We gave the idea of labels on text snippets some serious thought during development, but there's a nasty complication that arises and we couldn't come up with a clean solution during our analysis. There may still be a good solution that we overlooked.
The "label" field would need to be a completely separate control, just like it is for the other snippet types. So how do we lay things out?
Option #1: We limit the text snippet's contents data to be a single line so the label and contents can be placed side-by-side.
Option #2: We force the snippet's contents data to be displayed in a much narrower region so that the label is shown on the left. This would look a lot like two columns of data, with the label being on the first line and the contents data to its right. The problem is all the empty space that now appears beneath the label.
Option #3: We put the label on an extra line ABOVE the contents data. This will usually NOT be what the user wants, as it's visually distracting and fails to present the material in a useful way.
The big problem is that we need a solution that cleanly handles snippet contents data running for multiple lines. If so, then we aren't able to put the label on the same line with the contents data unless we go for the visually ugly option #2 that is also very wasteful of visual space. This "waste" becomes much more of an issue on smaller screens (e.g. laptops).
We could theoretically do something along the lines of what @Zaphod proposed with the "[label]text[/label]" technique. However, that has a major drawback as well. When you are in View mode for a topic, double-clicking within text should let you enter Edit mode at exactly that spot. But if we use formatting controls like "[label]text[/label]", we completely lose that ability. The label text would be displayed as "Label: contents" in View mode, but switching to Edit mode would move the text around, so now the snippet contents would move out from under where the user double-clicked.
There's no good solution here that we could think of. So we left it where users can readily insert their own labels at the start of the text if they really want them. You can also user whatever formatting for the labels that you prefer.
If anyone has a good idea for how to solve all these issues, I'd love to hear them!
