XML document authoring with emacs |  |
XML document authoring with emacs | |
For example, in a DocBook document, a procedure has this structure:
<procedure>
<step>
<para>
First step....
</para>
</step>
<step>
<para>
Second step....
</para>
</step>
...
</procedure>
If you are going to be writing a lot of DocBook
procedures, it saves time to have two small template
files lying around that you can insert into your
document. The first—call it
proc—contains the skeleton
of a procedure with one step:
<procedure>
<step>
<para>
</para>
</step>
</procedure>
In this skeleton, the line inside the
para element is empty, so you can
fill in the text of the step.
The second template file contains just the skeleton of a
step. Let's call this file step:
<step>
<para>
</para>
</step>So the workflow for writing a procedure becomes:
Insert a copy of the proc file.
Fill in the text of the first step.
For each additional step, insert a copy of the
step file, and fill in its text.
If you are finicky about maintaining proper indentation,
and the template file isn't indented correctly for your
current context, that's easy to fix. Just after inserting
the template, issue the command
indent-region (M-C-\).
In nxml-mode, this command re-indents all the lines in the
region; since the region is set to the inserted portion
just after using insert-file, only
the text just inserted will be re-indented.