Jelly Snippets

jelly-snippets

A simple text snippets plugin for Obsidian.md.

BEFORE UPDATING,READ:

If you have used an older version of this plugin (1.5) or below, updating to version 1.6 will erase your snippets. Backup your snippets before updating; I will update the plugin with a backup functionality later too in case I mess up again. Deepest apologies.

What does it do?

Pretty simple. You probably have run into snippets before.

1. Specify a mapping of snippet to replacement in the settings tab.

   snippet. |+| replacement!

2. If the cursor is at the end of a snippet...

   snippet.<cursor here>

3. ..then triggering the snippet conversion...

   snippet.<cursor here - TRIGGER!>

4. ..will replace the snippet with its replacement!

   replacement!<cursor here>

In greater detail:

Snippets are defined in a text area (like a file) in settings. Each snippet has two parts: lhs and rhs.

The lhs (left hand side) determines what text gets replaced; the rhs (right hand side) determines what replaces the text.

The lhs is exactly the text that will be replaced, while the rhs can have certain symbols to represent things like whitespace.

Naturally, there is a symbol to divide these two halves of a snippet, called a snippet part divider:

|+|, for example. (With spaces at the ends.)

lhs |+| rhs

So when you type lhs and then trigger the snippet command, it will replace the text lhs with rhs.

And, there is a symbol to divide each separate snippet in the list of snippets, called a snippet divider:

-==-, for example.

You must keep the snippet divider on their own line - that is, the plugin expects a newline after the snippet divider. (Implicitly, no two snippets can be on the same line.)

So if you had the following snippets file:

lhs |+| rhs
-==-
superb |+| superbowls

Then you would have two snippets. If your divider was -==- still and you had the following file:

lhs |+| rhs
superb |+| superbowls

Then typing lhs and triggering the snippet command would replace lhs with:

rhs
superb |+| superbowls

Using Symbols (simple)

Say you want to expand hw into a full hello-world function. Say we're using Rust. You define the snippet:

hw |+| fn hello() {
%\t%\e
}

When you trigger the snippet, you'll end up with this:

fn hello() {
    |
}

... where | represents your cursor. Of course, Obsidian is a markdown editor, so expect the little indent guide.

List of supported symbols

• Newline: %\n
• Tab: %\t
• Space: %\s
• Cursor Ending position (after snippet replacement): %\e

Why?

I wanted to make a generic snippets plugin that operated on text and worked as I needed. There is an existing snippets plugin already, Text Snippets by ArianaKhit, but not only is the plugin code somewhat outdated and a little complex, it seems to use an older API. (It is a very good plugin by the way.)

One of my goals writing this was to write a simple plugin that used the API exactly as described by the unofficial docs and by vanilla Typescript. I also wanted to make the core functionality of the plugin more flexible, though of course I have yet to add certain features that would truly provide that.

Another motivation was that I wanted to make a plugin by which I could type in my personal note-taking syntax (called JellyNote); I originally was going to write a whole editor extension, but I eventually realized that I could implement it with snippets. So, I'll be adding features to this plugin as long as I need them for JellyNote syntax.

This plugin also reminds me of LaTeX2Unicode, a neovim plugin which I used extensively in my first two years of college. I liked it because it would automatically change latex to unicode on pressing space; that was it. No stretching for the tab key.

It's since been incorporated back into julia.vim. I didn't originally mean to write a plugin that could provide this kind of functionality - but I suppose the concept of text translation is really useful!

Future Improvements/TODO

• Control characters in snippets (whitespace only)
• Semantic symbols in snippets (e.g. where does cursor go afterwards? a snippet with braces might benefit from placing the cursor inside...)
• Regex capabilities - at least on selection.
• A backup for snippets - or a way of specifying snippets in a file, to modularize snippets. May be useful if regex snippets need to be defined separately from text snippets.
• Bugfixes and auditing.
• AUTOMATED TESTING. Use Jest.
• Do the things liamcain suggested in my plugin PR to the Obsidian plugin repo. (one half done)
• Working with Obsidians template stuff.
• REWRITE: CodeMirror editor extension. See here on state fields. This should also make things such as tabstops and working in live preview possible, but I don't know for sure. This would mark a version upgrade.

Other caveats

• None right now, except that the maintainer of this plugin (me) is inexperienced and may break something. Keep your snippets safe if you write a lot of them.