it is.