[TxMt] Creating temporary snippets using TMTOOLS

[Hans-Joerg Bibiko]

On 16 Oct 2007, at 21:31, Robin Houston wrote:
> On 16/10/2007, Thomas Aylott <textmate at subtlegradient.com> wrote:
>> This already exists.
>> See "TextMate > Scratch Snippet > Record" & "… Insert"
>

It is only an idea ;)
I often thought about to make it possible to use temporary snippets  
bound on temporary keys.
My approach with TMTOOLS:
-I have a TM document which is saved anywhere but it must have  
'AUTOTEXT' in its name
-In that file I can write temporary snippets à la KEY SPACE SNIPPET -  
each row is one entry
-I have a tmCommand like:
KEY=$(cat)

[[ -z "$KEY" ]] && echo -en "\t" && exit_insert_text

SNIPPET=$("$TMTOOLS" get autoTextWindowsContent | egrep ^"$KEY ")

if [ -z "$SNIPPET" ]; then
	"$TMTOOLS" goto nextSnippetField
	exit_discard
else
	echo -en "${SNIPPET:${#KEY}+1}"
	exit_insert_snippet
fi

input: selected text or word

bound to TAB

Example:
http://www.bibiko.de/TMautotext.mov


Workflow:
If the 'AUTOTEXT' file is not open everything goes normally.
If I open that file and I edited it to insert a snippet (one hasn't  
to save it because TMTOOLS get its current content) I can use these  
temporary snippets.
Meaning if I press TAB the command looks for an equivalent key in the  
'AUTOTEXT' file. If there is one it will take this, otherwise it  
sends TAB to TM.

This works perfectly but one tiny things is there: speed. If I use a  
snippet coming from 'AUTOTEXT' like the example 'abcd' and I press  
TAB it takes ca. 200ms to jump to the next snippet field, or better I  
see it 200ms later. I can type very fast, everything is ok, but I see  
it a tick later.
Nevertheless my question is whether this workaround would be useful  
to elaborate further?

--Hans