I don't quite understand Snippets

[McCarthy]

Hi,

We use Global Project linking for things like topics that we reuse, logos, and page layouts. We have a situation here were there is one topic (that is almost identical for every writer except for a couple of screenshots and a few names. From what I understand about snippets, this would be an ideal case to use them with. There are few things I am a bit lost with though.

Snippets are not globally linked, right? Flare help says, "If you need to modify the content of a snippet, you only need to change it in one place and the change is made automatically everywhere that the snippet is added." It's not clear to me how this works and where the edits take place. Global project linking makes sense, since there is one special project with universal topics, page layouts and the CSS. I would like to get started with Snippets and have read what I could in the Flare help, but am struggling to see it clearly. Can anyone help?

Thanks

[KevinDAmery]

I haven't used global project linking at this stage (haven't needed it for my purposes), but in a stand alone project what you would do is store the snippets in your Snippets folder under Content\Resources. If you needed to make a change, you would open the snippet, change the content, then save it. When you do this, any topic that makes use of the snippet will have the updated content when you build your output.

My understanding of how it works in a global project linking situation is that you would save the snippets that you want available to all projects in the "master" project. If you wanted to make a change to it, you would open the master project and change the snippet there. The change should then be available to the "child" projects.

But again, I haven't done this myself, so I could be wrong.

[jacortes]

Kevin is right on. If you are using the "Master Project" approach, you will have to create an import file in your child project (In Flare menu Project>Import File>Add Flare Project Import File.)

Then, open your import file (Under the Project Organizer) and specify that you want to import .flsnp from the Master Project.

From that point, every time you update a snippet, open your import file and click reimport. Flare automatically tells you if the snippets in your master project are newer than the ones in your child project.

[McCarthy]

I haven't used global project linking at this stage (haven't needed it for my purposes), but in a stand alone project what you would do is store the snippets in your Snippets folder under Content\Resources. If you needed to make a change, you would open the snippet, change the content, then save it. When you do this, any topic that makes use of the snippet will have the updated content when you build your output.

Thanks kevin.

So the whole idea behind the snippet is that you create a chunk of info yourself for your own reuse throughout the topics inside a single (stand alone) project. Any changes to the snippet affect the reused content in that single project only. And global linking is more about linking a chunk of info throughout multiple projects across a team of writers (if necessary). Do I understand it correctly?

My understanding of how it works in a global project linking situation is that you would save the snippets that you want available to all projects in the "master" project. If you wanted to make a change to it, you would open the master project and change the snippet there. The change should then be available to the "child" projects.

But why would you want to include snippets in your Global "master" project if you could just include the chunk of info as a Topic file? This is essentially what's confusing for me (and where I can't see the difference between a globally linked snippet and a globally linked topic). Why would you need a globally linked snippet?

BTW, we use Global linking right now and it works like a charm. It is seriously great. Surprising how we lived without it The snippet thing is confusing though

[helen]

I love GPL too, nearly got all my projects using my master project now.

I think the reason you'd use a global snippet (as opposed to a global topic) is when you have say, one paragraph within a topic where the content before and after (for example) is project specific, but the middle content is generic. Then a global snippet would win over a global topic. You do have a good point though - now I'm thinking about I am using global snippets where I could use global topics just as easily.

[NorthEast]

I love GPL too, nearly got all my projects using my master project now. :D

I think the reason you'd use a global snippet (as opposed to a global topic) is when you have say, one paragraph within a topic where the content before and after (for example) is project specific, but the middle content is generic. Then a global snippet would win over a global topic. You do have a good point though - now I'm thinking about I am using global snippets where I could use global topics just as easily. :lol:

You’d use a snippet when you want to repeat a chunk of content several times in different topics in a project. The same applies to linked projects, you may have several topics in your master project where you need to reuse the same chunk of content, and those topics are then linked to from other projects.

