Re: `completion-in-region'

[Leo]

On 2010-04-11 16:32 +0100, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>> I am re-designing snippet.el
>> (http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SnippetMode) to tightly integrate
>> with abbrev. Emacs has abbreviation feature for a very long time but
>> it hasn't advanced much. 'snippet' is a substantial step forward. It
>> was original introduced in textmate and becomes so popular that
>> almost all text editors have it now.
>
> There have been many Emacs packages to do such things. Emacs itself
> comes with skeleton.el, tempo.el, expand.el, and probably some more.
> I'm not really interested in adding yet another such package to Emacs.
> OTOH I'd be interested in consolidating them so as to try and reduce
> the urge of people to reinvent them yet again.

I think you are underestimating the power snippet brings about. It was
probably because it looks so simple that nobody thought worthwhile to
implement it until textmate did.

For example, with snippet one can set up an email blogging tool in under
30 seconds. Can any of the other packages gives user the same
productivity?

----------------

My intention is indeed to consolidate snippet.el and absorb good
features from other packages and textmate. For example I have the
following in the todo:

* Snippet language
  An easy-to-use language (syntax) for creating snippets should be
  constructed by taking into account:
*** study textmate's snippet syntax and features
*** Is there any nice features in yasnippet that worth adopting?
*** study tempo and skeleton
*** peg.el might be useful
    Library that might be useful:
    http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/peg.el
*** form a usable sub-language for snippet
*** what's the best way to indicate same fields?

Leo