Snippets Windows

Peppered throughout iA Writer’s documentation for Windows you will see references to various “Smart” features. As a rule, these provide some form of automatic text completion or transformation so you can keep focused on writing instead of dealing with minutiae.

Snippets

This option is found in the menu bar Edit → Snippets The snippets feature enables you to assign a shortcut that substitutes for a word, sentence, or more. In the Editor, just type the designated shortcut and press the Tab key.

Some rules to keep in mind:

• Each snippet needs to have a unique abbreviation
• Shortcut cannot contain spaces

Note that Snippets will have effect in both the Editor and in the Preview.

Snippets Variables

In order to be even more powerful, snippets can contain variables. There are three predefined variable types:

Dates

iA Writer provides 2 different date variables:

• $DATE$ inserts the current date and time
• $DATE("d")$ where a custom format can be specified

The full list of possible date formats can be found here.

Clipboard

Replaces the $CLIPBOARD$ variable with the clipboard content if the clipboard contains text.

Caret Position

Sets the caret position at $CARET$ after applying the substitution.

Placeholder Sections

If you include a variable with internal text other than DATE, CLIPBOARD or CARETa placeholder section will be added to your snippet. These sections will be written out in the Editor with the internal text as the placeholder.

Placeholder sections can then be overwritten at the time of writing. Jump between placeholders with the keyboard using the Tab key. If you’ve ever added a table in iA Writer for Windows, you’ll recognize these placeholders and how easy they make adding text.

Smart Automation