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If you're not familiar with it, TypeIt4 Me is a keystroke activated text macro utility that allows you to define a set of abbreviations to trigger automatic entry of blocks of specified text, which may be a short as a single word, or as long as you wish. When you type the abbreviation (or select it from TypeIt4Me's pop up menu) and hit the assigned trigger keystroke(s), the Mac expands the entry as you continue typing. It is especially useful for entering frequently - used phrases and other boiler plate stuff. I'm so used to get that it is a shock to you a computer that doesn't have TypeIt4Me and my library of macros in golf, and life would be a lot more difficult (and painful) for me without it.
Originally published in 1989, TypeIt4Me won the 1994 MacUser Shareware Award for Best Publishing Tool and has become a "classic" must-have program for anyone who does a lot of typing on their Mac.
For example, I frequently type my name, so with TypeIt4Me I have assigned it the abbreviation "ch." Now when I type "ch" and stroke the spacebar, the two letters change to "Charles W. Moore." You can also use TypeIt4Me to apply long passages of boilerplate text. For instance the Moore's MailBag signature/disclaimer at the bottom of that column is a TypeIt4Me macro. I just type "mm," hit the spacebar, and the Mac does the heavy lifting.
Mac pundit and author David Pogue, who suffers from chronic typing injury, has been singing TypeIt4Me's praises for years, and says that it cuts the amount of typing necessary in his books by 25 percent. it streamlines operations remarkably, especially when your hands and arms are hurting and every keystroke is an adventure in pain, as I know all too well.
If this sounds a lot like Word's AutoCorrect feature, it's because it does very much the same thing. However, I don't use Word, and TypeIt4Me's big advantage is that it works in every application or text field. And TypeIt4Me is not a copycat -- it was around years before Microsoft added AutoCorrect to Word, copying the good ideas of others in typical Microsoft "innovation" style.
There are other utilities that support text macros, and they have their fans, but I've never found anything yet that I like as well as TypeIt4Me, which is now at version 2.2.2. A big advantage of TypeIt4Me for me is that I find it much easier to remember macro abbreviations that I make up myself, than I do memorizing prescriptive keyboard combinations. However, there's a new kid on the block: a text macro utility by Peter Maurer called Textpander, which offers TypeIt4Me-like features, adds a few new wrinkles of its own, and has a preference panel interface that some may find more convenient and intuitive than TypeIt4Me's menu selections, as well as Being freeware/donationware as opposed to TypeIt4Me which is $27.00 shareware.
Being an aficionado of this sort of software, I had to check Textpander out. It's a quick download, and installation is a breeze, with no logout or restart required.
Like TypeIt4Me, Textpander monitors what you type and inserts predefined text snippets on the fly whenever you enter their corresponding abbreviations. Here are a few examples for what you can do with either of these utilities:
• Insert standard greetings, text fragments, and signatures � including formatted text and pictures.
• Insert the current date and time in any format you prefer.
• Use editor-independent code templates and have Textpander position the cursor just where it needs to be.
• Type special characters without having to launch any special characters palette.
• Have Textpander correct typos automatically.
• Long, hard-to-type words such as 'benzo-methyl-tricarbo-something-or-other';
• Your name and address;
• A standard end of letter signature
• An entire paragraph of legal or medical text;
• A short word that you often misspell (such as 'teh' instead of 'the');
• Just about anything else you need to type often.
A particularly convenient Textpander feature is its ability to import or "subscribe to" existing TypeIt4Me (and Typinator - another text macro utility) macro/snippet libraries - at least theoretically. Unfortunately, in practice, while most of the imported snippets worked, some are rendered truncated, which necessitates the cumbersome workaround of configuring them natively in Textpander's own snippet library and creating memorizing a new, alternate abbreviations to trigger them. Not a biggie if you're starting from scratch, but I have over 100 TypeIt4Me macros.
However, a more serious issue related to snippet subscription is that applying macros from TypeIt4Me in Textpander results in an invisible upside down question mark (hex value \x00) character being inserted in in the text of your document, and that can cause a real problems. If you noticed that the daily news stories got posted on Applelinks very late on September 1st, now you know why. The posting CGI refused to accept my pasted in copy. Then I began to get notes from folks on an email list that I moderate telling me that outgoing messages were being truncated. It was a very long day.
Applelinks Webmaster Joe Ryan discovered the unwanted characters by using the "Show Invisibles" command in BBEdit. Once the problem was identified, it was easy enough to fix using find and replace, after which the copy posted normally., but it took me a few hours after that to figure out what the source of the problem was.
The pesky little upside down question mark characters were only being inserted by imported TypeIt4Me macros (which still work fine in TypeIt4Me), and did not appear with native Textpander snippets. However, the problem is serious enough that you should not use imported snippets on anything that will passthrough an Internet server. Best to create a whole new library of native Textpander macros.
One Textpander feature I especially like is that it can be configured to play a sound when a macro is applied. I'm not a touch typist, and I often type while looking at the keyboard or hard copy I'm transcribing rather than that the screen, so sound notification provides a heads-up if a macro is inadvertently applied. As with TypeIt4Me, you can also exclude specific applications from Textpander entries, which can include plain or formatted text, or even pictures.
