http://www.typeit4me.com I have been using Typeit4me for years. It’s been very helpful. How does this compare to Typeit4me?

Mark Hurst reviewed Typeit4me back in the day, and I recall being very into it for a while, but eventually souring on the Carbon-ness of it. YMMV: a lot of people still swear by it.

I really like the drop-dead simplicity and Cocoa-ness of Textpander. It was very fast to set up.

Also, FWIW, you can apparently refer to/recycle all your current TI4M commands if you want to give Textpander a sample spin (see prefs).

I heart Peter Maurer. He also made Witch, a window switcher that owns OS X’s window switcher. It’s kinda like Quicksilver, as you might find yourself sayin’, “This should be built into OS X.”

So I really like the idea behind this app…but now i can’t think of anything to abbreviate! Dangit!

Peter Maurer is great! I second the recommendation for “Witch”, and I still use the old CalendarClock, and wish Peter was still working on it. now, on to try Textpander…

I’m using Textpander to create footnotes on my weblog entries.

Hey, great app! I was wondering if one could create a handy automator action or AppleScript that allows one to add an abbrev on the fly — I’ve gotten used to quick abbrev definitions in Emacs, but it would be great to have something similar in Cocoa apps.

I use SpellCatcher X for this.

cheers, nickel

I’m glad to see this. Once you get into shortcuts, you will start shortcutting everything, from dates (Saturday, September 17, 2005 at 4:20 PM, Colorado Time was just typed by hitting Command-9) to 5-line addresses, to entire 400-word boilerplate email responses, to the entire URLs of your favorite sites (especially the ones buried deep in 5 subdirectories). You would never remember them, but with a shortcut like forum.com, your specific forum’s site comes up in under a second. Have a European phone number you can never remember? Just create a short cut, ElizPhone, and her entire 17-digit number appears anywhere you can place a cursor.

Like Hannu, I’ve used SpellCatcher since the late 90s. I’ve always thought it was an unfortunate name; while it does have a killer system-wide spell checker and alternative word window (see http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v416/sequoia1234/spellcatcher.png for an example of its drop down window that appears—you hit the corresponding number to replace the misspelled word), it’s main strength is its ability to create thousands of shortcuts.

It’s third feature, just so you know, is its “GhostWriter”, which tracks every single keystroke you type, and then categorizes them by application into a text file. While many don’t turn this on, for the (valid) fear of exposure, I love it. I’ve written long letters on Safari, and then had it crash. Or thought I sent an email, or overwritten something important in InDesign. Now, no problem: I open up that day’s file of ghostwriter, and all the text is there.

I’m mentioning all this not to take away from what sounds like a very cool freeware app that does what SpellCatcher does. I’m verifying how instrumental shortcutting can become once you install one of these utilities. I could give 400 examples of where I use short cuts throughout my writing day. Get it and try it!

Scott

This is possible in any decent texteditor (Vim).

Hell, even MS Word does it.

Why is this worthy of an article?

Why is this worthy of an article?

Because it’s low-cost, global, easy to implement, and saves huge amounts of time and effort.

Personally, I use more than the two apps you mentioned, so the ability to have shortcuts follow me around is powerful. As a Vim fan, you doubtless understand the value of not having to do something twice (unless it’s fun).

Sounds like a great app but it does not seem to work well with NeoOffice.

It’s great, but when enabled, I can’t scroll through a page in Firefox by using the spacebar. When I disabled Textpander, I got my space-bar back.

is there any equivalent global windows tool that does this?

Once again, “Melrin,” you make me a better man. Thanks for the tip.

If your on Windows you may want to check out AutoHotKeys as well. http://www.autohotkey.com/

I’ve been using it to complete my Project Management course work, and it’s great going between different apps (Word, Lotus Notes, Excel, Notepad) knowing that all my shortcuts would work.

Steve

I’m an inveterate user of expander software as well. I’ve been using TypeIt4Me, and will look into this new program. Be careful, though, because the more abbreviations you pile into it, the greater the chances you’ll see something like this pop up on your screen without warning: (rapid infusion (2 min) + IV drip (5 hr, 58 min)

Very nice. One caveat: it messes with Quicksilver’s Clipboard history…try inserting a few items and then go back and check the history.

Word and AutoCorrect have done this for years… Doesn’t seem like any sort of innovation. Besides, I think the “lost art” of re-reading your posts and emails to check spelling as well as grammar and tense is something that automated tools like these do away with. What ever happened to thinking before you click “submit”?

For all who say “Word has this” or “autocorrect,” there’s the flip side out there: in nearly every program, I can expand commonly typed words (sure, I spell them right, but do I really NEED to spell phenomenological or epistemological that often?) and not worry about it. I use the same thing on my Newton all the time. Especially when transcribing, it just plain helps.

In addition to the other refuters of ‘Word has this’ or ‘Autocorrect’ etal I just want to add that I have a workflow that involves correction on MY TERMS.

I hate Word’s macro and autocorrection. I’d rather use ASPELL and Textpander. Back in OS9 days I did use OneClick, Spellcatcher, etc, but nowadays these tools are too elaborate .. and I don’t like the overhead.

Textpander works EVERYWHERE, even in browser forms. Example, to fill in my email and blog URIs, I used textpander.

I also use Butler for clipboard buffers, so with Textpander for global macros I’m in text editing nirvana.

Leo vi vi vi - The editor of the beast

I have been using a very similar program (ShortKeys — www.shortkeys.com, Windows-only) at work for months now, and I find it indispensible. Email reply templates, email addresses, frequently-used comments and URLs, etc. — anything that I type more than a few times gets considered for a shortcut (I currently have 111!).

I’m still looking for an equivalent program for my Linux systems. My searches on the topic haven’t yet found anything but a couple of other people posting on how great this type of program would be to have for Linux. Does anyone know of an similar program for X-Windows?

In addition to AutoHotKeys, Windows users might want to check out ActiveWords at http://www.activewords.com/ There is a free version you can try. The full version has a scripting language for some fancy tricks. I use it constantly. AutoHotKeys takes more time to learn and futz with (although it can do more too); ActiveWords will have you rockin’ and rollin’ pretty fast.

Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t quite get this to work right with my other favorite app: quicksilver. I’m trying to use textpander as a quick and dirty way to timestamp items on my todo list using qs’s text mode and “append to…”. Unfortunately I can’t get textpander to expand text entered into qs’s text mode window. Any ideas on what I could be doing wrong? Thanks in advance

re: working with quicksilver I could get this to work consistently only by enabling text mode and then very slowly typing the abbreviation. It seems like QS’s efforts to find what you’re looking for while you type it interrupt TextPander’s polling of your keystrokes. Pausing between each letter seems to work, but is probably not the efficient solution you’re looking for.

Awe! Some!

BTW…my next puppy will be named Melrin.

Look at that, 43folders! I got two great things out of one article! Thanks!