2015.01.06 Abbreviations – index card

When I was curious about typing faster, I read forum posts from people who had increased their speed by developing their own form of digital shorthand. The trick works on paper, too. When I need to write quickly or in limited space, I use abbreviations like bc for "because" and w/o for "without." Why not on the computer as well?

I often take advantage of dynamic abbreviations when I know I've recently typed the word I want. To trigger those, I just have to type the beginning of the word and then use dabbrev-expand. I haven't set up my own static abbreviations, though. Main obstacles:

• I want to write shorter words instead of longer ones
• In the beginning, it's faster to type the word instead of thinking of the abbreviation and expanding it
• If I have to undo or backspace, that makes me slower
• If I burn this into my muscle memory, I might be more frustrated on other computers or in other apps (then again, I already customize Emacs extensively, so I guess I'm okay with the tradeoff)

Anyway, here's a short list I'm trying out with define-global-abbrev and hippie-expand:

Hmm. Let's say that it takes me two keystrokes to trigger the expansion, whether it's the xx keychord I've just set up or the M-/ I've replaced with hippie-expand. (Hmm, maybe a double-space keychord is a good candidate for expansion too.) Is the retraining worth a ~50% possible reduction in keystrokes? Probably not.

How about text with punctuation, so I can minimize reaching for symbols?

Maybe it's better to look at the words I frequently misspell, or that I tend to slow down then typing. I'll keep an eye out for those.

2015.01.06 Phrases – index card

Phrases are an easier sell. Still, I'm trying not to settle into the rut of set phrases. I should cut those mercilessly or avoid writing them from the beginning.

This is, fortunately, well-trodden ground. The yasnippet package comes with a large collection of snippets for many programming languages. You can start by familiarizing yourself with the pre-defined snippets for the modes that you use. For example, in my installation, they're under ~/.emacs.d/elpa/yasnippet-20141117.327/snippets. You can use the filename (or keywords defined with key, if specified) as the abbreviation, and you can expand them with yas-expand (which should be bound to TAB if you have yas-global-mode on).

I mostly work with HTML, CSS, Javascript, Ruby on Rails, and Emacs Lisp, so this is the cheat sheet I've made for myself:

2015.01.07 Code insertion – index card

For HTML, I need to remember that the tags are generally expandable, and that there are a few Lorem Ipsum abbreviations triggered by lorem.1 through .5. CSS has a v abbreviation that sets up a bunch of rules with vendor prefixes. For Javascript, I'll probably start with f to define a function and log to output something to console.log. Rails has a bunch of iterators like eai that look interesting. As for Emacs Lisp, the pre-defined templates generally add parentheses around common functions so you don't have to type them, and there are a few shortcuts like bs for buffer-string and cc for condition-case. I think I'll modify the default snippets to make better use of Yasnippet's field support, though, so that I don't have to delete and replace text.

In addition to using text expansion for code, you can use it for planning and writing other text. I saw Karl Voit use it to great effect in my Emacs Chat with him (around the 44:00 mark), and I've been gradually refining some templates of my own.

2015.01.07 Templates – index card

For example, here's the template I've been using for sketched books. Note: If you use Yasnippet for Org Mode properties, you may want to set yas-indent-line to fixed or the fields will get confused.

Gist: sbook

# key: sbook
# name: Sketched Book
# --

**** TOSKETCH ${1:short title}
      :PROPERTIES:
      :TITLE: ${2:long title}
      :SHORT_TITLE: $1
      :AUTHOR: ${3:authors}
      :YEAR: ${4:year}
      :BUY_LINK: ${5:Amazon link}
      :BASENAME: ${6:`(org-read-date nil nil ".")`} Sketched Book - ${2:$(sacha/convert-sketch-title-to-filename yas-text)} - ${3:$(sacha/convert-sketch-title-to-filename yas-text)}
      :ISBN: ${7:ISBN}
      :BLOG_POST: https://sachachua.com/blog
      :END:

$0

***** TODO Sketchnote $1
:PROPERTIES:
:Effort: 2:00
:QUANTIFIED: Drawing
:END:

[[elisp:sacha/prepare-sketchnote-file][Prepare the file]]

***** TODO Write personal reflection for $1
:PROPERTIES:
:Effort: 1:00
:QUANTIFIED: Writing
:END:

[[https://sachachua.com/blog/wp-admin/edit.php?page=cal][View in calendar]]

****** Sketched Book - $2 - $3

$3's /$2/ ($4) ...

