I’m not sure whether automatic text completion on a mobile device is a net good. It sometimes saves a few taps, but it seems like it’s at least as likely to cause extra work.

Although I’m ambivalent about autocomplete on my phone, I like it in my text editor. The difference is that in my editor autocomplete is

• configurable,
• transparent,
• intentional.

I value these characteristics, but I understand that not everyone does, especially on a mobile device.

Abbrevs

Emacs abbrevs (abbreviations) are completely configurable. The only abbrevs the editor knows about are the ones you ask for, and you can see (and edit) your set of abbrevs in an ordinary text file. You can easily toggle in and out of abbrev-mode, turning all abbrevs on or off.

You can also determine whether an abbrev applies to all modes or just some modes. For example, maybe you’d like imp to automatically expand to

    import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

when writing a Python file, but not when composing an email in which you might wish to call someone an imp.

Abbrevs are not saved by default, but Emacs will ask you when you exit if you’d like to save abbrevs created during your session. This encourages experimentation. You can try out an abbrev before deciding whether t