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Abbreviations howto

Abbreviations work like code shortcuts. In other words you can assign a list of words (abbreviations) which will be replaced by their expanded text, using a keyboard shortcut

Manage Abbreviations:
Select from menu: Insert/Abbreviation../Manage

A dialog window will open where you can add and remove your abbreviations.
Now click on “Add” and in the upper list will appear a new row with only “new” written into.
Click on that item and give to your abbreviation a name. This name will be used later while you will write into your documents.
In the right column, instead, write the text which will replace your abbreviation, and use the “|” char in order to tell SEPY where to put the caret after the abbreviation will be inserted.

For example, when I wrote XML files I’m used to write many times < ![CDATA[....]]> and for this reason I’ve created an abbreviation which let me to just write “< !". Then, when I expand the abbreviation (menu Insert/Abbreviation../Expand) my new text is " Thus, my abbreviation name is “< !", while its Expansion is "

Into the abbreviations menu you have:
- Expand (which substitue the current phrase with its expansion)
- Insert (which will show you the list of avail abbreviations, double click on one of them to insert into the document current position)
- Manage (open the abbreviation manage dialog)

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 3rd, 2005 at 5:41 am and is filed under Tips and Trick. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

11 Responses to “Abbreviations howto”

  1. Jan Says:
    December 14th, 2005 at 2:32 am

    It’s not possible to expand the abbreviation using a shortcut, is it? E.g. you type ” abbreviation –> expand.
    Jan

  2. sephiroth Says:
    December 14th, 2005 at 2:52 am

    you can assign a keyboard shortcut to abbreviations. Just look into key shortcut preferences

  3. Rendall Says:
    December 28th, 2005 at 9:15 am

    You rock.

  4. Jordan Says:
    March 15th, 2006 at 9:03 am

    I’m curious to see how users are implementing this, other than the example sephiroth gave…

  5. oligraphes Says:
    May 17th, 2006 at 7:08 am

    really i cant find how to assign a shortcut to abbreviations… there’s nothing in the ‘insert’ section of the keybshortcuts.csv file.

    also i would shortcut the “compile with mtasc >> compile” action coz everytime i need to click the button in the mtasc window in order to compile… while i don’t even change any option in the mtasc window, i would like to be able to directly compile with mtasc

  6. sephiroth Says:
    May 17th, 2006 at 7:34 am

    for the shortcut, you can find them into “keyboard shortcuts”, Insert->AbbreviationExpand and AbbreviationInsert

    for the mtasc in version 1.5.2rc23 i just added a shortcut compile using mtasc.

  7. sephiroth Says:
    May 17th, 2006 at 3:38 pm

    sorry I deleted your comment. I forward here:

    “actually there is none of the two lines you say in the file when i do tools>keyboard shortcuts.
    if i add the line (with a tabulation, not a space char) the shortcut doesn’t work.”

    my reply:
    1. are you running on windows or mac?
    2. which sepy version?

  8. oligraphes Says:
    May 17th, 2006 at 11:48 pm

    i’m running sepy 1.5.2 RC22 under mac osX 10.4.6, powerPC CPU.

  9. sephiroth Says:
    May 18th, 2006 at 1:36 am

    perfect, thank you!

  10. Mauricio Massaia Says:
    June 8th, 2006 at 6:24 am

    i used the abrev “fun” and assing this :

    function ():Void\n{\n\t\n}

    Then when i write “fun” + shortcut ( ctrl+b in my sepy) will show this :

    function ():Void
    {

    }

  11. sophrosyn1 Says:
    July 31st, 2007 at 1:43 pm

    This is kinda handy, but it still requires extra actions than just triggering a macro with a shortcut. What would be much more useful is keyboard shortcuts for snippets.

    Is this possible? It’s been on the request list for some time. :)

    Thanks for your work!