I've been using Texpander as described in this answer to insert boilerplate text snippets into browser windows and word processor documents in an Xorg session.
Recently, a comment by @vanadium here indicated that Rofi could be used as well:
I would for sure use rofi (or dmenu) for such user case. It has a fantastic quick search that narrows quickly down based on substrings you type. I use it for inserting custom text snippets among others.
How do I go about using Rofi for this purpose?
Requirements: rofi, xclip, and xdotool in an Xorg session
According to apt show rofi, Rofi is a
window switcher, run dialog and dmenu replacement
I searched the internet and came across User scripts. One of the scripts listed there, Kaomoji Rofi is described as "a simple kaomoji picker". I took its code (which I don't fully understand) and modified it:
#!/bin/bash
selection=$(rofi -i -width 1000 -theme solarized -dmenu $@ < /home/dkb/Documents/snippets.txt)
kaomoji=$(echo $selection)
echo -n "$kaomoji" | xclip -selection clipboard
sleep 0.1
xdotool key shift+Insert
-width 1000 or more is useful to see as much of the snippet contents because only one line is allotted to per snippet. Anything exceeding the width is represented by …-theme isn't used, the default theme or the theme last chosen by using rofi-theme-selector as described here will be used.sort -u -o $HOME/Documents/snippets.txt $HOME/Documents/snippets.txt once in a while keeps them sorted though it isn't really necessary.)sleep 0.1 and xdotool key shift+Insert are not essential. Users can use their preferred method to paste clipboard text.I saved the script as rofi-snippets.sh in $HOME/bin, made it executable, and bound it to Ctrl+` as the keyboard shortcut to launch it.
Users can rapidly select the snippet of their choice by typing in one or a few characters to highlight just the one snippet and then pressing Enter.
Here's an animation illustrating the script in action:
