Text Snippet Trouble. Plz help.

[Parody]

I'm pretty sure Sevrick is talking about the same thing I don't like (noted in the second post in the Sections without snippets thread) where even Sections with defined Snippets get a Text Snippet. The steps would be:

Create a new Topic Category.
Add a Tags Snippet to that Category's only Section.
Save it.
Go to the World Almanac.
Create a new Topic using that Category.

Result: The new Topic has a Tags Snippet and an undesired Text Snippet.

Expected: Only the snippets defined in the section would appear.

Note: You can make an Article Category and Article instead, doesn't matter. You can (IIRC) add all the non-Text Snippets you want; if there isn't a Text Snippet RW automatically adds one.

[rob]

I read @Sevrick's post differently. It sounds like he's stating that a text snippet is added at a different time, which is surprising to me. That's what prompted me to ask for step-by-step instructions.

If it's just a matter of the snippet being added at topic creation, I don't think he would have reacted as he did to the pruning suggestion. So it sounds like something else is going on here that I want to understand.

[Sevrick]

Image 1
http://i.imgur.com/8Wk2bZI.png
This is the category I made. Notice no text snippets. All highlighted sections is all I want to be added.

Now I add one in, and in Image 2 it automatically added text snippets that I highlighted in yellow. I don't want it to do this. I don't think it's unreasonable that they should change this.

Image 2
http://i.imgur.com/2SErKJO.png

[AEIOU]

Looks standard to me. Nothing a CTRL-SHIFT-` can't fix quickly and painlessly.

It's not an unreasonable request. But LWD has a running list of well over 1000 not unreasonable requests. I'd suggest that you add this to your responses on the next feature survey which should be coming shortly after the Marketplace is implemented. (Based on previous history, please keep in mind that shortly of course is a relative term...).

[rob]

Yep. This is normal behavior. As was indicated above, this is something on the insanely long list of things we need to do.

Everything on that list is critical to somebody and useless to someone else. That's why we have the surveys. The survey results let us make the largest percentage of users happy. Or, if your a "glass is half-empty" type, the survey results let us make the smallest percentage of users unhappy.

Once we get the Content Market out and solidly established, we'll be doing another survey. You can lobby hard to get out the vote for this change when that occurs.

P.S. Thanks for the screenshots. It made things a whole lot clearer to me, as I was worried it might be something else you were running into based solely on the wording of your posts.

[Parody]

Sevrick, I recommend you add your voice to the Sections without snippets Request thread. It'll show that there's still interest in that suggestion despite nobody bringing it up for a while.


A bit of meandering

Note that if there is even one Snippet or Section you wish to leave that hasn't been assigned content yet, you can't use Ctrl-Backtick or Ctrl-Shift-Backtick. So it's not always a useful workaround.

This goes back to a difference in philosophy between LWD's setup (the Global Categories and Tag Domains) and myself. From earlier:

Originally Posted by rob

The assumption is also that users will not be entering complete information for every topic.

This assumption goes with how LWD built a lot of "suggestions" into the Global Categories: a set of generic things about which you might want to write when adding an instance of the Category.

I don't design a lot of "suggestions" into my Categories. I don't find that I need them. Normally I know what I want to write about a thing, so when defining a Category for it I fit the definition to what I know I usually write. If I find that I missed something or a Snippet/Section/etc. isn't being used, I update the Category or create a new one. I still have a few often-left-empty Snippets/Sections here and there (typically to match the book descriptions) but not many. So, in general, if I Auto Add a Snippet, I want it whether or not I've added content to it yet.

However, many of my Categories have a section without a Text Snippet as they only need a combination of non-Text Snippets: things picked from a list, numbers, attached files, and so on. Instances may still have blank Snippets in these because I haven't created whatever goes into those yet (images and PDFs, normally).

So I find most of my Topics/Articles have automatically added but unwanted Text Snippets that I just leave there because I don't want to spend the time removing them and I can't use RW's workaround without wiping out stuff I want to leave for later and/or wiping out the common structure of that type of Topic/Article.

It's one of those minor annoyances, one where I wished they'd used an alternative like adding a new Snippet Type whenever you create a new section in the Category editor. (You could then delete it or change it to whatever type you needed.) ::shrug::

Hope you enjoyed that mini rant, mostly left over from 2014. Now where did I leave that one about the Ribbon...? ;)

[Sevrick]

For now I can just fill out what I want then go to the Quick Edit Content and select remove empty snippets. I guess that way isn't so bad.

Thanks for all your support. We have an awesome community.