Emacs plugin for storing written code as template - emacs

For example, standard libraries in C/C++ are used very often, and it's very inefficient to go to the web browser, search for the code example how to use a library component, copy the source code and modify to suit your need; a few month later, you need to use that library component again but forgot how to use it, and you have to repeat the whole process again!
This process is not very productive for me because after we learn something the first time, we do not need to fully study the same thing again; just part of it can help us recall how to use it. I want my written code or example code copied from the web site to be stored for later reference and modification.
Emacs macro is an option, but I think you have to type the whole source code to make a desired template. What if I found a well written code, and I want to store that code segment for future reference? Macro won't be productive because I have to type the whole thing.
Is there Emacs plugin for doing this?

I wouldn't recommend snippets for the task that you described.
Snippets are meant to be repeated often. You can't have a lot of them.
What you need is something that you use rarely, but can have a lot of.
I'm using org-mode for this task. With org-mode you can:
Organize your knowledge by language/library etc.
Include small code snippets directly via babel.
Attach any number of files to any heading.
This way you get the overview/description via the headings,
and the actual code via code blocks / attachments.
Another advantage is that you can easily grep your org-file / your attachments.
Other advantages are timestamps, TODOs and all kinds of export that org-mode provides.
UPD
Just to give you a sample of what it can do (open in in emacs, otherwise it looks ugly):
https://gist.github.com/abo-abo/6040382/raw/1be55e30a9ed8d81cc1b2b752b7d498d05e72978/hyper.org

There is quite a list on the EmacsWiki: Templates.
Personally I know TempoMode and Yasnippets. I prefer Yasnippets. The snippets are very easy to write and have support for variable fields which you enter on snippet insertion.

This should provide a command inserting the last item of current kill-ring.
(defun my-code ()
(interactive "*")
(insert "(defun ")
(save-excursion (insert (concat "()
(interactive \"*\")
(insert \"" (car kill-ring) "\"))"))))
Remains to specify the name of the command when done - and installing it.

In the past I have used Else-Mode to do just that sort of thing, especially when the project I was working on had a very rigid and long, required function header comments.

You can look to SRecode from CEDET package. Besides standard templates, like yasnippet, etc., it also provides support for content-aware templating, like some templates could be expanded only inside the classes, some only as top-level declaration, etc.

Related

Customizing Org Mode variables--where is the documentation?

I've been using Org-mode a few months, and as I customize Emacs, I'm having a lot of difficulty finding documentation on how to specifically customize various variables.
Example: I've successfully set up archiving, but want to customize the org-archive-save-context-info variable to reduce the info that's archived along with the task. I do not want to do this per-file, but in my config file. Despite my best efforts, I don't see documentation on syntax and parameters for customizing this.
I do see some documentation when I customize the variable in the Emacs UI--but I'm looking for documentation so I can see syntax and parameters for customizing this myself via a config file. I can learn it backwards this way (via 'easy customization'): customize a variable, see what Emacs wrote to the config, try tweaking that, etc.
[EDIT] I'm talking about info below the task that appears after archiving, like this:
:PROPERTIES:
:ARCHIVE_TIME: 2018-09-10 Mon 11:24
:ARCHIVE_FILE: ~/Dropbox/logs/capture.org
:ARCHIVE_OLPATH: Tasks
:ARCHIVE_CATEGORY: capture
:ARCHIVE_TODO: DONE
:END:
Is this intentional? Do I just need to 'know ELisp' first? Is the intention that you use the Emacs point-and-click UI to customize things like this? Happy to RTFM if I could find the FM.
Is the intention that you use the Emacs point-and-click UI to customize things like this?
It's certainly intended that you would use the customize interface if you don't know elisp (and you might well choose to use it even if you do).
Do I just need to 'know ELisp' first?
Yes, you'll need at least some familiarity with elisp in order to understand the documentation and be able to write your own config changes. This is because elisp is the configuration language for Emacs, and so the documentation is written in that context. (It wouldn't make sense for basic lisp concepts to be explained and repeated in every piece of documentation which used them.)
That said, many people get by just copying and pasting from config examples -- and you're likely to pick up the basics this way, even if you don't fully understand them. If you're serious about Emacs, though, spending some time to learn about elisp will be hugely beneficial to you in future.
I can learn it backwards this way (via 'easy customization'): customize a variable, see what Emacs wrote to the config, try tweaking that, etc.
That's an entirely reasonable thing to do.
FWIW C-hv org-archive-save-context-info is actually very clear if you have the background understanding.
This variable can be a list of any of the following symbols:
time The time of archiving.
file The file where the entry originates.
ltags The local tags, in the headline of the subtree.
itags The tags the subtree inherits from further up the hierarchy.
todo The pre-archive TODO state.
category The category, taken from file name or #+CATEGORY lines.
olpath The outline path to the item. These are all headlines above
the current item, separated by /, like a file path.
That tells you that you might use the following in your config file:
(setq org-archive-save-context-info '(time file todo))
Happy to RTFM if I could find the FM.
You can start learning about elisp in the "Emacs Lisp Intro" manual, which you should find near the top of the Info directory, or jump to directly with C-hig (eintr) RET. Type h from there if you need to learn how to use the Info reader.

