RFC: Command Output Options (was: [TxMt] Combining snippets and commands?)

[Allan Odgaard]

On 22/2/2006, at 0:31, Charilaos Skiadas wrote:

>> Instead of a macro, it is also possible to set the commands input  
>> to entire document and then use TM_LINE_NUMBER and TM_LINE_INDEX  
>> as the carets location.
> But you'd need the output method to be "Insert as snippet", to get  
> the placeholders to hold. How would that work if the rest of the  
> document is not selected?

Ah true, I forgot that output as snippet won’t replace input.

On that note, I think I am slowly homing in on how to redo the output  
options.

I want to keep it simple but at the same time offer more choices of  
what to replace, and of course make it more explicit exactly what is  
replaced. E.g. currently an input choice of “[ Selection ] or  
[ Word ]” with output set to “[ Replace Selection ]” doesn’t  
explicitly say that the current word will be replaced, when there is  
no selection.

So I will change the output menu to fewer choices:

Output: [ Discard      ]
         [ Text         ] which is [ pop-up ]
         [ Snippet      ] which is [ pop-up ]
         [ HTML         ]
         [ Tool Tip     ]
         [ New Document ]

And then the pop-up showing for the Text and Snippet output options  
have the folowing options:

which is [ Replacing Input      ]
          [ Replacing Selection  ]
          [ Replacing Document   ]
          [ Inserted After Caret ]

As for the number of options and combinations, I think I am  
satisfied. But I am not too happy about the phrasing of things.  
Especially the “which is” label precedding the conditionally showing  
extra options pop-up.

The HTML output option might also be ambigious w/o the mention of  
“new window” (though that alone doesn’t say that it’s actually a web- 
kit window).

And “Inserted After Caret” is also not entirely clear e.g. when input  
is Selection, as there practically is no caret from the users POV in  
that situation. But “Inserted After Input” is also bad incase input  
is set to None.