Tag Based Snippets

[Knightblde]

I got the chance to play with this a lot more today. It seems that when I click on a category heading (Individual in this case) it shows up EXACTLY how I WANT to see it when I am looking at individuals. But when I click on a topic (an Individual) much of the information that I want to see is gone. The section descriptions disappear (only available on mouse over) as does the name of all the snippets.

Is there anyway to make the actual Topic show up like they do when you click on the Category for that Topic?

*I think I am using all the right terms, please let me know if they are incorrect.

[Knightblde]

Ok, looking at this even more I think I understand the intended use a little better now.

Sections are basically groups for labels.
Sub-Sections are the labels for like snippets.

I was working on a Goals section under Individuals. I made a section called Goals and added three text snippets under it. I called them Immediate, Short-Term and Long-Term. What I wanted was the ability to label each of them the same way I named them.

I many not actually want that. When I started using it, I wanted to add two immediate goals to an Individual. I wanted them to be different snippets so they could be revealed at different times. But then I don't want two labels for the snippets so it makes sense to use the section/sub-section as the label.

The con to this method that the formatting makes it difficult to see where the sections and sub-sections are. When a section has multiple snippets it is visually pleasing and obvious when you are moving into a new section.

Moving from section to a sub-section is nothing special. The font is slightly smaller and the numbering is a little different. Neither of these offer enough visual separation in my opinion.

Another con is the large amount of real estate it takes to show the snippets. What once took 4 lines with headings now takes 7. I don't really see a way around this with the ability to reveal items as explained above.

[Knightblde]

I have decided that the ability to show labels is the winning choice. If I don't want them then fair enough. But when I do, I do.



In the image you can see the clear transition from Section 1 to Section 2. The problem is you don't know what the data in Section 2 is. When you start using sub-sections it gets a little trickier. Section 5 to 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 are not as obvious or appealing, IMHO.

In section 2 I have 5 data points. These points take up less space than the 3 data points in Section 5 because of the labels for the sub-sections. Labels on the left, on or off at my choice is the clear winner for me.

Also, you will notice that Section 5 has a blank Snippet. That Snippet is not in my design and I have to erase it from each topic I create. I only wished to use Section 5 as a separator, not as a place to store data.

[Destrin]

I started a new thread on this because my searching skills are lame, but I agree wholeheatedly with this. If I define a snippet as part of the structure, I want the label to ALWAYS be shown, whether it's tag based or free text entry or whatever. I can make it look close with manual entry and formatting but I really shouldn't have to.

[Joe]

Using the tag snippet as a workaround is definitely NOT recommended. This will be trouble in the future, so don't start making your content depending on this.

The current solution is to use the Rich Text capabilities of text snippets for format a label however you like. If you want something similar to the other labels in RW, using a dark gray color and size 8 tahoma font gets you 90% of the way there. It doesn't quite line up properly though, so it's not perfect.

That's not to say we can't or won't support "officially" labeled text snippets in the future, we just don't right now.

[Destrin]

Originally Posted by Joe

That's not to say we can't or won't support "officially" labeled text snippets in the future, we just don't right now.

What irks me about this in particular is that the interface is very inconsistent as tagged snippets and free text snippets are treated fundamentally differently. Here are the definitions of 'Character Role' and 'Career' under the 'Individual' category:

3.png 4.png

And here is how they display on the actual topic (career is the last item - with the ... showing):
2.png

This is just inconsistent UI behaviour. In both cases there is a snippet name defined, for tag entries it shows the name, for free text entries it doesn't, that inconsistency makes no sense and is pushing the user away from customisation towards a template style of use.

[Fox Lee]

This is related to my gripes with section structure, so if I may necromance for a moment - what about two different types of text snippet? I know it sounds a bit like going back to single-line and multi-line text snippets (actually I rather liked those), but bear with me.

I get why labels displaying on all snippets is not so great - if you're adding a bunch of text blocks to a single section (say, in order to reveal to players one paragraph at a time) then you don't need labels, so the current model is good. However, lots of people have posted examples here where a text snippet is in a summary-type section, where individual snippets describe different things. In that case, showing the label just like tags is really, really what you want.

So then, what if there were just two types of text snippet? Say "free text" works exactly as the current text snippet does, but there's also "named text" or "labelled text" or something that presents with its title as a label, just like tags do. Call me crazy, but I really feel like this would be a relatively easy way to address both cases.

[Knightblde]

I think we would make out better if we could just show/hide the label.

If there are two different types of snippets I am sure that at some point I will use one and then realize I need the other. To change it, I would have a lot of work ahead of me to "fix" my structure.

Using the work around of typing in my own label on each snippet is a total cop-out. This does not preserve structure as I would have to type it in for each topic. The entire point of using a topic is to have a pre-defined structure to work with.

[Fox Lee]

Originally Posted by Knightblde

I think we would make out better if we could just show/hide the label.

Ultimately yes, but since it's been implied that this may be difficult to implement, I thought having two snippet types might provide an easy alternative.

If there are two different types of snippets I am sure that at some point I will use one and then realize I need the other. To change it, I would have a lot of work ahead of me to "fix" my structure.

Isn't it a comparable amount of work, to go through the structure and add "show label" to all the relevant fields? To me it seems like six of one, half a dozen of the other.

If it would help differentiate them, maybe the labelled text could have a more distinctly different name, or appear distinct from a free text snippet in the management view. I've never had a problem accidentally using one type of snippet instead of another, except for accidentally choosing multi-domain tags instead of singles on occasion - I can't see it being much more likely than that.

Using the work around of typing in my own label on each snippet is a total cop-out. This does not preserve structure as I would have to type it in for each topic. The entire point of using a topic is to have a pre-defined structure to work with.

Very much agreed. I have a few hundred topics in "Individuals" alone, so there's absolutely zero chance I'm going back to add a bolded "Label:" to multiple fields in each of them. And even if I only had five topics to change, it's just not good design.