Re: Setting up abbrev

[Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>]

* wilnerthomas--- via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> [2022-07-31 15:24]:
> Have seen discussions about abbrev.  How does it work exactly, and
> how could I set it up to test it?

It is very handy and useful to use Emacs feature to abbreviate longer
phrases and expand them automatically on the fly.

Best is if you evalute following in Emacs and read it from manual:

(info "(emacs) Abbrevs")

29.2 Defining Abbrevs
=====================

‘C-x a g’
     Define an abbrev, using one or more words before point as its
     expansion (‘add-global-abbrev’).

‘C-x a l’
     Similar, but define an abbrev specific to the current major mode
     (‘add-mode-abbrev’).

‘C-x a i g’
     Define a word in the buffer as an abbrev
     (‘inverse-add-global-abbrev’).

‘C-x a i l’
     Define a word in the buffer as a mode-specific abbrev
     (‘inverse-add-mode-abbrev’).

‘M-x define-global-abbrev <RET> ABBREV <RET> EXP <RET>’
     Define ABBREV as an abbrev expanding into EXP.

‘M-x define-mode-abbrev <RET> ABBREV <RET> EXP <RET>’
     Define ABBREV as a mode-specific abbrev expanding into EXP.

‘M-x kill-all-abbrevs’
     Discard all abbrev definitions, leaving a blank slate.

Let us say you have following words: We are the champions⬛ and your
cursor is there on the end of the word "champions", you could write
{C-4 C-x a g} and enter into minibuffer: "wechamp" and then any time
you write "wechamp" and press {C-x '} after "wechamp" it would expand
to "We are the champions".

I often use it to expand websites, such as wgnu to expand to
https://www.GNU.org

Then if you do {M-x abbrev-mode RET} the expansion takes place
automatically.

Links in this email are surrounded by curly brackets and represent
Hyperbole package's hyperlinks which may be automatically invoked by
{M-RET}

In fact, my signature below is never automatically added, I use
abbrevs for that. My real signature is:

actfsf

suprms

however, then when I enter "actfsf" it expands into what you see here
below.

So signatures I always add manually, but by using abbrevs. 👀

Jean

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