Snippet Glossary

A Snippet Glossary defines a set of expansions that can be referenced across multiple other expansions.

A Snippet Glossary Entry consists in:

• a snippet name that uniquely identifies the snippet,

• an expansion to be produced when the snippet is referenced in another expansion,

• an optional display form, that is only displayed in the Glossary Viewer Entry Table.

A Snippet Glossary does not accept duplicate snippet names.

How do you reference a snippet inside an expansion?

You can reference a snippet using its snippet name inside an expansion with the Snippet command.

The following "Support Signature" snippet, for example:

Snippet name	support-signature
Expansion	Instant Text Customer Support Textware Solutions support@textware.com www.textware.com
Display as	Support Signature

can be referenced in the following expansion glossary entries:

1. Short	dyhasg
   Expansion	Our Short Guide at: https://textware.com/it9pro/help/getting_started.htm can help you get started in a few minutes. {Snippet}support-signature{/Snippet}
   Display as	Do you have a Short Guide?

2. Short	dyhaf
   Expansion	If you have any questions you can visit our Forum at http://www.textware.com/board/InstantTextEXP/index.html {Snippet}support-signature{/Snippet}
   Display as	Do you have a Forum?

At expansion time when Instant Text encounters a snippet command it looks up the referenced snippet in the Snippet Glossary and expands the corresponding expansion.

What is the purpose of referencing a snippet inside an expansion?

Imagine we had hardcopied our support signature in our

• "Do you have a Short Guide?",
• "Do you have a Forum?",
• and other expansion glossary entries,

instead of referencing the support-signature snippet.

If for one reason or another, we wanted to change our support signature, we would have to update all the expansion glossary entries where we have hardcopied it!

The advantage of a snippet is that it centralizes an expansion fragment. When you change the contents of a snippet, it impacts all the expansion glossary entries that reference it, at once.

The Snippet Glossary Shell

The Snippet Glossary Shell is the Snippet Glossary that contains all active snippets: in order for a Snippet Glossary to be active, it needs to be included in the Snippet Glossary Shell.

The Snippet Glossary Shell has a fixed location and a reserved name: Glossary\#Snippets.xglo

Viewing the Snippet Glossary Shell

You can view and edit the Snippet Glossary Shell in the Glossary Viewer using the View Snippet Glossary menu item of the Glossary Menu.