BBEdit-Like Glossaries for (Aqua)Emacs?

May 1, 2006 12:20 PM

I'd like to give Aquamacs/Emacs something akin to BBEdit's "glossaries" using the Speedbar.

I've been using BBEdit for all my basic HTML editing tasks over the past few years. I don't do much ... just clean up author submissions and write the occasional thing myself. I've gotten used to the handy glossary palette, in which I keep a collection of snippets like the code for author headshots and other such frequently used text. For assorted reasons, I want to start using Emacs again. Is there any way to set up Speedbar so it opens to a directory of snippet files and inserts instead of opens them when they're clicked?

Alternately, is there a better way to introduce glossary-like functionality outside plain old 'C-x i' ?

posted by mph to Technology (1 answer total)

Best answer: Have you tried using abbrevs? To define an abbrev, you type the expansion of the abbrev, select it, then type 'C-0 C-x a g' to add a global abbrev or 'C-0 C-x a l' to add an abbrev specific to the current major mode. The abbrev name must consist of word-constituent characters. Then, if you enter abbrev-mode and type the abbrev name followed by whitespace or punctuation (or any non-word-constituent character), the abbrev will be expanded. 'M-x list-abbrevs RET' will list all defined abbrevs. See (emacs)Abbrevs.
posted by bpt at 6:16 AM on May 2, 2006