Advanced Glossaries

[simon@geotek.co.nz]

Hi, I am very new to NWP & am feeling my way.

I have discovered the presence of Glossaries which is a feature that I have salivated after since the demise of Appleworks & its Clippings feature. I have read through the Help on glossaries, and understand how to create, edit & apply them. My problem, is my ageing memory, and inability to remember the keystroke shortcuts - especially when I anticipate having very many of them.

Can anyone tell me if it is possible, perhaps through Macros, to generate a Pick-list of the Glossary abbreviations library, that that be available in any NWP document?

To explain in further detail - we write geotechnical reports on a daily basis, and by and large, they follow a fairly standard structure, with section headings such as 'Geology', 'Fieldwork', 'Findings', to name a few. Within each of those sections, there are a number of standard Glossary texts from which to pick one (or more) that applies to the project. So what I envisage, is having some sort of hierarchical picklist of Section headings that can be chosen when constructing a report, and hierarchically within each such section, being able to view a Sub-picklist of glossary abbreviations, which auto-expand into the document when selected.

We endeavoured to have this set up by our IT consultant using Word's AutoText feature several versions back, but it was flakey, and I could never get my head around how to fix it when it broke, and haven't bothered to re-visit. These days, we just use Word's workgroup templates (I won't call it a feature ) to dish up Section folders, but almost daily we battle with Word over our network, and would love to find something with the above ability, to make it worthwhile abandoning Word altogether. I figure that NWP will do much the same thing as Word by using Templates through its Document Manager, but the refinement I am looking for, is to then have a selection of different Glossary Library Picklists, set for different Report types, but ultimately, all aliasing back to one Master Library, not unlike the concept of Albums in iTunes & iPhoto.

Not only would we would want to have this Master Library and its Picklists (albums) available internally from our OS X Server, so that everyone uses 'the One-Truth' , but just to make it even more challenging, I'd like to alias the server's Master Library contents & picklists to our Dropbox for extra-mural access.

Does anyone have any answers, advice or suggestions? Cheers & thanks in advance, Simon

[Þorvarður]

Hi Simon,

inability to remember the keystroke shortcuts (…). Can anyone tell me if it is possible (…) to generate a Pick-list of the Glossary abbreviations library, that that be available in any NWP document? (…) some sort of hierarchical picklist of Section headings that can be chosen when constructing a report, and hierarchically within each such section, being able to view a Sub-picklist of glossary abbreviations, which auto-expand into the document when selected.

You can easily create and access hierarchical glossaries in NWP.

Here is an example glossary for somebody writing about English literature.

1.png (56.64 KiB) Viewed 1981 times

Arrange it hierarchically and color the subentries. In my example the main entries are in red, 1st subentry is in blue and the 3rd subentry is in green.

Use a tabulator to adjust the width (the red circle on the screenshot).

There is one minor caveat. If you begin a paragraph with a word or string that is indented in the glossary file, then the expansion will be indented too. An example:

2 Indented.png (10.73 KiB) Viewed 1981 times

This isn't really a problem. You can (and indeed should) assign a keyboard shortcut to your favorite text body style, and then you just execute the shortcut and the text will appear as you want it to be.

My text body style is called "Normal", and it has the shortcut Option+Command+ n. So, in the example above, I just have to press Option+Command+ n to decrease the indented expansion, and everything looks fine again. I repeat, this is only required if the first word in the paragraph is an indented glossary entry.

Now create a macro to quickly open the glossary file:

# Opens the glossary [name of glossary]"
Open '/Users/YOU/Library/Application Support/Nisus Writer Pro/Glossaries/Engl./ENGLISH Lit. Glossary.ngloss'

If you haven't changed the default location of the glossaries, then you only have to change the text written in Fuchsia to match the name of your home folder and your glossary file. The blue text (Engl.) is just the name of a folder I created inside my Glossaries folder. You should remove it from your file path, of course.

You can place the macro in your template folder and add asterisks to make sure that it appears at the top of the list.

3.png (65.32 KiB) Viewed 1981 times

Assign a keyboard shortcut to the macro

1. Run the macro.
2. Your glossary file will be opened.
3. Reduce the size to…let's say… 50% and place it in the upper left corner of your screen (or wherever you want it to be).
4. Now save the file. The exact position will be saved; from now on, every time you run the macro the glossary will be opened in the upper left corner of your screen.

The great thing about Nisus glossaries is that you can have a glossary open and visible while you're writing.
=> The last screenshot is in the following message. The forum accepts maximum 3 attachments. I just learned that now.

[Þorvarður]

[Continuation]

4.png (61.37 KiB) Viewed 1981 times

Instead of opening and using the glossary file itself, you could also use one of those screenshot applications which allow you to take a screenshot of the part of a document you need and then display the screenshot as a *floating picture* that stays on top of all other windows. I use regularly (especially as an ersatz for split screen):

ScreenFloat (not to be confused with ScreenFlow!)
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/37581/screenfloat

SnappyApp, which is free, seems to have even more options.

SnappyApp
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/52549/snappyapp


If you have any questions, or if this wasn't what you wanted to do, then let me know.

Þorvarður