MadCap Software Forums

I am up to about 30 or so snippets in the help document that I manage.

If I am using them correctly, I can see a near-future size of 100+.

When I go to insert a snippet, I have to scroll through the list to find the one I want.

I find Auto-Suggest more distracting than helpful, so that is turned off.

Does anyone have a Best Practice that they follow to make their snippets more manageable? Does anyone have a way they 'find' their snippets to use? I have tried the drag and drop, but that too is a bit clunky.

I have thought that what is needed is an active search opton on the snippet tool. Where, as the letters are typed into the search box, the list moves to the first match. That would be a great help for anyone with a good sized catelog of snippets.

Thought I would check the forum first, just to see if I am missing anything, before I submit an enhancement request.

Tks

Lew,
No magic that you haven't already discussed. I do manage a considerable amount of snippets as well and find floating the Content Explorer pane useful. That way, I can view nearly the entire list of snippets and drag and drop as needed. Always place your cursor first before drag and drop. Makes it easy to ensure placement is exact.

I find it helpful to use strict naming conventions for my snippets (well, actually for everything in my Flare projects). With careful filenaming, I can sort a long list of snippets and quickly find what I'm looking for. For example, I routinely use prefixes such as the following for snippets.

• note_ /holds a note/
• wrn_ /holds a warning/
• fld_ /holds a field description/
• btn_ /holds a button description/
• def_ /holds a definition/
• aut_ /holds an "author note," that is a comment that I want to drop into many topics but that will not show up in generated output]
• email_ /holds an email link/
• url_ /holds a link to a web site/

Hope this helps.

jacortes: Tks, I will give the floating page a shot.

Nina:Tks. I can see where your system can help; at least you can pull down to the general area more quickly. Unfortunately, I attempt to be organized and use naming conventions, but production trumps adhereing to naming conventions (yes, I know this is just an excuse). But, you give me the urge to try harder.