Snippet completion more useful than I thought

Dec 03, 2015

I was noticing some editors have a feature that will automatically add a closing brace or parenthesis when an opening one is typed. This is commonly referred to as auto-complete. I have a love hate relationship with auto-complete. I often find the auto-complete triggers when I don’t want it to. Also, I find I have to arrow-press past the closing symbol to continue typing. Most of the time I find it faster to just type *something* than deal with the auto-complete.

It dawned on me the other day that I already have this facility in MDE. I just had add some snippet definitions.

(         ($text$) $END$
{         {$text$} $END$
[         [$text$] $END$
*         *$text$* $END$
**        **$text$** $END$
`         `$text$` $END$

This gives me just what I want. I type * for instance and press TAB. The closing * is added and the cursor moves the spot between the **. I type the text and hit enter. The cursor moves past the closing * plus one space. Here’s an example:

Markdown Edit Tab Completion from Mike Ward on Vimeo.

Share