The contained AppleScript Extract placeholder.scpt augments BBEdit’s placeholders by reducing the work required to keep the text included as the placeholder label.
A BBEdit placeholder is a portion of text prefixed with <# and suffixed with #>, e.g. <#example#>. Striking TAB on your keyboard when a placeholder is present causes the pointy brackets and their contents to be selected – greatly reducing the time and effort to find and edit these portions of the document. Tabbing through the document will highlight each placeholder ready to be replaced when one starts typing.
Typically the text between the placeholder delimiters is intended as a label. Consider this portion of a letter template:
--
<#sign off#>
Oliver Boermans
With <#sign off#> selected I can start typing to replace it with the appropriate formality. Although I notice that most of the time I write:
--
Yours sincerely
Oliver Boermans
I could remove the placeholder from the template and it would be right most of the time. Alternatively I could use this instead:
--
<#Yours sincerely#>
Oliver Boermans
It is self evident that this is the intended position for a “sign off” and my most frequent selection is pre-filled. This seems great, except now I have the inconvenience of manually removing the placeholder delimiters. This is exactly what this BBEdit script makes effortless.
Evoke the script and the delimiters are removed from the first placeholder found in the selected text.
There is room for improvement as sometimes I have the arduous task of typing something different:
--
Yours faithfully
Oliver Boermans
Wouldn’t it be nice if my template could store an alternative. Perhaps something like:
--
<#Yours sincerely|Yours faithfully#>
Oliver Boermans
With this placeholder selected evoking the script pops a dialog from which my the appropriate option may be chosen and entered in a snap.
Although removing the placeholder label sign off is no great loss in this particular example, it is easy to imagine scenarios where it would help to indicate the purpose of placeholder. By default the option dialog uses the label “Options”. To customise this designate the first option in the placeholder as the label by prefixing it with a delimiter:
--
<#|Sign off|Yours sincerely|Yours faithfully|Cheers|Love#>
Oliver Boermans
To use an alternative delimiter (perhaps to use a pipe | in your output) specify one by placing the desired character or characters at the very start of the placeholder – separating it from the placeholder options (and custom label if specified) with:
=|=
For example to use “$” as a delimiter:
--
<#$=|=Yours sincerely$Yours faithfully$Cheers$Love#>
Oliver Boermans
Or a comma “,” and a custom label
<#,=|=,Sign off,Yours sincerely,Yours faithfully,Cheers,Love#>
Oliver Boermans
If nothing precedes the custom delimiter delimiter, the script presumes you don’t want to delimit:
--
<#=|=Yours sincerely | Yours faithfully | Cheers | Love#>
Oliver Boermans
Inserting the whole placeholder text following the custom delimiter delimiter:
--
Yours sincerely | Yours faithfully | Cheers | Love
Oliver Boermans
Upon executing the script, if a BBEdit placeholder is not found within the selection, the extent of selection is used in its place.
In summary this is the expected pattern – brackets indicate optional elements:
`[<#[*]][CUSTOM_DELIMITER][=|=][|CUSTOM_LABEL|]replacement option[|additional replacement options][#>]`
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Line breaks within placeholders are not handled well. For more complex options I suggest creating a Clipping for the purpose.
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Only tested with BBEdit 11
- Download and unzip the package: Extract-Placeholder.bbpackage_v1.0.0.zip
- Double–click the Extract-Placeholder.bbpackage, BBEdit will prompt you to install (or update), and restart.
The package file will be copied to the Packages directory in BBEdit’s Application Support directory. Delete it from here should you wish uninstall later.
Invoke the script "Extract placeholder" from BBEdit’s Scripts Menu or ideally assign a keyboard short cut of your choosing.
In your Terminal:
cd BBEdit-ESLint/
make
to also install the fresh build:
make install