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I went to bed last night quite pleased with what I had accomplished for just two days. However, something was really bugging me. Why use a text file for all snippets? This is not “extensible” in any way. Adding more features to the engine will turn this file into a mess of code, rules and snippets.

What’s new

This update includes several new features:
- Snippets are now organised in a handy XML file. Sample is provided here: http://www.psp-webtech.co.uk/komodo/snippets.xml
- Support for language-specific snippets i.e. you can have the same trigger apply different snippets for different file types
- Support for snippet selection i.e. if you have more than one template for a given snippet, a popup menu will allow you to choose which one you want to apply

The KPZ file above has been updated to include the new version.

I have just edited my post and it seems to have also wiped out yours. I hadn’t realised it does that, sorry. Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for giving this macro a try. The script has evolved a lot and I think now it’s even more powerful than the template engine in Zend Studio.

A questions for the Komodo devs

I plan to spend some more time working on the macro tomorrow. I want to integrate all available triggers into the autocomplete list. I did a quick search in the Komodo JS APIs, but I didn’t find any interface that would allow me to plug into this service. I am considering building CIX files on the fly, but I am not sure how to instruct Komodo to load it. Any help would be much appreciated.

Insaned, could you edit the traceback changing all "[less-thans]"s to "[ampersand]lt;"s?

I'm advocating that we let the toolbox, and toolbox "parts", be representations of filesystem hierarchies, instead of monolithic XML files. That way you could simply
drop new snippets in them. Komodo now does filesystem notifications,
(see koIFileNotificationService), so it shouldn't be too hard. Yes, I got the
idea from this obscure editor on the Mac :)

Also see the Abbreviation support we added in 4.3 --

See the ko.abbrev singleton in chrome/komodo/content/library/abbrev.js

I'll leave it to Trent to comment on integrating with the autocomplete service.

- Eric

Eric,

Many thanks for your comments. If by traceback you mean my previous post, I just fixed it.

I am using an XML file in this extension as I want to be able to share my snippets across the team i.e. whenever I make a change, I want it to propagate to all team members (and friends). I am not aware of a way to synchronise the toolbox across different installations of Komodo. Each snippet in the XML file also has a couple of extra properties which I am not sure could fit quite easily in the hierarchy of the toolbox. I am considering exploring the “Remote File” part as this could replace the XMLHttpRequest I have in there at the moment.

I’ve just had a look at abbrev.js and I think there are a couple of nice features I could borrow (like the use of origAnchor versus the offset I store at the moment).

Any help or a steer in the right direction regarding the autocomplete integration would be much appreciated.

Have you fixed the tabStopRegEx = /(?«|\%tabstop\:)/g; issue?
It also seems that my post re-appeared :).

--
Isaak Malik
Web Developer

Ok, I downloaded the new version of your extension and the error doesn't show up anymore. I've also tested the snippets and it's working great.

Thanks again :)

--
Isaak Malik
Web Developer

Your change did not fix the error so I had a closer look at it myself and fixed it. The bug was that you used a wrong syntax, here's the bugfix:
tabStopRegEx = /(?:«|\%tabstop\:)/g;
Notice the "(?:)" instead of "(?)".

If this is not really what you require please explain the details and I'll create the right pattern for you.

I'm loving this snippet extension more and more :)

--
Isaak Malik
Web Developer

I have been looking into ways to integrate this extension with the auto-complete feature, but to no avail so far. Just this piece of code and an idea of how things should work:

svc = Components.classes['@activestate.com/koCodeIntelService;1'].getService(Components.interfaces.koICodeIntelService);
// some_temp_file.php will contain all available triggers as PHP functions or constants
svc.ideEvent('added_file_to_project', 'some_temp_file.php', ko.projects.active.manager.getCurrentProject());

This is to “simulate” a new file being added to the project so the CodeIntel Service will pick it up and hopefully parse it. I haven’t tested it yet, I am not a Python developer nor have I ever done anything like this before (but it sure is fun).

Are there any Komodo developers out there that might be able to help?

UPDATE
I also came across this, but it doesn’t seem to be working:

koCodeIntelCatalogSvc = Components.classes['@activestate.com/koCodeIntelCatalogsTreeView;1'].getService(Components.interfaces.koICodeIntelCatalogsTreeView);
koCodeIntelCatalogSvc.addPaths(1, ['C:\\snippets.cix']);

The change that I did actually made it work but the pattern seems a bit incompatible, I haven't looked into your code so I'm not sure what the correct pattern would be so I'm going to change it into yours to be on the safe side.

--
Isaak Malik
Web Developer

Hey Stan,

I have a small request if you don't mind, could you change your macro so that snippets are only checked and loaded at Komodo startup? I noticed that your macro checks for snippet updates regularly while Komodo is running, personally I find this unnecessary.

Thank you in advance.
--
Isaak Malik
Web Developer

Just some preliminary questions:

1) How is this line of development an improvement over the other "TextMate" like enhancements by others? (see for example http://blogs.activestate.com/jeffg/2006/08/textmatestyle_m.html) it seems like there are multiple people doing slightly different versions of the same idea, anyone have a side-by-side comparison?

1.5) This seems to be re-inventing stuff made available in the latest release of KomodoEdit. Is this by design or did you start building this before you knew about the latest feature enhancements?

2) I've noticed a lot of snippet engines using XML. This seems like an ok choice but after a while it gets *very* cumbersome in some areas. Have you considered packaging snippets in a full-fledged programming language syntax, (such as Python?) ... [see note]

Thanks for any feedback on these.

