Aby[fn:1] (aby-mode) is a simple fragment/snippet manager for Emacs. This
minor-mode lets you easily insert the contents of files from a designated
snippets directory into an Emacs buffer by using the command aby-insert.
Furthermore, Aby is capable of dynamically altering certain elements in a
fragment file by using custom defined functions (cf. the documentation for
aby/aby-instruct for more information on building instruction lists).
M-x aby-insert lisp/robodoc-class
will search for a file in the aby-fragments-dir, matching the
aby-file-extension (default aby.el). It will evaluate the Elisp
expressions in this file in a temp-buffer, expecting an association list
with replacements rules as the return value. Again, the documentation of
aby/aby-instruct shed some light on the data structure.
The resulting replacements rules will the be parsed by the aby-insert
function, which performs variable allocations and regex-replacements, and
eventually inserts the resulting string into the current buffer.
Besides the fully fledged, gold standard way of inserting Aby snippets – as
described above –, it is also possible to omit the process of calling (or
creating) an instruction-file prior to inserting the snippet. For cases
that don’t require explicit replacements instructions (as given in a
replacement-file via the replacement-rules), it is possible to skip the
creation of an instruction-file and just create a fragment-file which is
immediately inserted into the buffer. The only replacements which will be made
are those prescribed via the auto-replacements (cf. doc for
aby/aby-auto-replacements).
In order to create fragments/snippets, which will be inserted via this method,
add files to the fragment directory with a specific addition to the suffix,
indicating that this file is to be parsed as a plain-fragment during the
aby-insert process. The default suffix-indicator is
".abyss\\.?+\\..+$"
which is a Elisp RegEx, indicating that all files which end with an arbitrary
extension plus a trailing suffix (.abyss) should be considered as Plain
Fragments.[fn:2] Thus, the files simple-html.abyss.html and
function.abyss.lisp will be interpreted as Plain Fragment files:
class.lisp function.aby.el function.lisp function.abyss.lisp method.aby.el simple-html.abyss.html method.lisp module.aby.el
Place the files of the aby-mode on your hard-drive and load the files to your Emacs configuration, e.g. via:
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/aby/src/")
(require 'aby-mode)
;; load your custom Aby config (optional, see below)
(load "~/someplace/aby-config.el")
These expressions could be placed in your .emacs file.
In order to alter the Aby configuration, you can modify the config variables
(cf. the variables documentation in the doc) after load. An example
config-file can be found on /examples/aby-config.el.
As exemplified in the previous example, an Aby snippet is inserted via the
aby-insert command.
The examples directory contains a (somewhat “recursive”) file for creating
Aby instruction-files (cf. examples/fragments/aby/aby-instruct.aby.el).
This one comes in very handy when creating new aby-instruct files (cf. doc).
The /examples directory contains examples both for configuration and the
creation of Aby fragments (i.e. instruction and snippet files).
Detailed insight on how to construct instruction files and information on the
parsing/insertion process can be gained by reading the /doc (dive in via
/doc/index.html) and especially examining the functions aby/aby-instruct
and aby/aby-insert.
[fn:1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aby_Warburg [fn:2] For more on Elisp RegEx (Regular Expressions), cf. the Emacs manual and the EmacsWiki.