Dear ConTeXt gang,

A continuing desideratum for ConTeXt is a user-friendly writing and editing environment, where the range of application of the category “user-friendly” includes especially non-experts in programming or software development. The lack of such an environment is one factor that inhibits the wider use of ConTeXt. Despite its immense power, precision, and flexibility: At present it is not generally feasible for instructors and researchers in, e.g., the humanities to assign the use of ConTeXt to students, or to use it to collaborate on projects.

In addition, the first author (Idris) especially required a ConTeXt editor with, among other features, bidirectional capabilities to serve both academic writing as well as the needs of the Oriental TeX project, including the Zahrāʾ (aka Husayni) typeface system under current development.

In the course of an ongoing effort to address these lacunae, in 2017 a project to develop a set of utilities for the Windows editor Notepad++ was launched. After months of development and testing, Luigi and I are proud to present to the ConTeXt community

Notepad++ for ConTeXt: Lexer and Macro Utilities for editing ConTeXt Documents
Version 0.98

This package includes

I. A plugin for Notepad++ that implements, for the ConTeXt document processing system, i) a language lexer for semantic highlighting of TeX, LuaTeX, and ConTeXt commands; ii) autocompletion of commands with full support for calltips (set in columns); iii) tagging and insertion of markup and templates, with support for mnemonic keys.

II. A color scheme and two complementary Notepad++ themes:
Silver Twilight Hi and Silver Twilight Lo.

Notepad++ for ConTeXt is available here:

https://github.com/luigiScarso/context-npp
https://github.com/luigiScarso/context-npp/blob/master/install/Npp-for-ConTeXt.zip

as well as here:

http://wiki.contextgarden.net/File:Npp-for-ConTeXt.zip

For a future TeXLive DVD: The package will be available under

texmf-dist/context/data/npp/context

The complete manual for Notepad++ ConTeXt, along with its TeX sources, may be
found in the following directory of the zip:

/Npp-for-ConTeXt/doc/npp-context-manual.pdf

It may also be downloaded here:
https://github.com/luigiScarso/context-npp/tree/master/doc

The README follows this announcement.

NOTA BENE: The old wiki page
http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Notepad++
is currently obsolete and needs to be updated in its entirety.

Further development is planned beyond this initial release. We warmly welcome and look forward to feedback and suggestions for improvement from the ConTeXt community!

Best wishes
Idris and Luigi

==============
REAMDE.md:

*Notepad++ for ConTeXt: Lexer and Macro Utilities for editing ConTeXt Documents
Version 0.98*

This package includes

I. A plugin for Notepad++ that implements, for the ConTeXt document
processing system,
i) a language lexer for semantic highlighting of TeX, LuaTeX, and ConTeXt commands; ii) autocompletion of commands with full support for calltips (set in columns); iii) tagging and insertion of markup and templates, with support for mnemonic keys.

II. A color scheme and two complementary Notepad++ themes: Silver
Twilight Hi and Silver Twilight Lo.

Notepad++ for ConTeXt is available here:

https://github.com/luigiScarso/context-npp
https://github.com/luigiScarso/context-npp/blob/master/install/Npp-for-ConTeXt.zip

as well as here:

http://wiki.contextgarden.net/File:Npp-for-ConTeXt.zip

For a future TeXLive DVD: The package will be available under

texmf-dist/context/data/npp/context

The complete manual for Notepad++ ConTeXt, along with its TeX sources, may be
found in the following directory of the zip:

/Npp-for-ConTeXt/doc/npp-context-manual.pdf

It may also be downloaded here:
https://github.com/luigiScarso/context-npp/tree/master/doc

Completing development of the C++ plugin and lexer was done by the current
maintainer, Luigi Scarso (ConTeXt Development Team). Original C++ plugin
and lexer development was done by Dr. Jason Wu (Colorado State
University). Project vision and development planning (as well as the two
themes and color scheme) are by Professor Idris Samawi Hamid (Colorado
State University).

The Notepad++ for ConTeXt lexer is strongly influence by the plugin
WebEdit by Alexander Iljin:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/npp-plugins/files/WebEdit/

This plugin aims to support the editing of ConTeXt documents in a number
of ways. This includes some integration with the standalone distribution
of ConTeXt.

(For more information on ConTeXt see

http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Main_Page
http://www.pragma-ade.nl/index.htm .)

This plugin includes a language lexer for semantic highlighting of
ConTeXt commands; it also includes a system for tagging and inserting of
markup and templates, with support for mnemonic keys.

In its first phase of development, the plugin borrowed some ideas and
implementations from other plugins (notably WebEdit); and, from the
experience of Professor Hamid, several macros and customizations. In the
second phase, a significant part of development was devoted to
translating the xml documentation files of ConTeXt (= the English
interface files that list and classify commands, see below) into the
relevant xml configuration files of Notepad++, and to look for an
efficient way to edit a document while minimizing the need to access the
documentation. One outcome of this effort is the current autocompletion
calltip mechanism, which provides columnar representation of the
documentation for each autocompleted command, and equivalent to that
provided by setup-en.pdf ("ConTeXt commands EN").