----
Note: I've used this approach before and it has huge advantages:
i) automatic support for variable interpolation and advanced string manipulation;
ii) no need to use CDATA escapes to avoid syntax collisions (e.g., with python just use """ or ''' or pep292 Templates or printf or ... you have *many* alternatives)
iii) automatic support for "snippet transclusion" (e.g., if you define each snippet as a function and each "language library" as a class, the language already includes built-in support for cross-referencing from one place to another, no need to re-invent this)
iv) no hassles with XML kludges such as escaping greater-than signs or un-nestable CDATA symbols and other ugly and inelegant stuff
v) you can design snippets to be as simple or as complex as you want, on the simple side you don't even have to know Python (or Ruby or Perl, or whatever native syntax you use)

I'll try to explain a bit more why I think XML is not the best choice for defining snippets.

Nothing speaks like an example, so here is one to illustrate a bit of what I am talking about. Consider how readable this is compared to XML. Also notice that "piggybacking" on a full-fledged programming language allows us to do a bunch of custom things that cannot already be done with XML, and yet there's *nothing* that we can do in XML that we cannot do here.

    ...

    ### begin: define pysnip_entry
        oEntry                = core_pysnip.snipentry()
        oEntry.sigil          =  '___'    ### the user can redefine the 'placeholder' syntax
        oEntry.caption        =  'new blank simpletable';
        oEntry.abbrev         =  'simpletable';
        oEntry.desc           =  """new simpletable for html or xml, with a secret message thrown in""";
        oEntry.keycombo       =  None;
    ### ------------------------------------------
        oEntry.body =r"""
            {table}
                {tr}
                    {td}___cell1{/td}
                    {td}___cell2{/td}
                    {td}___cell3{/td}
                {/tr}
            {/table}

            {p}Secret message: ___{String.rot13('HelloWorld!')} {/p}
        """
    ### ------------------------------------------

### begin_: do cool stuff with snippets
    mysnips = html.getsnips(abbrev.startswith('simple')); ## get more than one
    mysnip  = gui_chooserdialog(mysnips);  ## use a textmate-style chooser
    page    = html.getsnip(name.equals('newdoc')); ## outer enclosing page
    mysnip  = gui_fillintheblanks(mysnip); ## popup a gui dialog box auto-populated with every variable in our snippet
    page.body = mysnip.body;
    page.textarea_paste();

### begin_: do cool stuff with entire snippet libraries
    myexport = core_pysnip.export(libname.match('perl')).to_xml;
    n2export = core_pysnip.export(libname.match('*')).to_textmate_bundle;
    n3export = core_pysnip.export(libname.match('x')).to_yaml;
    core_pysnip.export('*').to_base64encoded().upload_to_website();

    ### NOTE: curly-braces were put in to keep Drupal happy.
    ### Normally we would just use whatever syntax we want
    ### with ZERO ugly syntax hacks or escapes.

    ### NOTE: we have a bunch of snippets that look just like this
    ### one, all defined using python syntax. But you could do it
    ### using ruby or perl quite easily also, as these languages are
    ### all best-of-breed as far as manipulating strings goes.

    ### NOTE: the user can extend this however she wants without "breaking" 
    ### the syntax, add a custom attribute, add custom functions, metadata
    ### whatever. There's no need to reverse engineer the snippet file
    ### format, or processing language because it's all just python.
    ...

I'll be waiting for the new version then, in the meanwhile I'll be using the suggested.

Thanks :)
--
Isaak Malik
Web Developer

Hello,

A few weeks ago I worked on a HTML+CSS snippet toolbox with sharing (and maybe inclusion in a future Komodo release, who knows?) in mind.

So far it's still incomplete, but I'm completing the set of HTML and CSS snippets. There are no keyboard shortcuts, so you have to activate snippets using the mouse (I know...). I used to have shortcuts, but providing a toolbox with like one hundred keyboard shortcuts that will inevitably clash with user preferences is not that sensible, so I just killed them.

I thought that I would duplicate those snippets (and modify some of them) for use with the Abbreviations mechanism that was included in 3.3. But now I wonder if I should go with this extension instead.
Are there plans to enhance the Abbreviations feature using some of the improvements in this extension, or did the Komodo team decide to keep that feature simple and let people work with extensions for more advances functionality?

Is it possible to create more complex snippets like below, whereby there's nesting:

<%= f.submit [[%tabstop:"Submit"]] [[%tabstop:, :disable_with => '[[%tabstop:Submitting]]']] %>

This in analogy to TextMate's:
${TM_RAILS_TEMPLATE_START_RUBY_EXPR}f.submit "${1:Submit}"${2:, :disable_with => '${3:$1ing...}'}${TM_RAILS_TEMPLATE_END_RUBY_EXPR}

TextMate's even more complex, namely it'll replicate whatever you type at ${1:Sumbit} at ${3:$1ing...}.

There is this weird issue where if you ctrl-z out of the snippet it caused the extension to stop working and act buggy for a bit before you can invoke it again. Is there a way to fix this?

@tdegrunt: Unfortunately nesting tabstops is not supported. I plan to include this support in future versions, however I can’t commit to any dates as things are getting quite complicated and frankly I don’t get much spare time :(

@roamzero: I am aware there are some issues when using the Undo command. Unfortunately at this point the snippet engine does not monitor the state of the buffer. To get the snippets running again, hit TAB as many times as the number of tabstops you’ve got in your latest snippet. Sorry.

Cheers,
Stan