How to hide imports?

I suspect I'll be creating a lot of snippets that will only be used as imports, I'll never call them directly into for example Evernote, only using them as a subpart of a snippet that calls them in itself. To illustrate using an example of a snippet with a shortcut of /gettingstarted with optional import snippet shortcuts of #a, #b, and #c, I'd use the /gettingstarted snippet but would only ever use #a, #b and #c as imports to one or many other snippets.

I'm concerned that this is already causing a cluttered dashboard and field pick-list. Since we can't nest folders I can't create a logical structure to handle this, and have currently opted to name snippets that will be used starting with "/" and snippets that will only be imports with "#". I tried putting the # snippets into a folder and disabling it, which does remove it from the picklist, but apparently it disables the imports so the other snippets can't call them. I'm now moving the # snippets to a #folder so they don't clutter up my category folders and make them difficult to scan, but perhaps there is a better solution that I've missed?

If there isn't anything I've missed, I'd like to suggest that some new functionality is added to stop folders and pick-lists getting cluttered with import only snippets. I think a quick win might be to supply a snippet level option to toggle on/off visibility in the pick lists. It would also be helpful if setting this toggle to "on" would cause these to have a visibly less prominent appearance in the Dashboard folders to easily distinguish them from the snippets I'm actively using.

Hi @anon5389147,

I've moved your post to the Feature Ideas forum. In the meantime, here are some suggestions for the scenario you're working with (which is also something I do).

  1. Make a folder for snippet bits - those snippets that are only ever used as imports. Put this folder at the very bottom to keep it out of the way.
  2. When I make a snippet bit, I put the shortcut inside square brackets. That makes it easy to see at first glance that it's not a snippet to be used on its own.

Hope this helps :slight_smile:

Thanks for the reply. I'm already using a folder for the import only snippets, but envisage ending up with multiple folders for them. I really feel the functionality could be improved in this regard, as scanning past the variety of workarounds such as # or square brackets is really not a great experience.

Hi @anon5389147 - of course, I understand. I've escalated your suggestion to our dev team and we'll see what kind of solution we can come up with. Text Blaze owes most of its best features to feedback from users like yourself, so we're always on the lookout for suggestions that can help the user experience :slight_smile:

Thanks again for contributing your idea!

I only joined a few days ago and already it's an incredibly useful product, so of course I'm wishing I can tweak it further :wink:

Haha, wait till you start digging deeper into the more exotic functions! You're going to have soooo much fun :grin:

I suggest having a cursory look through the various commands in the documentation, just to get an idea of what can be done. Then, jump in here and ask questions to your heart's content. Even if it sounds like an absurd request, don't hesitate to ask. Text Blaze is extremely powerful and flexible, and it can do stuff you'd never even imagine.

Best of all, @scott and I are always happy to jump in here and help you out with anything you might want to achieve with Text Blaze. So go for it! :slight_smile: