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Textpander: An end at last to email from 'Melrin'

Peter Maurer [Textpander]

It took me about 5 seconds to fall hopelessly in love with Textpander.

Like so many wonderful things in the world (*waves to Unix apps*) it does exactly one thing: it replaces text you type with other text (or images). So, how would you use this? God, how wouldn’t you? Here’s the bullets from the Textpander page:

  • 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.
  • Import text snippets from other typing utilities.

This is huge for me for two reasons. First I date everything with a stamp (like 2005-09-17 07:43:53), and second, I constantly mistype my own name (“Melrin”). I automated both of these timesucks in less than a minute in Textpander, and now I’m the happiest boy in the world.1

Did I mention it’s donationware? I’ll definitely be crossing the palm of one Peter Maurer (also the developer of the wonderful Butler, it would seem).

Get this. Use this. Pay Peter.

[via Lifehacker via Slacker Manager ]


Notes

  1. Update 2005-09-17 11:00:12: Check out how Justin uses Textpander to make footnotes.

Chris's picture

I have been using a...

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?

 
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