Open source replacement for Text Expander, TypeIt4Me and Typinator...

Dear Jonathan,

I am thrilled to read your comment about TypeIt4Me being "magical".

Just wanted to let you and TidBITS readers know that TypeIt4Me is licensed per *user*, not per Mac. In other words, so long as you are the only person using TypeIt4Me on any given Mac (easy to ensure if you install just for your user account), you need only pay ONE single licence, yet have TypeIt4Me available on any Mac you use.

As a student or faculty, you could buy a TypeIt4Me academic licence for $14, which, at least here in London, would be the cost of three or four lattes at St**Buck$ :-)

Best wishes for the New Year,

Riccardo Ettore <http://www.typeit4me.com> "Still coding, after all these years"

> Let's make a simple mac autotyping program that inter-operates with
> AutoHotKeys (an open source program on Windows).
>

Considering the polish of the three major text expansion apps on the
Mac, I wonder if it wouldn't be a more feasible and more efficient
approach to write a converter utility so that you can exchange snippet
files between each of these three, and AutoHotKeys on Windows. Much
more so, since I wouldn't consider the way in how you configure the
latter anywhere near "polished", and I'm not so sure whether an
equally basic OSS tool derived from porting AutoHotKeys to the Mac
would be able to compete with the three existing solutions in its own
right.

For basic text expansion support between these apps, though, a
conversion tool could possibly be developed with comparatively little
effort "even" [1] in AppleScript.


Regards,

Jochen.


[1] - No offence intended, Sal! ;)


--
Jochen Wolters
jochenpolytropia.com | http://polytropia.com | jochenwolters (Skype)

You can also do this with the Clipboard storage or the Shelf of Quicksilver: <http://blacktree.com/projects/quicksilver.html> Here is a manual: <http://mysite.verizon.net/hmelman/Quicksilver.pdf>

Hey All

Jochen wrote:

> Considering the polish of the three major text expansion apps on the
> Mac, I wonder if it wouldn't be a more feasible and more efficient
> approach to write a converter utility

And I've got a version working using TextWrangler & Text Factories

http://unchart.com/untype-0.1.zip

Of note for Mac-only users: this includes 6400 typos (about triple
Adam's recent list).

I'd be particularly appreciative if you'd give me a head's up if you
find any errors.

--
Jonathan Ploudre
If this message seems brief:
http://five.sentenc.es/

Fantastic notion, Jonathan. I am forced to use Windows at work, and have a Mac at home. I've been working on homogenizing my computing environment between the two, because I am constantly groaning about some thing I've found an easy to do on one and not on the other--or there's an easy way on both but it's different and I have enough on my mind without remembering two different ways to do the same thing many times over. A cross-platform app would be the best, but that's probably wishing on a star. I agree that some way of creating a uniform file format for snipplet files, or a converter, would be very much more practical. by the way, Lifehacker has created an AutoHotKey front end just for text replacement, called Texter (http://lifehacker.com/software/texter/lifehacker-code-texter-windows-238306.php). Not quite as smooth as TextExpander, but still very nice. If I could sync my snippet files--or even if I had to add changes manually from one to the other, if the file formats were compatible so all I'd have to do would be cut and paste added words between them, that would be a huge thing. I'm not a coder, so I can't offer to help with creating your adapter, but I'd be an enthusiastic user (and would certainly be happy to make a donation to support such an adapter). Benj

Google Apps are cross platform 8)

With luck one of their team is reading TidBits... Failing which
somebody could create a new App for you.

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On 19-Feb-08, at 3:07 AM, Benjaloo wrote:

> Fantastic notion, Jonathan. I am forced to use Windows at work, and
> have a Mac at home. I've been working on homogenizing my computing
> environment between the two, because I am constantly groaning about
> some thing I've found an easy to do on one and not on the other--or
> there's an easy way on both but it's different and I have enough on
> my mind without remembering two different ways to do the same thing
> many times over. A cross-platform app would be the best, but that's
> probably wishing on a star. I agree that some way of creating a
> uniform file format for snipplet files, or a converter, would be
> very much more practical. by the way, Lifehacker has created an
> AutoHotKey front end just for text replacement, called Texter
> (http://lifehacker.com/software/texter/lifehacker-code-texter-
> windows-238306.php). Not quite as smooth as TextExpander, but still
> very nice. If I could sync my snippet files--or even if I had to
> add changes manually from one to the other, if the file formats
> were compatible so all I'd have to do would be cut and paste added
> words between them, that would be a huge thing. I'm not a coder, so
> I can't offer to help with creating your adapter, but I'd be an
> enthusiastic user (and would certainly be happy to make a donation
> to support such an adapter). Benj