Abbrevs
Abbbrevs are small pieces of text that are expanded as you type.
The expansion is context sensitive, so it depends on the mode you opened the file: if you open a .py file, it is python-mode so it uses the table for python, if you open a .c file, it is C language so it uses de table for C language and so on.
Abbrevs are loaded from a Emacs-LISP file. The traditional location of this file is:
~/.abbrev_defs
The format of the sections in this file is the following:
(define-abbrev-table 'xxxx-mode-abbrev-table '(
("abbr" "text to expand for abbr" nil 0)
("other" "other text" nil 0)
...
))
Example:
(define-abbrev-table 'html-mode-abbrev-table '(
("htmls" "<html>\n<head>\n<title></title>\n<style></style>\n</head>\n<body>\n</body>\n</html>\n" nil 0)
("table" "
\n" nil 0) ("tr" "" nil 0) ("td" " ")
... other usefull and frequently used HTML definitions here ... ))
Abbrev files can be read using this Emacs Lisp call:
(read-abbrev-file "~/.abbrev_defs")
You can use it dynamically as a Emacs command:
M-x read-abbrev-file
There is a minor mode of Emacs called Abbrev-mode. It can be switched on an off with this command:
M-x abbrev-mode
If you (as me, rcaguiar) don't like very much this mode, you can disable it in .emacs file adding the following line:
(setq default-abbrev-mode -1)
At the end of Emacs session it usually writes the current Abbrevs to file. For it to NOT happen, you need to include the following line in .emacs file:
(setq save-abbrevs nil)
To make the use of Abbrevs less invasive as Abbrev Mode, you can use the Emacs Lisp function "expand-abbrevs". It is usually bound to some shortcut as < C-x ' > for instance. You can use < C-h b > to confer the bindings. To bind it to some other key combination you can use the following line in your .emacs file:
(global-set-key [f4] 'expand-abbrev)