Scripting News: The glossary in Little Outliner

Thursday June 24, 2021; 11:02 AM EDT

If you're new to LO2, the glossary is a pretty unique feature that goes back to Clay Basket in 1995, and was documented as part of Frontier's website framework. It's a permanent fixture, very useful, and easy once you know what it does and how it works. #
What it is#
The glossary is a substitution table. When a term appears in text being rendered, the term is replaced with its value. So you could define an entry called "my blog" (the quotes are part of the definition) and its value would be a link to your blog. At some time in the future if your blog moves, just change the value of "my blog" and links to the blog will change too, when the text is rendered. #
Here's the glossary I use in all my pages. It's a public outline. It has to be public for it to work, so you shouldn't put private information into the glossary. #
In LO2 a glossary is a two-level outline. At the top level are a set of terms the renderer will look for, and its subordinate text is what it will be replaced with. #
Here's a screen shot of part of my glossary, being edited in my outliner.#
How to#
To use your glossary outline, here's what you do:#

Make the outline public. #
Choose the View OPML command in the File menu to get a link to the glossary outline. #
Put the URL on the clipboard.#
In an outline where you want to use the glossary, choose Edit OPML Head from the file menu, and add an attribute to the table. Its name is urlGlossary, and the value is the URL you have on the clipboard. #

Now you should be able to use the glossary in your outline. #

Last update: Thursday June 24, 2021; 4:18 PM EDT.

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