@msword-fragment: creating an internal snippet which refers to an external snippet ignores the externals' special functions unless the internal snippet starts with a string (sometimes)

Reference File: #1026614

Sorry for the wordy title.

I have created a Word Fragment using @msword-fragment and am using internal snippets as parameters:

For some of these parameters, I have created external snippets to centrally manage the text, e.g. @#eip-pxp-inc-en-global:

Here, things get weird in the exported document: notice how none of the special functions in the external snippet display properly (@placeholder and @highlight):

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However, adding a string in the internal snippet before the external snippet (such as “TEST”) exports the document correctly:

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If anyone else encounters this, the workaround seems to be to include some text in your internal snippet before calling your external snippet.

I will note that this issue has not occurred consistently for me (I have had some internal-referring-to-external-snippets that have displayed @highlight correctly even when the internal snippet did NOT have a text string)

I had a brief look but could not immediately reproduce this.

Could it be the case that this is linked to the ambiguity regarding internal snippets, as described in the manual Snippets – Help ?

For example, I noticed in your actual clause that you inserted parentheses around the internal snippet, which could trigger the software to treat this as a condition; adding some text before it, can then indeed force that to be undone. (Note that the ideal way to solve this is through the @void function — its main mission in life is to force situations like these into a certain direction.)

FYI, this was a quick test in a new document, that seems to work OK, reusing your external snippet without any modification.

Hi Maarten - the parentheses you mention here are my workaround to get it working. If I remove all four parentheses from the Clause, I get the buggy output described above!

If you remove the parentheses from the internal snipped in your test document, you might be able to reproduce the error.