Dot Notation for Snippet Expansion Link

I find Zach Holmquist’s syntax for TextExpander snippets both logically satisfying and frustratingly prone toward collisions. It’s the kind of system that makes me smack my forehead for not coming up with it myself, but then I dig in and realize how terrible it would be in a world of dot notation (like URL’s).

The syntax is logical: email.me expands to your preferred email address. me.home expands to the home address. You can probably guess what emoji.poop expands to.

The strength of the syntax is in it’s easy recall and extrapolation. But it’s weakness is how verbose it is (not to mention collisions with real situations where me.home might need to be typed).

It seems that the dot should be unnecessary. emojipoop and emojilove are still logical and extensible while being very uncommon.

Changing syntax for this stuff is hard once I’ve internalized it. I try hard not to mix and match syntax either. It’s worth taking the time to evaluate though since I’ll probably use it 100s of times a day.

By way of Simplicityisbliss