Snippets

A snippet is a reusable piece of text you can insert with a couple of keystrokes. Snippets save you from retyping boilerplate — a code-block scaffold, a colored-text tag, today's date — and can wrap your current selection to reformat it in place.

Snippet management

Each user-defined snippet is stored as a json file, so snippets are just files you can back up or share. VNote also ships built-in snippets, such as inserting the current date. Built-in snippets are read-only; you can show or hide them with the panel's show built-in snippets toggle.

The Snippets dock widget lists everything available.

Defining a snippet

When you create a snippet, you set:

• Name — the identifier used to search for the snippet.
• Shortcut — an optional two-digit code to locate a snippet quickly.
• Cursor Mark — marks where the cursor lands after the snippet is applied. It should appear once in the content.
• Selection Mark — marks where selected text is inserted. It may appear multiple times; every selection mark is replaced with the selected text when the snippet is applied.

By default the cursor mark is @@ and the selection mark is $$ (as used in the examples below).

Applying a snippet

From the snippet panel

Place the cursor where you want the text, then double-click a snippet in the snippet panel.

With shortcuts

In the editor, press Ctrl+G, I to bring up a panel of all snippets. From there you can:

• Type a snippet's two-digit code (for example 00) to apply it directly.
• Type part of a name (for example my) to search, then press Enter to apply the first match.
• Press Tab to move focus between the search box and the snippet list, use the arrow keys to navigate the list, and press Enter to apply the selected snippet.

By symbol

Type %snippet_name% directly in the editor and press Ctrl+G, I to expand that symbol into the snippet snippet_name. Many line-edit fields in VNote also accept this form, including the New Note dialog, the New Notebook dialog, and note templates.

Examples

Insert a C++ code block (cursor lands inside):

```cpp
@@
```

Comment out the selected text:

<!-- $$@@ -->

Wrap the selection to color or highlight it:

<font color=red>$$@@</font>

<mark>$$@@</mark>

To select some text and instantly wrap it, select it, apply the snippet, and the $$ marks are replaced with your selection while the cursor moves to @@.

Snippets in templates

Because templates support snippets, a template can auto-fill content when you create a note — for example inserting the note name as the title. See Templates.