(In a ConTeXt distribution it lies at the end of this path:
/tex/texmf-context/doc/context/documents/general/qrcs/setup-en.pdf)

One of the fundamental differences between ConTeXt and traditional
programming languages is the huge quantity of keywords (=commands,
macros) and parameters (= command arguments) in ConTeXt. Fortunately,
nearly all of them are described in the interface files of the
standalone distribution, under

tex/texmf-context/tex/context/interface/mkiv.

Here one finds the file context-en.xml, which is constituted by the
concatenation of all of the the other interface files.

The build.cmd script, under the /scripts folder of Npp-for-ConTeXt.zip,
reads context-en.xml and results in two files, i) /Program Files
(x86)/Notepad++/plugins/Config/ConTeXt.xml, which is used by the ConTeXt
lexer for Notepad++, and ii) /Program Files
(x86)/Notepad++/plugins/APIs/context.xml, which is used by the
autocompletion and calltips mechanism. The build.cmd script is a batch
script that has to be executed outside Notepad++; under the hood it runs
the Python2.7 script command_primitives_api.py with the correct command
line options; if xmllint.exe is installed it checks to make sure that
the files saved are well-formed.

The Npp-for-ConTeXt.zip ships with versions of Config/ConTeXt.xml and
APIs/context.xml that take as reference the official ConTeXt that is
shipped with the TeXLive 2018 distribution (see
https://www.tug.org/texlive/). So the build.cmd script is useful if the
user has a different (possibly updated) standalone distribution.

The switches at command line of command_primitives_api.py are

usage: command_primitives_api_new.py [-h] [-m MTXCMD] [-i IFCFILE] [-u
IFCUFILE] [-c CMDFILE] [-p PRIMFILE] [-d CHARDEF] [-r MACROCHARDEFFILE]

optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit -m
MTXCMD, --mtxcmd MTXCMD ConTeXt mtxrun program -i IFCFILE, --ifcfile
IFCFILE ConTeXt XML interface file -u IFCUFILE, --ifcufile IFCUFILE
ConTeXt XML interface user file -c CMDFILE, --cmdfile CMDFILE ConTeXt
XML command file -p PRIMFILE, --primfile PRIMFILE ConTeXt primitives.lua
script -d CHARDEF, --chardef CHARDEF ConTeXt char-def.lua file -r
MACROCHARDEFFILE, --macrochardeffile MACROCHARDEFFILE ConTeXt
macro-chardef.lua script

and the build.cmd sets the following

-m mtxrun.exe ^ -c
%CTXDIR%\tex\texmf-context\tex\context\base\mkiv\mult-prm.lua ^ -i
%CTXDIR%\tex\texmf-context\tex\context\interface\mkiv\context-en.xml ^
-d %CTXDIR%\tex\texmf-context\tex\context\base\mkiv\char-def.lua

The above assumes that the user sets the correct standalone in %CTXDIR%.
It's important to note that this is the standalone also used by the
ConTeXt plugin. Usually there is no need to pass --primfile PRIMFILE and
--macrochardeffile MACROCHARDEFFILE, because they should be generated by
the python script. The option --ifcufile IFCUFILE is useful if the user
wants to add the documentation of a set of private macros: in this case
it's necessary to know the syntax of that documentation, where the
ConTeXt XML command files are taken as reference.

Another component introduced in the plugin is the user's macro window,
enabled with Ctrl+'-'. The idea is to offer to the user a way to quickly
insert one's most used macros, set and saved under the section entitled
[Markup] in

/Roaming/Notepad++/plugins/config/ConTeXt.ini

The body of the macro to insert must contain a single '|', which is a
placeholder for the selected text; the macro can be selected with the
mouse or by hitting the Return key. It may also be selected by typing a
shortcut key. The Esc key closes the window. For example, if the user
needs to insert a macro '\framed', as in

\framed[frame=on]{...}

(where '...' signifies some text to be operated upon by the command),
and with a single key 'f' as shortcut, the text to set in ConTeXt.ini is

(f)\framed[frame=on]{|}

Note the full parenthesis that enclose the key shortcut - '(f)' in this
case. The user's macros stored in ConTeXt.ini can be edited from
Plugin->ConTeXt->Edit Config; once saved it has to be re-loaded with
Plugin->ConTeXt->Load Config (no need to restart Notepad++). For the
sake of readability, the string '%n' in the body of the text is
translated into a newline. The shortcut can be a sequence of A-Za-z0-9
characters, i.e. (d0) and (sst) are valid shortcuts. But for longer keys
or keys which require pressing Shift for input, perhaps one will need to
set a specific delay: This can be done under the [CommandsSetups]
section of ConTeXt.ini via, e.g.,

usermacro:elapse=500 and or usermacro:elapse_shift=600

The time is in milliseconds.

A second mechanism (also adopted from the WebEdit plugin) are tempaltes.
Under the section of ConTeXt.ini entitled [Templates], there is a list
of text strings and their replacements: In the edit field of Notepad++
the user types <text> and Alt-'\'; <text> is replaced by <replacement>.
The rules are the same as for those of the user's macros set under
[Markup].

Finally, the standard Notepad++ right-click mechanism offers the usual
insert text menu. Use

Plugins - ConTeXt - Update Right-click menu

to add one's markup macros.

These ways of inserting markup tags are independent, so it's possible to
have several ways to insert the same text. However, it's likely that in
a future release this will be simplified or streamlined.

--
Idris Samawi Hamid, Professor
Department of Philosophy
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80512
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