emacs Semantic/senator : autocomplete for external lib's

It seems this forum is more alive than mailing list : http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_name=cedet-semantic.
I would like repost my quest from a week ago from there:
First hi to all who contribute to this great package as CEDET :D .
Without much hussle I am able to get working most of the CEDET futures, but when it comes to senator / semantic things get more tought :\ .
Parsing local files are fine.
I don't use EDE not to get things more complicated.
I use the 1.0.6 git trunk version, for compability with ECB.
First is the rumble about the emacs core / cedet git-trunk hussle. How do I check that current installation is running the latter ? ( I have done some .emacs modificaitons see below) .
I generally cannot get the proper autocomplete working for external libs - in this case the OGRE3D project, which all are in the /usr/include/OGRE. I suppose I have added to 'search path' include properly, semantic-describe-c-env. sees them added properly.
2.a What are the basic commands to the semantic parser ? , that is I need to force it to parse the desired includes.
Once I saw semantic parsing the OGRE files in the 'idle time'. Still the autocomplete does not work ( OGRE:RAY is not recongized as a type).
senator-completition-menu-pop gives some non-matching 'c**p'
2.b I know there are customize-group options for semantic, tough their description say little to me.
From the other post:
"Yes, there is a setup cost. You can use semanticdb.sh to pre-parse your
code, but if you never open every file, you might end up with Emacs
having such a huge data structure it gets larger that your machine can
handle. If your project is small, this shouldn't be a problem."
Well this might be, if that would parse OGRE.
here's my .emacs:
.emacs at pastebin.com
Here's what I got on the mailing list, hope that it would help someone , thaks to Eric Ludlam :D :
======================
1. First is the rumble about the emacs core / cedet git-trunk hussle. How do I check that current installation is running the latter ? ( I have done some .emacs modificaitons see below) .
After emacs start, use:
M-x cedet-version RET
and look for the 1.1 version from CEDET/bzr.
I just tried this and noticed not everything has the right version
number. Interesting. I'll have to look into that.
Anyway, the next thing to try is:
M-x locate-library RET cedet RET
and make sure it points where you think it should.
2. I generally cannot get the proper autocomplete working for external libs - in this case the OGRE3D project, which all are in the /usr/include/OGRE. I suppose I have added to 'search path' include properly, semantic-describe-c-env. sees them added properly.
If you enable global-semantic-decoration-mode you can right-click on
header files, and it will give you some options, such as showing where
it things the header is, and showing if it has been parsed yet or not.
2.a What are the basic commands to the semantic parser ? , that is I need to force it to parse the desired includes.
You can use the include menu to force a header to be parsed, or visit
said include. If it can't find it, you can add OGRE to your path from
there too.
If you vist your header, you can use the senator menu to force a file to
reparse, or use:
C-u M-x bovinate RET
to do it.
Once I saw semantic parsing the OGRE files in the 'idle time'. Still the autocomplete does not work ( OGRE:RAY is not recongized as a type). senator-completition-menu-pop gives some non-matching 'c**p'
Autocomplete can fail for many reasons. The best way to find out why is:
M-x semantic-analyze-debug-assist RET
at a place you want to do completion. It will tell you about your
header files, symbols, and the like. It could be your preprocessor
symbols need some setup.
For large complex library headers, sometimes it is just a matter of
having the right pre-processor symbols setup in Semantic so that the
right bits of the headers get parsed for symbols. You'd have to visit a
header where a symbol you want to complete is, and see if it was parsed.
Using:
M-x boviante RET
will dump the symbol table.
2.b I know there are customize-group options for semantic, tough their description say little to me.
From the other post:
"Yes, there is a setup cost. You can use semanticdb.sh to pre-parse your code, but if you never open *every* file, you might end up with Emacs having such a huge data structure it gets larger that your machine can handle. If your project is small, this shouldn't be a problem." Well this might be, if that would parse OGRE.
I doubt parsing the includes is the problem here. I think there is just
something new in the ogre headers we'll have to deal with.
Eric
===================================

How to specify big (multi-line) tables?

