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notepad-plus-plus / nppShell

Provide Explorer context menu entry "Edit with Notepad++"
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Dynamic icons are gone #52

Closed Eagle3386 closed 12 months ago

Eagle3386 commented 1 year ago

Back in the days of NppShell_06.dll, running regsvr32 /i NppShell_06.dll opened up a dialog for, among other things, enabling the "dynamic icon" feature: image

This would turn any associated file's icon into something like this: 202388990-f408d3f8-03fe-46ae-b75f-571d18ddefdb (Image borrowed from notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/12531)

Was this awesome feature dropped from the new NppShell.dll? If yes, can you add it back, pretty please? 🥺 If not & it's still there, how to enable it?

GurliGebis commented 1 year ago

Since the new implementation is using the IExplorerCommand interface, it is not something we really can do.

Eagle3386 commented 1 year ago

Sorry for my lack of knowledge, but I'm curious: why's the new interface blocking re-adding that feature?

Also, given that limitation, couldn't N++ just additionally support the "old" interface that's used for those dynamic icons, as well?

GurliGebis commented 1 year ago

The old implementation used the old IContextMenu3 interface, while the new IExplorerCommand interface. So adding it isn't something that easily can be done, since they work completely differently.

Eagle3386 commented 11 months ago

@GurliGebis / @donho Sorry to resurrect, but couldn't make it sooner here. Regarding the topic: couldn't we combine both approaches, using IExplorerCommand for the context menu part & IContextMenu3 for the dynamic icon related stuff, then?

Also, as I'm no C++ expert, but still curious to understand the internals, what exactly is missing in the new interface that the old offered to enable the dynamic icon handling? Because reading through MS docs regarding both interfaces, I don't see anything that could be used for dynamic icons - yet, it was available a couple of months ago..?! 🤔

GurliGebis commented 11 months ago

@Eagle3386 not really from how I see it. Instead what I would suggest people do is enable file extensions in explorer (which should be the default in this day and age).

Eagle3386 commented 11 months ago

I've got that enabled since I started using Windows (back in the days of 3.11 & 95 SE, that is), but I still find it way more accessible, easier, more comfortable & even more aesthetical to have icons represent what they files actually contain. Especially, when dealing with multiple files of different types within a folder which are all assigned to N++ for editing them.

IMHO the alternative, or should I say fix, would be to include a specific icon for each supported filetype - which could contain the file extension as it previously did.

Another alternative would be to include the software's logo as an overlay on top of N++'s "page" icon.