On a reader’s blog, I just discovered Textpander, a small utility which turns small segments of text into large, expanded ones. Back in the Mac OS 8 and 9 days, I used to run TypeIt4Me to catch common typos and handle a few conversions, and I’m delighted to find Textpander is a perfect companion to Mac OS X. When the preference pane is opened, Textpander launches a small background process to watch your keystrokes for a given trigger from the defined list. Personally, misspelling “and” as “adn” is one I always look for when proofreading, but now those days are gone. What’s more impressive is that Textpander can match the case of the misspelling such that the replaced word is exactly what you intended to type. Great software that Just Works. This handy utility is offered as donationware, so I highly recommend giving it a try and sending the author a tip if you find it useful.
Thanks for the trackback. :)
I’ll be sure to return the favor when I get the opportunity.
Textpander is a great tool. I use it all of the time with both my work as an academic and a Mac enthusiast (I never know when I’ll need an ð or a ⎋ character). It sure is nice to have all of those odd characters right at my figertips to use when I need them.
I highly recommend this little app.
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You should know that TextPander has a bug where it disables the keyboard-shortcut for hiding the dock. The developer is aware of the issue but I’d recommend pestering him about it some more.
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That Dock key-command bug is rather annoying. I was wondering when that started!
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TypeIt4Me 3.0 for OS X’s just around the corner.
Ricardo Ettore (TI4Me’s developer), Evan Gross (Thunder/Spell Catcher), Peter Lewis (Anarchy/ Interarchy), Alessandro Levi Montalcini (USB Overdrive), Alco Blom (URL Manager/Web Confidential), [which others (?)] have been Mac developers since the early days, and continue on with stellar, indispensable programs for us Mac users.
Now that the Mac’s turning 30 (would you believe it?), more than ever these guys (and their programs) need our recogniyon and support…
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