4 Responses to “Textpander 1.2.1: On-the-fly typing accelerator”

1. Hawk Wings » Blog Archive » Textpander: Save your fingers, type more efficiently says:
   December 10th, 2005 at 1:16 am

   [...] UPDATE: New version (1.2) released 28 October 2005. UPDATE: New version (1.2.1) released, 9 December 2005. [...]

2. Ted Pavlic says:
   January 30th, 2006 at 10:48 am

   TypeIt4Me is a similar application (http://www.typeit4me.com/) though it is not free and has poor iTerm and Terminal Support (I think it has crashed both programs when I’ve turned it on in those apps).

   TypeIt4Me *DOES* work well in GVim (http://www.vim.org/) GUI mode while Textpander does not work at all. I have been told this is because CNTRL+LEFT doesn’t work in GVim like it does in other OS X apps. However, Textpander DOES work well in vim inside a terminal. (of course, if you use Vim for EVERYTHING there’s no reason to use either application because Vim has this feature built into it and it works much faster than both programs (as explained in a second)) As I mentioned, TypeIt4Me does not work well within terminal-mode vim because it does not work well in a terminal at all.

   Note that both applications have a problem with speedy typing in some apps (Thunderbird in particular). The applications have been optimized to work in nearly every application — this generalization has cost them some speed. To make a replacement, they have to highlight the previous word, get rid of it, and basically “type back in” the word that they want to replace. In other words, the operation is FAR from “atomic.” If you type fast enough so that your next keypress lands before the process is done, then you muck up the replacement. For example, let’s say you typed “teh one” because you frequently misspell the. The applications will go back and replace “teh” with “the”, but if you typed the “o” after the “h ” too quickly, you end up getting “othe ne”. In the end, you take a productivity hit from either (a) having to correct all of these mistakes or (b) having to type much slower.

   That being said, Textpander is a VERY clean looking app (whereas you have to have some faith to run TypeIt4Me and still sleep at night). Additionally, it supports %| which is a GREAT feature. It’s a “Place cursor here” token.

   Imagine you’re LaTeXing a document (HTML works fine for this example too; really any coding that has closing symbols). I know when I type a document up, I always like to close my blocks first and then go back and populate their contents. This way I never forget to close a block. Well, I can create Textpander shortcuts like these (notice the placement of the %|):

   shortcut : expansion
   {} : {%|}
   {{ : \left{%|\right}
   BAL : \begin{align}%|\end{align*}
   BA* : \begin{align*}%|\end{align*}

   Now if I type {{, not only does Textpander type \left{\right} for me, but it puts my cursor just after the first {. That’s very handy.

3. Ted Pavlic says:
   January 30th, 2006 at 11:01 am

   ( WARNING: This is slightly unrelated; however, this is the only post mentioning iTerm on the entire blog, so I figured it was as relevant as possible. )

   One last thing about iTerm. Does it annoy anyone else that the first time you open iTerm or Terminal they open a default session?

   I understand the purpose of this. When you open a terminal, you want a shell to pop up immediately.

   However, if you’re launching another app from an AppleScript (for example, let’s say you’re launching pine OR you’re using one of the various scripts that kicks of a shell in the frontmost finder Window (or a droplet that “Opens iTerm Here”)) you’ll always have a second iTerm window in the background. For some reason, that gets on my nerves.

   And yet when I’m not launching an AppleScript that runs a shell command, I want an empty window to pop up. I would never want to get rid of that functionality.

   Well, I found a solution. It has two steps.

   1. Setup iTerm to “Open at Login.” This way it will always be open and so AppleScripts that start their own shell commands won’t cause a second terminal to open. PLUS if you click on “iTerm” in the dock and no other sessions are open, it will still create a default session for you. When no sessions are up and running, iTerm uses no CPU, though it still holds on to a little bit of your memory (so there are downsides to this). Additionally, every login a default shell pops up (and I don’t like this either), so you have to do the next step as well…

   2. Create an empty script called AutoLaunch.scpt and put it in ~/Library/Application Support/iTerm. My script just has:

   tell application “iTerm”
   — do nothing
   end tell

   This script prevents iTerm from opening a session on its initial startup. This quells the default session from loading every time you login.

   That does it for me. Now anything that kicks off an iTerm command only uses one Window and yet I still am only one click away from a new session at all times.

4. Riccardo Ettore says:
   May 17th, 2006 at 3:56 pm

   Hi Ted, sorry to hear TypeIt4Me keeps you awake! :-) Can you give new version 3.0 a spin and let me know if you can now sleep peacefully? ;-)
   Get it here: http://homepage.mac.com/rettore/ty2/TypeIt4Me3.0PublicBeta.html

   cheers,
   Riccardo

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