On the downside, I find Textpander just a bit sluggish on my 700 MHz G3 iBook compared with TypeIt4Me, which applies text in near real time. Not a big issue, but a slight lag is noticeable although it likely wouldn't be on faster hardware. The Textpander menu also disappears from the menu bar in some applications due to space limitations on my 1024 x 768 screen. The menu can be disabled in the preferences.
Speaking of which, I like Textpander's three-panel preference pane, which is the only user interface for the program aside from the menu bar manulet. The program is very light on documentation (there isn't any), but fortunately, the configuration options are pretty intuitive. You also have the option of having text macros applied as you type, or only after a delimiting keystroke, which you can also specify to be retained or deleted after the macro is applied. I opted for the delimiting keystroke configuration, sticking with the spacebar as with TypeIt4Me.
Textpander Is activated/disabled using a check box on the preference panel, which is positive and convenient. Having both Textpander and TypeIt4Me installed, you need to disable one or you will get double-entries (that is, if you have Textpander subscribe to TypeIt4Me's macro library). TypeIt4Me is activated/disabled in the International preference panel, which is not the most intuitive location.
After several days' use, I am quite favorably impressed with Textpander's performance except for the unwanted character kerfuffle. For a utility this early in its development, it seems to be relatively bug-free and refined. On the other hand, TypeIt4Me is a mature application that works extremely well and has a proven track record. TypeIt4Me also supports OS 10.2, while Textpander wants OS 10.3.9 or later, which might be the deciding factor for some users. Since you can try both out without making any cash commitment, my advice would be to sample them both and decide which one you like best.
New in TypeIt4Me X 2.2.2
TypeIt4Me no longer distinguishes between TSM-aware and non-aware applications. The list that used to be called TSM Apps in previous versions of TypeIt4Me's Preferences is replaced by Excluded apps, whose NEW purpose is to allow users to permanently disable TypeIt4Me in specific applications by drag & dropping their icon in this list.
TypeIt4Me still takes advantage of TSM-savvy applications by testing for the document you type in to be a TSM document and if it is, expansion occurs MUCH faster than in non-TSM documents. For example, Appleworks does NOT use TSM documents, while the new Pages application does and the difference is VERY noticeable!
The Clipboard is no longer used to place the expanded text into the document by issuing a Paste command, except in six applications: Eudora, PowerPoint, Excel, AlphaX, Script Debugger & Mozilla Thunderbird.
TypeIt4Me should therefore no longer interfere with Shadowclipboard and any other Clipboard management apps, except when expanding in one of the six above-mentioned applications.
Thanks to this change, TypeIt4Me now expands in Adobe InDesign and QuickBooks.
Added support for embedding a backspace in the expanded text, by using the @$08 syntax as in the OS 9 version. This is specifically useful if you want to define g to expand to ing and have it attach itself to the preceding word. Example: @$08ing
If you want the trigger not to be appended on a case by case basis, you can now type a ` (grave accent) as the last character in the expanded text definition of any abbreviation for which you don't want the trigger appended. For example, if you define app to expand to application` (note the ` sign at the end of application), then the trigger will not be appended when app is expanded to application.
The abbreviation buffer is now reset to zero when the command key is pressed. Therefore, pressing/releasing the command key just before typing an abbreviation should always result in the abbreviation expanding on first try.
System requirements:
Mac OS X 10.3.9 or higher
Textpander is freeware /donationware
For more information, visit:
http://www.petermaurer.de/textpander/
Charles W. Moore
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I have used TypeIt4Me for months. It is slow and unreliable. Typically when I type an abbreviation I have to wait a few seconds for the clipping to appear. If instead of waiting I keep typing, then the clipping is inserted in the wrong place. For instance, the abbreviation qjqjqj (followed by one of my trigger characters such as a space or punctuation) is supposed to cause the current date and time to be typed. Typically I want to enter that date, and immediately type some text. But if, say, I type the following:
qjqjqj I just got off the phone with Mr. Thompson
what appears is
I j2010-02-17 1253ust got off the phone with Mr. Thompson
instead of
2010-02-17 1253 I just got off the phone with Mr. Thompson
Initially I attempted to replace my Word autocorrect tool with TypeIt4Me, but that did not work. I would have had to slow down my typing to 1/3 the speed.
I am not a very fast typist, either. I type maybe 35 words a minute.
Another shortcoming of TypeIt4Me is that sometimes it simply does not replace my abbreviation. My documents are sprinkled with the text qjqjqj, followed by the date. This is because the first time I type it, it is not replaced. Then if I wait a few moments and type it again, the abbreviation is replaced.
I wish I could find something that works better. For years, when I used to work on Windows machines, I inserted dates in Word using a macro I had written. All I had to do was hit ALT Q and the date would be inserted as quick as lightning, every time. But in the current version of Word for Mac it is not possible to write one’s own macros.