Autocomplete
Autocomplete helps you complete various pieces of text by searching for parts of what you try to complete, and inserting the rest of the text for you. Across the Zettlr editor, a variety of autocomplete functions are available.
Usually, you trigger autocomplete with a special character at a valid position. These characters differ for the types of autocomplete Zettlr supports, such as citations, tags, snippets, or code blocks. A “valid position” usually means that the character needs to be preceded by whitespace, or inserted at the beginning of a line.
Tip
Because one not always wants to insert an autocompletion, you need to accept an autocomplete suggestion by either clicking it, or pressing Tab. Pressing the Enter-key will abort the insertion process. This prevents accidental autocompletions.
Tag Autocompletion
Zettlr can autocomplete tags, or keywords for you. To do so, insert a pound-sign (#) at the position where you wish to insert a tag. Start typing the tag until you have found it. Then, accept the autocompletion.
Citation Autocompletion
When inserting citations, autocomplete helps you identify the correct citation key. To start a citation autocomplete, enter an @-character. Start typing parts of the citation key, author names, or parts of the title of the work to cite. Once you have identified the citation key, accept the suggestion with Tab.
Tip
In your citation settings, you can determine how Zettlr will autocomplete the citation. There are three styles available, and Zettlr will add any required surrounding characters as necessary, and place your cursor accordingly.
Snippets Autocompletion
To insert snippets, insert a colon-character (:). This will offer you available snippets to choose from.
Note
You can customize which character triggers the autocompletion. Especially if you are writing using a French typographical style, you will space out your (normal) colons from your text, which will trigger the autocomplete. If this happens frequently, you can change the autocompletion trigger character to another one.
Emoji Autocompletion
Zettlr allows you to insert emojis based on string values (e.g., :joy:). Since the control character to start an emoji autocompletion is the same as for snippets, you can enable or disable this in the preferences.
When searching for an emoji, you can type various synonyms for the character.
Note
Autocompleting an emoji will insert the actual Unicode-symbol for the emoji, not its string representation.
Code Blocks
Zettlr can provide syntax highlighting for various programming languages out of the box. By default, code blocks do not provide syntax highlighting, and instead simply format your code in monospaced font.
To enable syntax highlighting for a language, you need to provide a code for the language. To help you identify the correct keywords, Zettlr offers automatic autocomplete of these language codes.
To start the code block language selector autocompletion, start by typing three backticks on a new line. After the third one, the autocomplete will start.
The preselected entry indicates “No Syntax Highlighting.” In that case, if you accept the autocompletion, Zettlr will simply insert the closing backticks and place your cursor into the codeblock without applying a language code.
Start typing a language name to search for the correct language code. Accept a completion with Tab.