About Snippets

You can create a text snippet or a block snippet. This is determined by the way you insert the snippet. If you insert a snippet on a blank line in a topic, it is inserted as a block snippet and takes up all of the room so that no other content can be added. If you insert a snippet on a line where other content exists, it is inserted as a text snippet. Therefore, if you want to insert a snippet on a blank line and also type other text before or after it, you need to type the text first and then insert the snippet afterwards. Also, if you have a snippet containing multiple paragraphs and insert it within a line of text, the snippet becomes just one continuous line of text because it is a text snippet.

When you create a text or block snippet, it displays surrounded by brackets (if you have markers turned on).

You can apply a condition tag to a snippet so that it is included in some targets but not in other targets. See Applying Condition Tags to Content.

You can also create snippet conditions. Snippet conditions are condition tags that you can apply to content within snippets. With snippet conditions, you can separate certain snippet content so that it displays in some topics or master pages but not in others. This allows you to use one snippet for many purposes, rather than having to create multiple snippets. Whereas regular conditions are included or excluded at the target level, snippet conditions are included or excluded at the topic or master page level. See Using Snippet Conditions.

Flare recognizes when you are typing content that matches existing snippets in your project. This makes it a very fast and convenient way to single-source your content. See About Auto Suggestion and Enabling and Disabling Auto Suggestion.

example

Let's say you work on a team of 15 writers and there are a series of snippets in all of your projects that begin with the same three words—For more information…

Perhaps each person knows to start typing those words in certain places. But what if a snippet already exists with the full content that the writer needs? Without knowing that, a person might spend time typing all of the content, and maybe even create a new snippet for future use. But if Auto Suggestion is enabled, as soon as a person types a certain number of characters, all matching snippets are shown in the Auto Suggestion popup. Therefore, the writer can quickly find and select the appropriate snippet.

Following are the main tasks involved with using snippets.

• Create Snippets From Content If you have already added content in your topic and want to turn that content into a snippet, you can create a snippet out of that existing content using the Home ribbon or Format menu. See Creating New Snippets from Existing Content.

• Add Snippets You can add a new snippet (without necessarily having any topic open). See Adding New Snippets.

  Note: You can also import an existing snippet from outside your project.

• Insert Snippets After you create or add snippets, you can insert them into any topic in your project. See Inserting Snippets.

  Note: You can also create nested snippets (i.e., a snippet within a snippet). To do this, simply open a snippet and then insert another snippet into it.

• Edit Snippets You cannot modify the snippet at its location in the topic. When you insert a snippet into the topic, the content is displayed, but it is held in a separate snippet file. In the topic the snippet marker is represented by brackets. To modify a snippet you need to open it by right-clicking on it and selecting Open Link, or you can open it from the Content Explorer. Then you can make changes to it in the XML Editor. See Editing Snippets.
• Replace Snippets After you create or add a new snippet to your project, you can insert it into any of your topics. Later, if you decide that a different snippet is a better fit for the topic, you can select a new snippet to replace it. See Replacing Snippets.

Warning: It is recommended that you avoid creating links to snippets.This is primarily due to the nature of snippets, which are designed to be inserted into multiple files. Let's say you have a heading style in a snippet and that snippet is then inserted into 12 different topics. In another topic, you might decide to create a cross-reference that points to the heading in that snippet. But which of those 12 topics is it supposed to point to in the output? There is no way for Flare to know this, so you could end up with some very undesirable results. For this reason, it's a good idea not to link to any content in a snippet.