Tired of typing, and retyping the same words, phrases and paragraphs time and again? Wish you could just type in some short abbreviation as a placeholder for something which would later be replaced by an address or quote or something much larger? Want a shorthand way of typing a little but getting a lot? My need was fulfilled by a delightful program called TypeIt4Me 3.0.
“It’s autotext, Jim, but not as we know it!” . . . so says a website ad from the United Kingdom which goes on to say that TypeIt4Me expands your abbreviations as you type.It’s like autotext, but TypeIt4Me works in all applications, not just one. There are macro utilities that can type text but TypeIt4Me lets you define meaningful abbreviations, so you can type them naturally, as part of your writing, without memorizing obscure character combinations.
First you define a number of abbreviations and the full text entries that they represent, then you watch the Mac expand them on the fly even as you continue typing! This is the original and still the best text expander for Mac OS since 1989. Its as simple as the illustration below:
So, I’m sure you are now asking what this program is useful for. That depends on who you are and what you write about. Doctors, medical transcriptionists, lawyers, tech support operators and professional writers are amongst the most prominent types of users who have bought a TypeIt4Me user licence so far. Some find useful for typing the current date and my return address at the top of a letter and for a standard end of letter salutation. Another example is: "u r rh ab teh cgs" that would type out "you are right about the changes". (Assuming that you have defined u=you, r=are, rh=right, ab=about, teh=the and cgs=changes and that you defined the space bar as one of your expansion triggers.) Notice how the common mistake of typing "teh" instead of "the" gets automatically corrected as would "adn" for "and", plus any others that you can think of. TypeIt4Me can help you eliminate your most common typos on the fly. It is also very useful for entering repetitive data in a database file or spreadsheet. Or to log into various systems by typing an abbreviation that expands to your user ID then tabs to the next field and pastes your password. Enough potential uses?
TypeIt4Me is a very useful shareware program which can be purchased for only $27. Interestingly, I have come to enjoy the British author of this software, Riccardo Ettore, who is also updating from OS9 a real cute and delightful utility called Sounds4Fun that will be released in January.
Thanks, Tom. EXACTLY what I've been looking for. I type the same html tag strings over and over, and now TypeIt4Me...types it for me. There were probably other ways to accomplish this but this app is perfect for my skill level.
Posted by: Steve Mays | January 15, 2007 at 05:02 PM