[Cecily]

A couple of related points to note:

• If you change a snippet or topic that will be imported into child projects, the child project doesn't know about the change until it starts to compile. You couldn't really expect it to, but it's worth remembering that it's not quite as "automatic" as implied above. In particular, if you have made no other changes to the child project, when you click to compile, it tells you the project is up to date, but then when it actually starts the compilation it prompts about changes to imported files.
• As Lisa says, snippets are for when you want to import part of a topic - a sentence, paragraphs, a graphic etc - so different destinations can have different text before and/or after. In particular, that gives more flexibility re hyperlinks with GPL. You can set GPL so that it automatically imports all topics to which the imported topic includes hyperlinks, or use conditions to exclude the links in some child projects, but it may just be easier to avoid the problem by having them on individual topic pages that are not imported in their entirety.

[Cecily]

Snippets are not globally linked, right? Flare help says, "If you need to modify the content of a snippet, you only need to change it in one place and the change is made automatically everywhere that the snippet is added."

Rereading this and other bits, I'm not sure if there is some confusion about the meaning of "project".

So the whole idea behind the snippet is that you create a chunk of info yourself for your own reuse throughout the topics inside a single (stand alone) project. Any changes to the snippet affect the reused content in that single project only. And global linking is more about linking a chunk of info throughout multiple projects across a team of writers (if necessary). Do I understand it correctly?

Not really. Certainly snippets can be globally linked, but they aren't automatically so.

• If you're not using Global Project Linking, each project is a self-contained entity. Snippets can be put in lots of topics and each time you update the snippet it is updated in all its destinations whenever you Save All or Compile.
• If you are using GPL, you have separate projects, but child projects can import topics, snippets, graphics and other things from a parent project. In a child project, you won't see updates to snippets (or any other imported files) until you recompile; Save All is not sufficient.

[KevinDAmery]

I haven't used global project linking at this stage (haven't needed it for my purposes), but in a stand alone project what you would do is store the snippets in your Snippets folder under Content\Resources. If you needed to make a change, you would open the snippet, change the content, then save it. When you do this, any topic that makes use of the snippet will have the updated content when you build your output.

Thanks kevin.

So the whole idea behind the snippet is that you create a chunk of info yourself for your own reuse throughout the topics inside a single (stand alone) project. Any changes to the snippet affect the reused content in that single project only. And global linking is more about linking a chunk of info throughout multiple projects across a team of writers (if necessary). Do I understand it correctly?

Not exactly. As others have mentioned, a snippet is a chunk of content that is smaller than a topic: it could contain an entire topic's worth of content, but most of the time you'll want something smaller, like a paragraph or two. For example, if you have a dialog box that gets used in a lot of different areas or a common interface element that appears in multiple places, you could make some of the process for that dialog into a snippet and reuse it in the topics related to all of the areas. This approach is valid for stand alone projects and for linked projects. A snippet isn't usually something you would present to a customer all by itself: normally, you would also include other information over and above the snippet to complete a topic.

My understanding of how it works in a global project linking situation is that you would save the snippets that you want available to all projects in the "master" project. If you wanted to make a change to it, you would open the master project and change the snippet there. The change should then be available to the "child" projects.

But why would you want to include snippets in your Global "master" project if you could just include the chunk of info as a Topic file? This is essentially what's confusing for me (and where I can't see the difference between a globally linked snippet and a globally linked topic). Why would you need a globally linked snippet?

Because you can't insert topics into other topics. Having a globally linked topic is useful if you need to replicate all of the content from start to finish, whereas snippets are useful if you want something smaller and more granular.

Snippets are not the same thing as global project linking. Global project linking allows you to have common full topics and other assets shared across multiple projects. Snippets are one type of content that you might want to share.

[McCarthy]

Thanks a lot for your explanations and patience. I have a much better understanding now

[trent the thief]

And returning to the global snippets part...

We have a very large project going into Flare. One master project and dozens of sub-projects that are fairly large on their own.

How can I force Flare's New Snippet dialog to always look in a specific location besides My Documents/My Templates/Snippets (the bottom option)?

There are 3-5 writers working on the projects. We have a ton of field descriptions and other generic descriptions used throughout the project that we don't want to worry about keeping synchronized.

I browsed through the registry hoping to find a setting that designated the location to no avail.

I've tried various combinations of directories and shortcuts without even partial success.

I remember this being discussed in the ancient days, but couldn't dig anything up. Suggestions?