Textpander - a great input tool

Fri, 16 Sep 2005 osx textpander comments

The Sidekick/Hiptop phone is not perfect, but the device's handling of text input is close. As you type it has a list of abbreviations that it uses to expand what you type on the fly. It is great for correcting spellings and typing common phrases quicker as it allows you to expand the list very easily. The way in which it is integrated throughout the entire device makes typing a breeze on the small keyboard. I found myself typing these abbreviations on my computer and cursing as they didn't work.

Not anymore! Go grab Textpander by Peter Maurer if you use Mac OS X, and you can have the same experience in all of your mac applications. Type ddate and it is replaced with Friday; September 16, 2005. If you actually wanted to the abbreviation to appear, you can hit apple-z (undo) and it will undo the expansion.

It isn't just for email & chatting, you can use it to speed up rails development - set rgc to expand to ruby script/generate controller, and so on.