notepad-plus-plus-legacy/PowerEditor/misc/npp.help/HTML/Languages.html

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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html><head><meta content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" http-equiv="content-type"><title>Languages</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css" type="text/css">
</head>
<body>
<h1>Languages
</h1>
<p>Notepad++
can distinguish between different languages source code can be written in.
This is useful to allow certain modifications and visual aids to be
applied specifically designed for that language. For example, a
language could distinguish certain keywords that have to be
differently interpreted, and as such it can be useful to distinguish
these keywords using another color or font. The language also
determines the folding behavior (see <a href="Folding.html">Folding</a>) and how to handle
comments (see <a href="Commenting.html">Commenting</a>).
<p>Notepad++
offers a lot of languages that can be selected, and has a few methods
to add your own as will be discussed.</font><br>
<font face="Times New Roman, serif">By
default Notepad++ will try to guess the language of a document by the
extension of the filename (if it is a file) or the default setting if
it is a new document (see <a href="Preferences.html#New_Document_Open_Save_directory">Preferences</a>). To select another language, simply select it from the
<span class="menu_item">Language</span> menu. The language of the currently active document is
visible in the status bar in the first section (see&nbsp;<a href="Status%20Bar.html">Status Ba</a>r).</font>
By
default a language can have multiple keywords, divided in certain
categories. It also determines the symbols used for comments and what
extensions are associated with it by default. You can supplement the
keywords and the list of extensions using the <a href="Styler%20Configurator.html">Styler Configurator</a>, it also allows you to change the
colors used to print the text.
<p>
If
you like to define your own language, you can do so by two means. The
most simple and straightforward method is to make user of a User
Defined Language (see <a href="User%20Defined%20languages.html">User Defined Languages</a>), but you can also
create your own external lexer (see <a href="External%20Lexers.html">External Lexers</a>). This is more
flexible but also a lot more difficult to make.
</body></html>