What's the best choice for defining a large table in org-mode (by large, I mean that each cell can have multiple lines)? The one feature of org-mode is its ability to export to HTML or LaTeX (or other), but in this case would I have to commit to the export format a priori and hard-code the table in that language (e.g., HTML)? What software would you use to create table with mostly text fields with paragraphs in each cell in the first place (which you could convert to HTML, for instance)?
You might want to look at table-mode. This supports the sort of "large tables" you're talking about. It's been part of the emacs distribution for some time now. Start with
(require 'table)
somewhere in ~/.emacs. Create an empty file or buffer, type
M-x table-insert RET
answer the initial questions sensibly and then play around a bit. You can get some documentation with
C-h f table-insert RET
To find more documentation, you'll need to locate the source code. Start with
M-x locate-library RET table RET
This will show you the location of the byte-compiled lisp file for table-mode, and in that same directory you should fine table.el or table.el.gz, which will contain documentation you'll need to at least skim. Most linux systems (foolishly) do not install the .el files by default, so you'll have to go rooting around with the package manager to get them.
I was fairly sure that org-mode knew how to parse table-mode tables and format them for you, but I can't seem to find that written down anywhere right now.

Emacs recursive project search

I am switching to Emacs from TextMate. One feature of TextMate that I would really like to have in Emacs is the "Find in Project" search box that uses fuzzy matching. Emacs sort of has this with ido, but ido does not search recursively through child directories. It searches only within one directory.
Is there a way to give ido a root directory and to search everything under it?
Update:
The questions below pertain to find-file-in-project.el from MichaƂ Marczyk's answer.
If anything in this message sounds obvious it's because I have used Emacs for less than one week. :-)
As I understand it, project-local-variables lets me define things in a .emacs-project file that I keep in my project root.
How do I point find-file-in-project to my project root?
I am not familiar with regex syntax in Emacs Lisp. The default value for ffip-regexp is:
".*\\.\\(rb\\|js\\|css\\|yml\\|yaml\\|rhtml\\|erb\\|html\\|el\\)"
I presume that I can just switch the extensions to the ones appropriate for my project.
Could you explain the ffip-find-options? From the file:
(defvar ffip-find-options
""
"Extra options to pass to `find' when using find-file-in-project.
Use this to exclude portions of your project: \"-not -regex \\".vendor.\\"\"")
What does this mean exactly and how do I use it to exclude files/directories?
Could you share an example .emacs-project file?
I use M-x rgrep for this. It automatically skips a lot of things you don't want, like .svn directories.
(Updated primarily in order to include actual setup instructions for use with the below mentioned find-file-in-project.el from the RINARI distribution. Original answer left intact; the new bits come after the second horizontal rule.)
Have a look at the TextMate page of the EmacsWiki. The most promising thing they mention is probably this Emacs Lisp script, which provides recursive search under a "project directory" guided by some variables. That file begins with an extensive comments section describing how to use it.
What makes it particularly promising is the following bit:
;; If `ido-mode' is enabled, the menu will use `ido-completing-read'
;; instead of `completing-read'.
Note I haven't used it myself... Though I may very well give it a try now that I've found it! :-)
HTH.
(BTW, that script is part of -- to quote the description from GitHub -- "Rinari Is Not A Rails IDE (it is an Emacs minor mode for Rails)". If you're doing any Rails development, you might want to check out the whole thing.)
Before proceeding any further, configure ido.el. Seriously, it's a must-have on its own and it will improve your experience with find-file-in-project. See this screencast by Stuart Halloway (which I've already mentioned in a comment on this answer) to learn why you need to use it. Also, Stu demonstrates how flexible ido is by emulating TextMate's project-scoped file-finding facility in his own way; if his function suits your needs, read no further.
Ok, so here's how to set up RINARI's find-file-in-project.el:
Obtain find-file-in-project.el and project-local-variables.el from the RINARI distribution and put someplace where Emacs can find them (which means in one of the directories in the load-path variable; you can use (add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/some/directory") to add new directories to it).
Add (require 'find-file-in-project) to your .emacs file. Also add the following to have the C-x C-M-f sequence bring up the find-file-in-project prompt: (global-set-key (kbd "C-x C-M-f") 'find-file-in-project).
Create a file called .emacs-project in your projects root directory. At a minimum it should contain something like this: (setl ffip-regexp ".*\\.\\(clj\\|py\\)$"). This will make it so that only files whose names and in clj or py will be searched for; please adjust the regex to match your needs. (Note that this regular expression will be passed to the Unix find utility and should use find's preferred regular expression syntax. You still have to double every backslash in regexes as is usual in Emacs; whether you also have to put backslashes before parens / pipes (|) if you want to use their 'magic' regex meaning depends on your find's expectations. The example given above works for me on an Ubuntu box. Look up additional info on regexes in case of doubt.) (Note: this paragraph has been revised in the last edit to fix some confusion w.r.t. regular expression syntax.)
C-x C-M-f away.
There's a number of possible customisations; in particular, you can use (setl ffip-find-options "...") to pass additional options to the Unix find command, which is what find-file-in-project.el calls out to under the hood.
If things appear not to work, please check and double check your spelling -- I did something like (setl ffip-regex ...) once (note the lack of the final 'p' in the variable name) and were initially quite puzzled to discover that no files were being found.
Surprised nobody mentioned https://github.com/defunkt/textmate.el (now gotta make it work on Windows...)
eproject has eproject-grep, which does exactly what you want.
With the right project definition, it will only search project files; it will ignore version control, build artifacts, generated files, whatever. The only downside is that it requires a grep command on your system; this dependency will be eliminated soon.
You can get the effect you want by using GNU Global or IDUtils. They are not Emacs specific, but they has Emacs scripts that integrate that effect. (I don't know too much about them myself.)
You could also opt to use CEDET and the EDE project system. EDE is probably a bit heavy weight, but it has a way to just mark the top of a project. If you also keep GNU Global or IDUtils index files with your project, EDE can use it to find a file by name anywhere, or you can use `semantic-symref' to find references to symbols in your source files. CEDET is at http://cedet.sf.net
For pure, unadulterated speed, I highly recommend a combination of the command-line tool The Silver Searcher (a.k.a. 'ag') with ag.el. The ag-project interactive function will make an educated guess of your project root if you are using git, hg or svn and search the entire project.
FileCache may also be an option. However you would need to add your project directory manually with file-cache-add-directory-recursively.
See these links for info about how Icicles can help here:
find files anywhere, matching any parts of their name (including directory parts)
projects: create, organize, manage, search them
Icicles completion matching can be substring, regexp, fuzzy (various kinds), or combinations of these. You can also combine simple patterns, intersecting the matches or complementing (subtracting) a subset of them

