In fact, tags would create a hierarchical structure, as well as categories, but with deeper sub-levels. You may indeed consider that this is too complicated for some people.
But, for example, with the current snippet base, I find quite tedious to find all snippets related to the use of a tree widget in gtk. And what if I want to search all snippets related to data structures? If we had those two categories, where would you fill in the "Generic Tree Model" snippet?
By limiting categories to one or two levels, you somewhat move the difficulty from the developper to the user, as it becomes easyier to maintain coherent categories, but harder to find something.
If all snippets where really small and centered on a single purpose (which IMHO will not be the case, even right now I find this idea debatable), I would suggest using a drop-down menu (as now) along with a search field (instead of tags).
If, as I am convinced, snippets could be interesting for a user for a large number of reason that we simply can't imagine, what I would like to have is a hierarchical tag navigation system. The behaviour of such a system is exactly the same as a tree structure (as you suggest) but is far more easier to maintain with no difficulty cost for the user. However, one should keep in mind that tags should be chosen carefully, possibly in a list of existing one, by the developpers of the snippets.
Let say I'm quite insensitive to fashion :-)
In fact, tags would create a hierarchical structure, as well as categories, but with deeper sub-levels. You may indeed consider that this is too complicated for some people.
But, for example, with the current snippet base, I find quite tedious to find all snippets related to the use of a tree widget in gtk. And what if I want to search all snippets related to data structures? If we had those two categories, where would you fill in the "Generic Tree Model" snippet?
By limiting categories to one or two levels, you somewhat move the difficulty from the developper to the user, as it becomes easyier to maintain coherent categories, but harder to find something.
If all snippets where really small and centered on a single purpose (which IMHO will not be the case, even right now I find this idea debatable), I would suggest using a drop-down menu (as now) along with a search field (instead of tags).
If, as I am convinced, snippets could be interesting for a user for a large number of reason that we simply can't imagine, what I would like to have is a hierarchical tag navigation system. The behaviour of such a system is exactly the same as a tree structure (as you suggest) but is far more easier to maintain with no difficulty cost for the user. However, one should keep in mind that tags should be chosen carefully, possibly in a list of existing one, by the developpers of the snippets.