SnippetManager Advanced

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Introduction

Historically, the SnippetManager was written by Tim Sneath, a Microsoft guy. The SnippetManager is a small application which stores text snippets for further use. SnippetManager uses the clipboard to collect different text snippets from other applications. Every time you have a text snippet, which you want to store for further use, you drag and drop the text on the SnippetManager. In a previous article, "SnippetManager written by Tim Sneath extended with cool tooltip", I extended the application with a tooltip feature, which shows you parts of the content of the snippet when you hover over the provided linklabel. So this was a kind of useful feature for efficient work.

Background

A few days ago, I got an email from a guy, who is really impressed by the little application. He asked me if it is possible to add a feature which provides the functionality to group snippets together. He knows exactly what he needs and he gave me the following description:

"I ran across your utility earlier in the week and have used it extensively since then. I am using the one that was extended by Da Bert. I was wondering how hard it would be to modify this so that it uses a tabbed interface, to separate different snippet files for different categories. For example, I administer a lot of UNIX machines, have some Oracle and SQL Server databases, and still manage to write a little code. I would like to have a different snippet file for each category, like sa.snippet for System administration, sql.snippet for database work, cs.snippet for aspx work, etc. Then have a tab for each category that has the little snippet interface for each category."

New Features

• Tabbed interface for grouping snippets
• Add, delete, rename and reorder categories
• Move snippets between categories
• When minimized to systray, the context menu displays grouped menus generated from categories and snippet information
• Always keeps track of the currently selected category in all circumstances.
• When you drag snippets to SnippetManager, a snippet is automatically added to the selected category
• SnippetManager supports CRTL+V to paste snippets (used when the other application does not support drag and drop, e.g., Notepad)
• Load and save different snippet files
• Hide and show SnippetManager on double click, for fast and effective work
• Old snippet files from previous versions will still work and are automatically added to category named "Common"
• Every previous form is updated with a corresponding combobox for selecting the category the snippet should belong to

Known Issues

A drag and drop feature should be implemented from the SnippetManager to the target application. This would be easy with a second control near the snippet linklabel. With the linklabel itself, it is not as easy. Perhaps some one has ideas how to do.

License

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