XMenu 1.9 and Snippets

Since the days of OS 4 I’ve been skeptical of utilities that provide multiple clipboards, as many of them hack the operating system, and I’ve been repeatedly stung by them. I gave up years ago, but still come across reports of bad karma caused by some such utilities, while scanning the Apple and other user forums.

Christian has provided the Snippets feature in XMenu 1.9 that allows one to build a ‘library’ of plain and rich text files (and Internet locations) that can be inserted into a text document. It does not hack the OS, which means it won’t create problems.

Here’s how to use it:

Launch XMenu 1.9. You can, if you wish, add it to the list of startup items in System Preferences > Accounts - Login Items.

Command-click on an XMenu item in the menu bar to access Preferences. Check the option to display a Snippets icon in the menu bar.

To create a snippet, select text in any application. Command-click (or Control-click) on the Snippets icon in the menu bar and choose ‘Open Folder in Finder’. Drag the selected text into the Finder folder that opens. Alternatively, you can copy in the Finder plain or rich text files or Internet locations into the Snippets folder.

The result is a ‘library’ of snippets than can be selected for insertion into documents. Items no longer needed can be deleted by displaying the Snippets folder in the Finder and sending them to the Trash.

The snippet library can contain hierarchically organized folders, e.g., by topic. Snippets can be edited by a text editor such as TextEdit.

To select a snippet for insertion into a text document, click on the Snippet icon in the menu bar and choose the desired one. It will be inserted at the cursor insertion position in the (frontmost) text document – in whatever application you are using.

Anyone who needs to use and reuse standard text collections should find this feature very useful. Citations, FAQs, support responses, that sort of thing. :slight_smile:

It’s free!

The support of plain text files is a little bit flawed, therefore rich text files or text clippings (no matter if rich or plain) are currently recommended. The next release will fix this.

BTW:
Actually all kind of files are supported by the snippets menu, e.g. also images. But as this has not been thoroughly tested, we didn’t announce this :wink:

Simple and useful. I did not see an easy way to make a keyboard shortcut.

The pdf implies that you can insert the contents of a text file. When I insert a such a snippet all I get is the file’s icon (in a rich text file) or the file’s name or path (in a plain text file.) Am I doing something wrong or does xmenu support only clipping files as snippets?

I’ve built a little collection of snippets, some clipped by selecting a block of text and dragging it into the Snippets folder (previously opened in the Finder by Control-clicking on the Snippets icon in the menu bar and choosing ‘Open Folder in Finder’), and some text files copied from the Finder into the Snippets folder.

So I’ve used two ways of getting text files into my Snippets collection. All of these text files can be opened with a text file editor such as TextEdit.

To insert one of my snippets into a text file that I’m editing, I place the cursor at the desired insertion point, then click on the Snippets icon in the menu bar and choose the desired snippet. Presto! The text is inserted.

Questions: How did you add items to your Snippets folder? Are they really text files? How did you insert snippets into a text file?

I tried several files. All were created with TextEdit, all have valid data, all but one was dragged to xmenu’s snippet folder from another location. Per you original post in this thread, I dragged a selection from Safari to xmenu’s snippet folder; that clipping file worked fine. The others show up as icons or pathnames.