Zen Coding plugin for Geany

From the Zen Coding website:

Zen Coding is an editor plugin for high-speed HTML, XML, XSL (or any other structured code format) coding and editing. The core of this plugin is a powerful abbreviation engine which allows you to expand expressions—similar to CSS selectors—into HTML code. For example:

div#page>div.logo+ul#navigation>li*5>a

...can be expanded into:

<div id="page">
        <div class="logo"></div>
        <ul id="navigation">
                <li><a href=""></a></li>
                <li><a href=""></a></li>
                <li><a href=""></a></li>
                <li><a href=""></a></li>
                <li><a href=""></a></li>
        </ul>
</div>

Read more about current Zen Coding syntax

Dependencies

• Compiler and related utilities
• Geany plugin development packages (including GTK+/GLib)
• Python 2.6+ development package

For example in Debian (and Ubuntu, Mint, etc.), the following command should install the required packages:

# apt-get install \
    build-essential autoconf libtool geany-plugins libgtk2.0-dev python-dev

There should be packages for most popular distros that serve the same purpose as these one do.

Installation

Check out the sources from GitHub:

$ mkdir -p ~/src
$ cd ~/src
$ git clone git://github.com/codebrainz/geany-zencoding.git

Then change to the Geany Zen Coding plugin directory and generate the required build system files:

$ cd geany-zencoding
$ ./autogen.sh

Now configure, compile and install the build system:

$ ./configure --prefix=`pkg-config --variable=prefix geany`
$ make
$ make install # maybe as root depending on prefix

After that you can run geany and use the plugin:

$ geany -v

Activating the Plugin

Open the Plugin Manager by selecting Tools->Plugin Manager. Find the Zen Coding plugin in the list and check the box next to it.

De-Activating the Plugin

Open the Plugin Manager by selecting Tools->Plugin Manager. Find the Zen Coding plugin in the list and uncheck the box next to it.

Using the Plugin

The first thing you will probably want to do is change the keybindings for the Zen Coding plugin from their defaults. To do this, go to Edit->Preferences and then select the Key Bindings tab. Find the Zen Coding group of keybindings and change either of the two keybindings to your preference.

Note: I would welcome suggestions for key bindings to use which do not conflict with Geany's default keybindings. The current defaults are Ctrl+Shift+e for Expand Abbreviation and Ctrl+Shift+q for Wrap with Abbreviation.

Expand Abbreviation:

To use this, type a Zen Coding abbreviation and then activate the keybinding for Expand Abbreviation. The abbreviation will be replaced with the expanded text if it was valid. You can also activate this action by selecting the menu item Tools->Zen Coding->Expand Abbreviation.

Wrap with Abbreviation

To use this, select text to be wrapped and then activate the keybinding for Wrap with Abbreviation. You will be prompted for an abbreviation and then the selected text will be wrapped with the expanded text of the supplied abbreviation. You can also activate this action by selecting the menu item Tools->Zen Coding->Wrap with Abbreviation.

Profiles

You can select the profile you wish to use by selecting a profile under Tools->Zen Coding->Profile. Custom profiles can be installed under your home directory, typically ~/.config/geany/plugins/zencoding/profiles. These are just standard config/ini files with the group [profile] and having the key name as well as zero or more Zen Coding profile dictionary keys/values.

Settings

You can edit the Zen Coding settings module by choosing the menu item Tools->Zen Coding->Open Zen Coding settings file. This will open the module used to control the Zen Coding engine. You can also just open and edit this file from it's location on disk, typically ~/.config/geany/plugins/zencoding/zencoding/zen_settings.py. The plugin will detect when this file has been updated and it will reload itself.

Reset Settings

You can reset the settings file by just deleting it from your home directory, typically ~/.config/geany/plugins/zencoding/zencoding/zen_settings.py.

Bugs

• No support for changing doc_type.
• Only system-wide profiles currently loaded.
• Need better icons.
• Lots of other stuff not implemented, or otherwise.
• Needs distro packaging