rofi-blah-blah — snippets

Make rofi insert any defined snippet, directly to the text input you’re writing in.

This code for this repository is found at https://github.com/chelmertz/rofi-blah-blah

Install dependencies

You need xsel and xdotool.

Configure rofi

Add the snippets modi to your rofi configuration, point at your copy of the script:

rofi -show snippets -modi snippets:~/code/github/chelmertz/rofi-blah-blah/rofi-blah-blah

Trying out some snippets

mkdir ~/snips
printf "my snippet\nis so long\nit requires newlines\n" > ~/snips/a-test-snippet
# open up a program that waits for text input, like gedit
# start rofi

(Optional) Changing the location of your snippets

By default, ~/snips is used. You override this by giving rofi the environment variable SNIPDIR, like:

env SNIPDIR=/tmp/my-snippets rofi -show snippets -modi snippets:~/code/github/chelmertz/rofi-blah-blah/rofi-blah-blah

What makes up a snippet?

Have a single directory with files in it.

The filename is the name of the snippet.

The file’s contents makes up for the snippet.

Some alternatives

pet

https://brianshumate.com/articles/command-line-snippets/

Not chosen because it seems overkill, and (looks like) it wants to own the GUI. In my case, I want rofi to be the front end.

rofi-modi-snippets

https://github.com/raphaelfournier/rofi-modi-snippets

Would suit me, but (commenting on version d24d25aa6):

don’t allow for snippet contents with newlines (i.e. a mail signature or whatever)
don’t allow for snippets with a specific delimiter (i.e. it cuts a configured snippet like a|b|c, with the separator |, to snippet a with content b)
allows for duplicate snippet names, silently matching on the first occurrence
needs to change hardcoded paths in the cloned script
uses xdotool type which is slow in my tests (compared to xsel -bo; xdotool key ctrl+v)

chelmertz/rofi-blah-blah