Initialize new Vim buffers with file-type-specific templates
- Automatically populate new buffers with file-type-specific templates
- Include dynamic text in your templates with simple placeholders
- Create custom placeholders that are replaced by functions you define
- Define custom replacements based on file-type
- Define custom templates based on filename and containing directory
- Simple convention-over-configuration design (no configuration required)
Add something like the following to ~/.vim/templates/skel.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<@BASENAME@>
@CURSOR@
</@BASENAME@>And when you create a new buffer, e.g., books.xml, it will be initialized
with your template:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<books>
[cursor is here]
</books>It differs from a snippet plug-in in that it is concerned with initializing new buffers with boilerplate text without any manual intervention such as triggering a snippet.
vim-skeleton stays out of your way: it will never load a template unless the
buffer is empty and is not associated with an existing file on disk. And if you
don't happen to want to use the template for a particular file, hitting undo
(u) restores your empty buffer.
Out of the box, vim-skeleton will attempt to load <parent_dir_name>.<ext>.
So for example, editing a new buffer with name
app/controllers/user_controller.rb will attempt to load controllers.rb and
fall back to skel.rb if not found. The plug-in can be extended with your own
rules for loading templates and doing your own processing of template files
(such as doing custom substitutions). See :help skeleton-config for
details.
Use the :SkelEdit[!] command for quick access to the currently loaded
template file (or a specific template if specified).
Use the :SkelInsert[!] command to load a specific template or force
insertion of a template when automatic insertion wouldn't normally be
triggered.
See :help skeleton-commands for details.
vim-skeleton is installed just about the same way as any other Vim plug-in.
The only extra step is creating your templates directory and adding templates
to it. By default, vim-skeleton looks in ~/.vim/templates, but this can be
changed (see :help skeleton-config).
To get started, try:
mkdir -p ~/.vim/templates
echo "Hello world" > ~/.vim/templates/skel.txt
vim hello.txt
Tests are written for vspec, which can be installed via vim-flavor:
bundle install
vim-flavor install
The test suite can then be run via the rake task:
rake test
The documentation in doc/ is generated from the plug-in source code via
vimdoc. Do not edit doc/skeleton.txt directly. Refer to the
existing inline documentation as a guide for documenting new code.
The help doc can be rebuilt by running:
rake doc