On Dec 6, 2007, at 9:00 AM, Errol Sayre wrote:
Unfortunately this doesn't really work the way anyone would expect
as a code completion... it doesn't even replace the selection, it
literally only inserts the clipping.
That's not true. Or, at least it depends on how the clipping is set up
and how you invoke it.
BBEdit's Clipping feature is very powerful: it can replace the
selection, incorporate the selection somewhere inside the clipping,
make a new selection inside the inserted text, use text from the
clipboard, insert timestamps in a configurable format, insert the
current file name, insert the current function name, run a script,
etc. The possibilities are virtually endless. See Chapter 12 of the
User Manual for more information.
I use Clippings every day and would have a hard time getting by
without them. I'm often amazed how little people know about the
feature. I personally think it's superior to the highly-touted snippet
and code-completion features of some competing text editors. Here are
a bunch of reasons why:
(1) Clippings auto-completion doesn't require remembering obscure
strings coupled with a tab to complete. All I have to do is type the
first few characters of the clipping name and hit my user-defined
key
combination to auto-complete. Or, if I can't remember the name at
all,
I can hit just the key combination to search through a list of every
clipping associated with the file type. Like other editors, I can
also assign a key combination to a specific, frequently-used
clipping.
(2) Rather than popping up in a tiny contextual menu like other
editors, the list of matches is displayed in a resizable, floating
palette that allows me to change my search in the middle of the
selection process.
(3) Clippings are stored as simple text files that can be easily
edited in BBEdit itself, unlike some other text editors that require
using a special interface for editing snippets. (I've got this
fantastic editor at my finger tips, why do I have to edit my
freakin'
snippets in a different little window that lacks nearly all the
text editing power of the editor itself?!!)
(4) While controlling the available clippings based on scope is
powerful (only certain clippings made available based on the
surrounding code), I actually prefer BBEdit's system of having all
clipping associated with a particular file type (e.g. PHP or
JavaScript) available anywhere in that file. I don't like a system
that tries to be smarter than me (admittedly, not that hard to
do ;-).
But sometimes I really do want to insert a language construct out of
context, where it doesn't belong, especially if I'm reorganizing my
code as part of a larger change.
(5) As mentioned above, BBEdit's placeholders are, in some ways,
superior to simple "tab positioning".
-Dennis
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