Re: Don't you think this would be a nice feature? (Place holder)

[Andreas Politz]

Weiwei wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> I'm a Emacs newbie, just jumped into it from Vim. I'm using AUCTeX to
> write LaTeX files. In Vim, it has a very nice feature -- placeholder.
> For example, you have the following skeleton in inserting figures:
>
> \begin{figure}[H]
>   \centering
>   \subfigure[]{\includegraphics[width=3.1in]{}}
>   \subfigure[]{\includegraphics[width=3.1in]{}}
>   \caption{}
>   \label{fig:}
> \end{figure}
>
> Now your cursor is in the third line between the first square brackets
> [], after you type something, you want to jump to the brackets at the
> end of the same line {}, and so forth. Vim LaTeX suite has this
> function with a single key-stroke. In AUCTeX, I didn't find such one,
> or maybe I missed it. Could anybody kindly point it to me if it
> exists?
>
> Now lets look at this feature a little bit further. Can we have (Or do
> we already have) a universal place-holder in Emacs? For example, we
> have a block of text/program as this:
>
> foofoofoo<>foofoofoofoofoofoofoofoofoofoofoofoo
> foo<>foofoofoofoofoofoofoo<>foofoofoofoofoofoo
> foofoofoofoofoo<>foofoofoofoofoofoofoofoofoofoo
>
> The <> indicates a place-holder in which you want to jump quickly. The
> function I proposed is to find next <>, and then delete the left "<"
> and right ">", and leave cursor there.
>
> I'm not sure if any similar functions are already there. I think it
> should be easy with regular expressions. Simply I'm not a regexp guy.
> What do you guys think? And anybody want to have a try? Thanks!
>
>
> Weiwei

There are better ways in emacs to do this, instead of inserting literal text.
For example using text properties to mark regions of interest (`jumpspots').
I am not familiar with the various abbrev/template packages, but I could imagine
that at least some of them are taking advantage of this.

-ap