Text expansions, sequences? What's the best approach for inserting a non-trivial text?

[tesar-tech]

Hi.

I read through some related issues but still found it difficult to understand how to simply create text expansions. Specifically, I want to press a key and have it automatically insert Console.WriteLine($"");. However, there are several issues with handling characters like double quotes, parentheses, and so on.

To work around this, I came up with a solution that abuses the unicode function.

(defvar et 1);;expansion timeout for letters


(defalias
cwl (macro ;;Console.WriteLine($""); expansion
  (unicode C) $et (unicode o) $et (unicode n) $et (unicode s) $et (unicode o) $et (unicode l) $et (unicode e) $et (unicode .) $et
  (unicode W) $et (unicode r) $et (unicode i) $et (unicode t) $et (unicode e) $et (unicode L) $et (unicode i) $et (unicode n) $et (unicode e) $et (unicode "(") $et
  (unicode $) $et (unicode r#"""#) $et (unicode r#"""#) $et (unicode ")") $et (unicode ";") 
)

It works and works just fine, but it feels a bit complicated for such a simple 23-character text.

Is there a simpler and more consistent approach I can use?

[jtroo]

The recent zippychord functionality is something I've been using for my shorthands. One day I, or maybe someone else, will get around to implementing clipboard integration: #1463 which will help with ease of text expansion.

[greqov]

Isn't it easier to add custom snippets in your code editor? (if you're asking about programming use case of course).

[tesar-tech]

Yes, for this one snippet in one code editor it's easier.

But there are other similar expansions I would like to incorporate into my workflow.

[Silcantar]

Maybe I'm being dense. but why would

(macro S-c o n s o l e . S-w r i t e S-l i n e S-9 S-4 S-' S-' S-0 ;)

not work?

[tesar-tech]

Yep, this works. And is much leaner solution than the unicode one. But I was trying to find an "ultimate" solution, something like

(charexpansion """Console.WriteLine($"");""" )

Which I now understand isn't part of kanata (yet).

[jtroo]

There is now clipboard functionality added as of the recent 1.8.0 which can do expansions.