November 4th, 2011 . . . .
Categorized under: Windows

Notepad++: Change Print Font Size

Notepad++ doesn’t have a menu to configure print font size.. How inconvenient, I really think this is a must-have feature!

This link tells me there are two ways to do it: by macro, or NppExec. The macro method didn’t work for me (I added the code in shortcuts.xml but the macro doesn’t show in Notepad++ so I couldn’t run it) The NppExec method has very brief explanation I don’t know how to do it.. And I couldn’t find a quick link that tell me exactly on how to do that method either. It was frustrating. A user who just wants to change print font size shouldn’t have to learn details about NppExec and Scintilla. So I think I would share here.

This is my take on it: Basically Notepad++ runs on a backend called Scintilla. And we can change print font size by sending a message to Scintilla to change its  SCI_SETPRINTMAGNIFICATION parameter. We can send a message to Scintilla by either running a macro, or via NppExec. Below is how I do it using NppExec.

  1. Plugins -> Plugin Manager -> Show Plugin Manager
  2. Select NppExec and click Install
  3. Restart Notepad++ after finish installing
  4. Press F6 or click Plugins -> NppExec -> Execute
  5. Type in SCI_SENDMSG 2146 -2
    • SCI_SENDMSG is a command to send message to Scintilla
    • 2146 is a code for SCI_SETPRINTMAGNIFICATION
    • -2 is a parameter, telling Scintilla to reduce the font size by 2 level
  6. Click OK
  7. Done.

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