Nicolas Martyanoff has a post on something I didn’t know about: Emacs Tempo templates. I’ve been an Emacs user for somewhere between 15 and 20 years and I’d never heard of Tempp templates. On the one hand that’s pretty surprising. On the other hand, we all know that learning Emacs is a lifelong journey that is never completed.
As most of you know, I’m a Yasnippet user and find it very useful even for non-programming chores so I’m not in the market for another templating engine but if you’re new to templating, Tempo may be worth a look. I don’t have any experience with it, obviously, but based on Martyanoff’s description I’d judge that Yasnippet is easier to use and learn and seems more flexible too.
Martyanoff says that one of the virtues of Tempo is that it’s simple but I find it harder to use than Yasnippet so my advice to the template n00b is to use Yasnippet. Still, as always, Emacs let you have your way. Along with skeletons there are three1 template systems you can use with Emacs so there are plenty of choices.
Footnotes:
Unless there’s yet another Emacs templating system I don’t know about.