Emmanuel! What Is the Point of Using Snippets

I receive some mails asking me "Emmanuel! What is the point of using snippets?" to implement a Pick Loop.

I can do the same, without snippets, and with just 2 entries!!!

Step 1: Create an expansion glossary entry to produce the action repeatedly

Create the expansion glossary entry with the dedicated short form of our choice:

I have highlighted the "expansion snippet" :-) that does the scroll down action with a red box.

The Pick command that follows proposes to perform the scroll down action again.

Step 2: Create the pick list that proposes the action again

Now we create the pick list that proposes the action again.

It has only one choice, and not so surprisingly (after all we are implementing a loop), the expansion is completely the same as in step 1.

Fair enough! I understand that it may well appear simpler to do it like that.

What I find elegant in the method using snippets is that the action to repeat is isolated in a single snippet.

You may ask "What's the point?"

Imagine you think that

does a better job scrolling down than

and therefore decide to change the way you implement scroll down.

Using the Pick Loop Method with Snippets you will need to change only one snippet whereas using the Pick Loop Method without Snippets you will need to change the 2 entries created in the steps 1 and 2 above.

I happen to do a job where I love to have things centralized so that a change impacts only a central place. :-)

That is basically the power of snippets.

A snippet centralizes a know-how
that can be referenced all over the place using the snippet command
instead of hard-copying it all over the place.

In the 2 entries of this post you can see that the scroll down know-how is hard-copied twice (see the red boxes).