Windows Explorer shell extension for SciTE.

[John Brandwood]

Hi,

I've written an open-sourced collection of Windows Explorer shell
extensions that supports a bunch of different text editors, including
SciTE, and a few other Scintilla-based editors.

It provides a few (IMHO useful) features that aren't that common in other
editor's shell extensions.

The project is available on SourceForge/GitHub at
https://sourceforge.net/projects/editwith/

The only "issue" that I had with SciTE, was that it didn't seem to register
itself with Windows, and so I had to "guess" that it would always be
installed in the 32-bit Program Files directory ... which is obviously not
always going to be the case.

Can anyone suggest a better way to find out if SciTE is available on
someone's computer?

One thing to note is that I load up SciTE's icon from the SciTE.exe file
(if I can find it).

It is faster to load it up from within the shell extension itself ... but
then I would need permission to use/copy/distribute the SciTE icon.

I have so far received permission from 13 commercial/open-source text
editor authors to use their icon within my shell extension ... can someone
here tell me who can give me permission to use the SciTE icon?

If TPTB here feel that the shell extension is a useful addition to SciTE,
then please feel free to copy/fork it ... it's been released under the
Boost License specifically to make that easy to do.

Thanks,

John.

[Neil Hodgson]

[There is a mailing list specifically for SciTE at http://groups.google.com/group/scite-interest]

The only "issue" that I had with SciTE, was that it didn't seem to register itself with Windows, and so I had to "guess" that it would always be installed in the 32-bit Program Files directory ... which is obviously not always going to be the case.

SciTE is meant to be copied onto computers with no installation procedure and for multiple, perhaps customised versions, to be present and active. Unless SciTE is currently running, which can be determined from the director interface (http://www.scintilla.org/SciTEDirector.html), the only way to find if SciTE is on the computer is an exhaustive search of the attached disks. The single file version is called Sc???.exe where ??? is the version number instead of SciTE.exe.

It is faster to load it up from within the shell extension itself ... but then I would need permission to use/copy/distribute the SciTE icon.
I have so far received permission from 13 commercial/open-source text editor authors to use their icon within my shell extension ... can someone here tell me who can give me permission to use the SciTE icon?

Isn't the open source license http://www.scintilla.org/License.txt sufficient? Simply include a copy of the license in your source code next to the icon.

If TPTB here feel that the shell extension is a useful addition to SciTE, then please feel free to copy/fork it ... it's been released under the Boost License specifically to make that easy to do.

Several downstream projects that incorporate SciTE, include enhancements like that, and they may want to use your shell extension.

Neil

[Philippe Lhoste]

The only "issue" that I had with SciTE, was that it didn't seem to register itself with
Windows, and so I had to "guess" that it would always be installed in the 32-bit Program
Files directory ... which is obviously not always going to be the case.
Can anyone suggest a better way to find out if SciTE is available on someone's computer?

I appreciate applications that doesn't leave traces on the computer they run on... Think
"portable applications" too, made to run from an USB key, for example.
I often put SciTE in a non-standard program directory, particularly since Windows make
hard to update files in Program Files.

There are some hints to find out where SciTE is, like finding a SciTE_HOME environment
variable (but it points to settings, not to the exe), finding it running in the memory,
searching the registry for association with some file types (like .txt), etc. None being
very reliable and rather long / hard to do.

The most reliable way to know if SciTE is available is... to ask the user! If your
extension has a settings dialog, you can include a browse button to point to a SciTE exe
(SciTE.exe, Sc1.exe, etc.).
--
Philippe Lhoste
-- (near) Paris -- France
-- http://Phi.Lho.free.fr
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