Hi, It seems to me that usability of clips in PSPad is not as good as usability of analogous feature called "snippets" in such editors as Dreamweaver (viz http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/ ), Aptana Studio (viz http://www.aptana.com/ ), Komodo Edit (viz http://www.activestate.com/Products/komodo_edit/ ), WeBuilder (viz http://www.blumentals.net/webuilder/ ).
In all these editors snippets are available through the sidebar; in PSPad clips are available through popup window. I think that making clips available through popup window defeats the very idea of clips/snippets -- inserting a piece of code as quickly as possible. Suppose you have to insert two clips/snippets one after another. I those other editors you should make such actions: mouseover the first snippet, doubleclick it, moseover the second snippet, doubleclick it. In PSPad you should make such actions: press ctrl + space to open clips window, mouseover the first snippet, doubleclick it, press ctrl + space to open clips window again, mouseover the second snippet, doubleclick it. So, availability of clips through popup window introduces additional actions and makes the clips less usable. If this were not enough, clips that wrap selected portion of code demonstrate quite strange behavior. If you select some portion of code, beginning for example with letter "h" and press ctrl + space, in the opened clips window you see only those clips, which has names beginning with letter "h". But if I have selected some code beginning with letter "h" it does not mean that I want to apply some clip having name beginning with letter "h" at all! In this situation I should perform additional action -- to press backspace key to see all clips. I think that clips/snippets functionality is one of the central features of any good code editor. But poor usability of PSPad clips prevents using as much as it could be. I suggest that clips functionality would be made available in PSPad, as in other editors, through the sidebar. -- <http://forum.pspad.com/read.php?2,44545,44545> PSPad freeware editor http://www.pspad.com