I’ve sketched the key points of the book below to make it easier to remember and share. Click on the image for a larger version that you can print if you want.

Haven't read the book yet? You can [[$5][buy it from Amazon]] (affiliate link) or get it from your favourite book sources.

Like this sketch? Check out [[http://sketchedbooks.com][sketchedbooks.com]] for more. Feel free to share – it’s under the Creative Commons Attribution License, like the rest of my blog.

***** TODO Post $1 to blog
:PROPERTIES:
:Effort: 1:00
:QUANTIFIED: Packaging
:END:


***** TODO Update sketched books collection
:PROPERTIES:
:Effort: 1:00
:QUANTIFIED: Packaging
:END:

1. [[elisp:sacha/index-sketched-book][Index sketched book]]
   - [[file:~/Dropbox/Packaging/sketched-books/index.org][Edit index]]
   - [[file:~/Dropbox/Packaging/sketched-books/ebook.org][Edit ebook]]
2. [[elisp:sacha/package-sketched-book][Compile]]
3. Update [[https://gumroad.com/products/pBtS/edit]]

***** TODO Tweet sneak peek of $1 with attached picture

[[elisp:(progn (kill-new (format "Sneak peek: Sketched Book: %s - %s %s" (org-entry-get-with-inheritance "SHORT_TITLE") (org-entry-get-with-inheritance "AUTHOR") (org-entry-get-with-inheritance "BLOG_POST"))) (browse-url "http://twitter.com"))][Copy text and launch Twitter]]

One of the advantages of tweaking text expansion inside Emacs instead of using a general-purpose text expansion program is that you can mix in some Emacs Lisp to transform the text along the way. I'm still thinking about how to make the most of this, as you can see from this half-filled note-card:

2015.01.07 Text transformation as part of expansion – index card

For example, this snippet makes it easier to share source code on my blog while also linking to a Gist copy of the code, in case I revise it or people want to comment on the code snippet itself. It doesn't use any of the built-in text expansion capabilities, but I think of it as a text expander and transformer because it replaces work I used to do manually. You'll need the gist package for this one.

Gist: Sacha (updated to clean up region code)

(defun sacha/copy-code-as-org-block-and-gist (beg end)
  (interactive "r")
  (let ((filename (file-name-base))
        (mode (symbol-name major-mode))
        (contents
         (if (use-region-p) (buffer-substring beg end) (buffer-string)))
        (gist (if (use-region-p) (gist-region beg end) (gist-buffer))))
    (kill-new
     (format "\n[[%s][Gist: %s]]\n#+begin_src %s\n%s\n#+end_src\n"
             (oref (oref gist :data) :html-url) filename
             (replace-regexp-in-string "-mode$" "" mode)
             contents))))

Both Yasnippet and Skeleton allow you to use Lisp expressions in your template. If you don't have all the data yet, you might consider writing another Lisp function that you can call later when you do. For example, in the sketched books code above, I have an Emacs Lisp link that composes a tweet with a link, puts it in the clipboard, and then opens up a web browser. (I do this instead of posting directly because I also want to attach an image to that tweet, and I haven't figured out how to modify any of the Emacs Twitter clients to do that.)

So that's what I've learned so far about automating text in Emacs. It'll take me more than a week to get the hang of the abbreviations I've just set up, and I'll probably need to add even more before adding and using abbreviations become true habits. But hey, maybe this will help you pay closer attention to repetitive text and editing actions in Emacs so that you can automate them too, and we can swap notes on useful abbreviations. What kind of text do you expand?

For more information, see:

• EmacsWiki:CategoryTemplates
• Emacs Rocks: Yasnippet
• Thinking about how to make better use of Yasnippet in my Emacs workflow