Re: Automatic Insertion of Required Elements and Attributes

+--
| I'm actually slightly amazed. How do you deal with the absence of C-c
| C-e, C-c C-r, C-RET, M-C-k, and all the other editing functions? Is
| there a shim that implements these somewhere?
+--

I used to use sgml-mode but now I do everything in nxml-mode.  I
forget what all those keybindings meant, but I can address your
need for insertion of required child elements.  Back in 2007 one
Stefano Sabatini asked a similar question.  Here's my reply.

+-- Mr. Sabatini:
| And what about the insertion of complex skeletons, like that of a
| variablelist? There is already some way to add them with some
| shortcuts or is needed to hook into nxml-mode-hook all the various
| docbook specific skeleton insertion functions required?
+--

My solution to this is to put together a collection of little
template files and insert them using "C-x i".  For example,
if I'm building a variablelist, I have two template files named
"varlist" containing the variablelist element, and a file "vle"
containing the skeleton of a varlistentry element.  Here's the
"varlist" file:

================================================================
       <variablelist>
<!--\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\-->
       </variablelist>
----------------------------------------------------------------

The comment line is there to remind me to fill in the body.
As I add each child element, I keep that comment line just
below the element just added, so I can quickly find the
spot where the next child element will go in.  Once the
list is complete, I'll delete the comment line.

Here's my template file "vle" for a varlistentry:

================================================================
         <varlistentry>
           <term>
             <code >
</code >
           </term>
           <listitem>
             <para>

             </para>
           </listitem>
         </varlistentry>
----------------------------------------------------------------

This assumes that the terms I'm defining are in code.  I have the
</code> closing tag unindented because it's inline markup:  I'll
add the term's text after the <code> start tag, then use C-d to
pull the </code> end tag up just after it.

Not elegant, but I've been using it for a long time now, and
it speeds up document creation a lot.

There's a more detailed discussion in my locally-written nxml
documentation:

     http://www.nmt.edu/tcc/help/pubs/nxml/

Scroll down to the section entitled "Toward faster work".

Best regards,
John Shipman ([email protected]), Applications Specialist, NM Tech Computer Center,
Speare 119, Socorro, NM 87801, (505) 835-5950, http://www.nmt.edu/~john
   ``Let's go outside and commiserate with nature.''  --Dave Farber


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