Fragments are a customizable version of templates with a representation in perspectives and dialog boxes of the graphical interface for querying the values of variables in the template.
The only “new” functionality they have is to offer their functions through toolbar elements in editors.
Snippet Viewer is an extension offered by the WTP (Web Tool Platform) for the template, more focused on (web) formatting of the code, while templates helps the user to enter repeating patterns into a text editor.
So, at the beginning, Eclipse Templates was a standard eclipse function that could only be applied to java and javadocs.
The fragments are basically the same, but for other file types and WTP were added to fill the same need, but for their own file type (xml, jps, html, ...)
(and this, right there, "why the fragments were first introduced")
The template does not have its own presentation, but rather an obscure preference page ( Preferences -> Java -> Editor -> Templates )
At that time, you could write a small eclipse extension to create a template view.
This was allowed with eclipse3.4M6 (templates have their own look)
You can also create custom rich snippet descriptions.
Vonc
source share