How do I fully-justify latex code on EMACS

I want to fully-justify latex code on EMACS so that my latex code will look better. For example, I remember my advisor sending me latex in fully justified way like this:
In ~\cite{Hummel2004}, authors described an approach for harvesting
software components from the Web. The basic idea is to use the Web as
the underlying repository, and to utilize standard search engines,
such as Google, as the means of discovering appropriate software
assets. Other researchers have crawled through Internet publicly
available CVS repositories to build their own source code search
engines (e.g., SPARS-J)~\cite{Matsushita2005}.
I suppose that his column-width is set to 70 columns.
Could someone give me a hint?
The standard fill.el package includes the command justify-current-line which is part of what you need. From the function help:
Do some kind of justification on this line.
Normally does full justification: adds spaces to the line to make it end at
the column given by `current-fill-column'.
Optional first argument how specifies alternate type of justification:
it can be `left', `right', `full', `center', or `none'.
If how is t, will justify however the `current-justification' function says to
And other posters have already given you the magicall invokation:
M-x set-justification
As a philosophical side note, the point of fixed-wdith text justification is to fake real typography on a inflexible output device. So applying it to LaTeX source seems a little odd to me. Moreover, I have been using the "one sentence to a line" approach to LaTeX documents for some months now, and find that it really does improves both the editability and the source-control behavior of LaTeX, so I would recommend against doing this.
If you select the region, and then press Ctrl-u M-x fill-region you get "full justification".
M-x set-justification-full
Use Refill mode afterwards to not have to run the command again after typing.
To get line wrap in the file itself (as opposed to something like longlines-mode that does not alter the structure of the file), I use auto-fill-mode, which automatically applies M-q (fill-paragraph) to each paragraph. For example, I use auto-fill-mode in mail-mode. You could do something similar with your LaTeX mode with a hook like this:
(add-hook 'TeX-mode-hook 'turn-on-auto-fill)
Assuming your TeX mode's hook is TeX-mode-hook.