Developer

How do you want to contribute?

Script

You can script Programmer’s Notepad (and record/replay macros) using the PyPN extension which brings the full power of Python into Programmer’s Notepad. Find out more here:

PyPN Overview

If you need more low-level integration with Programmer’s Notepad, consider writing an extension.

Add to Online Help

All contributions to our online help are welcome, just join the wiki and start writing!

If you need to discuss a topic, ask in the forums.

Translation

Programmer’s Notepad 2.1 (currently in testing) brings support for translations. We already have in-progress translations for Chinese and Hungarian, perhaps you’d like to add support for yours?

See the Translation page on the docs wiki.

Schemes

Schemes define the way that languages are highlighted in Programmer’s Notepad.

Most languages can be catered for with the simple-to-define XML based scheme description files. These make it easy for any user to get the syntax highlighting they want. You can find more information in the online docs: Adding support for your language.

For more complex needs/languages, PN 2 supports “lexers” which can be developed using any programming language that can produce a DLL with C-compatible exports (such as C++, Object Pascal, …).

Extensions SDK

You can develop extensions for Programmer’s Notepad using C++, the SDK includes all the bits you need along with both template and demo projects – the PyPN scripting support is developed with this same SDK.

Get the SDK

There’s also browsable documentation online generated from the plugin interface code. Note this SDK requires PN version 2.0.9 or greater, ask in the forums if you need help building for an older version. For more information on how to write an extension see the online documentation: Writing your First Extension.

There’s a project hosted on Google Code to store the code for your extensions to make them easy to find and work on for other Open Source developers. See the pnotepad-plugins project. This project includes an up-to-date SDK for PN 2.1.

Hacking on Programmer’s Notepad

Programmer’s Notepad 2 is an open source project, and we welcome contributors to all aspects of the project. The source code can be downloaded using Mercurial from:

http://pnotepad.googlecode.com/hg/.

You can find more details on the pnotepad googlecode page.

If you do not have a Mercurial client, then now’s a good time to install one. We recommend Tortoise Hg which is a Windows shell extension allowing you to use Mercurial from explorer and file dialogs.

For inspiration you can see the development roadmap or look at the tracker for new feature requests and bug reports.

There are full instructions for building Programmer’s Notepad on the docs site.