Snippets and links

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Ed Dressel
Posts: 226
Joined: Tue May 11, 2004 6:40 pm

Snippets and links

Unread post by Ed Dressel »

I use Snippets a lot--they save me a ton of time. I really love them. But there is a feature I would love them to have that would save me more time.

I tried to ask this before, but I don't think I described it very well. I am trying again. I hope this is clear.

In a Snippet, I often need to put a link in it, but where that link jumps to depends upon where I put the Snippet in my help file. To solve this currently, I create multiple Snippets for the same help file Topic. I then put the link between the Snippets. This works, but I think it could be easier.

With a snippet, it would be nice if there were "properties" for the snippet that could set/override where the links jump to. So that I could override any links so that they jump to the correct relative location.

Does this make sense?

Much appreicated,

Ed Dressel
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Tim Green
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Re: Snippets and links

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Ed,
With a snippet, it would be nice if there were "properties" for the snippet that could set/override where the links jump to. So that I could override any links so that they jump to the correct relative location.

Does this make sense?
It does make sense, it's just not possible, at least not in the current implementation of how snippets work. To achieve what you want, snippets would have to be a completely different kind of interactive object. They would have to display properties with an automatic, configurable list of all the links they contain, and you would have to configure this list every time you insert every single snippet. Or you would have to have a solution like a list of links with IDs in each project, and the same IDs would be mapped to different targets in each project.

There are other possible solutions, but you get the general drift. The problem is that all these solutions are awful, by definition. They add a huge amount of complexity, they would confuse even advanced users and they would cause many errors, on many levels. We have thought about this already, a lot, and it is just one of those situations where having the user perform a little extra work is really the best answer to the problem. 8)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Ed Dressel
Posts: 226
Joined: Tue May 11, 2004 6:40 pm

Re: Snippets and links

Unread post by Ed Dressel »

Thank you for the reply.

I think the solution to the complexity is in a great GUI design. What that looks like, I don't know, but after programming for 30+ years now, anytime something is going to be complex, the GUI gets a lot of work. I think it is doable, but I understand it isn't easy. (If it was easy, others would be doing it :-) ).

Much appreciate your response.

Ed Dressel
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