Snippets: auto_prepend

[nbanyan]

Description

With glossaries, the current auto_append option does not let pages override abbreviation declarations because it is added to the end of the page.

Benefits

An option to automatically add the glossary at the beginning of the document would be more convenient for this use case.

Solution Idea

Add an auto_prepend option to mirror the current auto_append option.

[facelessuser]

When you say "glossaries" what glossary feature are you using that requires prepend. Can you provide a clear, real-world example of how you implement glossaries?

[nbanyan]

I have an abbreviations.md file to hold all the site wide abbreviations and be included as a snippet, but sometimes an abbreviation on a page will have a different definition because of the subject matter.

As an example CNO could be Chief of Naval Operations in the snippet, but a page could use it for Computer Network Operations. Having the abbreviations.md snippet added to the end of the page prevents the page from specifying its own definition for that acronym.

[facelessuser]

Prepend is problematic as well as we may inject before YAML frontmatter and such.

Maybe if you need to control auto append, maybe we can allow a placeholder to specify the insertion point for auto append.
Then for files where you need to provide an override, you can just add the insertion point at the end and then add overrides after.

Though, until something like this was added, the mitigation would be to not use append if you need to have such control.

[nbanyan]

For now I am adding the snippet line just after the frontmatter and will check for it when my coworkers create pages.

[facelessuser]

It may even make sense not to include abbreviations with multiple meanings in the "auto" abbreviation file. Those that have multiple meanings may make more sense only being specified directly on the desired page to ensure proper context.