Typinator 2.1: Eliminate Keystrokes (3 License Giveaway)
If you are like many modern typers, you aren’t that worried about the details, you just want to get your message across. You usually end up cleaning up your text when you’re done, always a pain. The only thing that possibly is more annoying, is the constant need to re-enter the same text over and over again. Your contact information, a signature, company logo, or just about any chunk of repetitive text that is essentially, a waste of keystrokes. You could just put it on a website and link to it but how many people will a actually click on that hyperlink? Also as a reader I have been annoyed when people take that route for a small amount of text.
The solution to both of these problems is Typinator. This handy shareware app will give you auto-correct in any program. This is great if you have a program that does not have an auto-correct or just has a lousy one. Typinator provides thousands of corrections to misspelled words in English, French, and German and I found it to do a really good job fixing my mistakes. In addition to the built-in database, you can download the free TidBITS AutoCorrect Dictionary to fully expand your correction set.
Best of all though is that Typinator gives you the ability to insert text chunks into your work to save you the time you would have used rewriting it over and over again. Sure, you could use a Sticky, and copy/paste, but that gets really annoying when you have more than 1 piece of text (or an image) you need to use multiple times.
The look of the interface is pretty basic (check out the screen shot below) which is something I have grown to appreciate about the app. It definitely gets the job done. I found that after using Typinator for a short period, it became quite indispensable and I would have to say that if you work with text at any capacity you will likely find it pretty useful.
Typinator has a 15 day free trial and after that will cost EUR 19.99 for a license.
But wait! Christoph at Ergonis has graciously donated 3 full licenses to Typinator to the readers who can best answer these burning questions:
Q: What features would you like to see in future versions of Typinator?
Q: How could you use Typinator to improve your own work flow?
As usual the contest ends a week from today, which is January 12th at 12:00am EST. Winners will be announced shortly after that time. Good luck everyone!
I’m using TextExpander right now, had never heard of this little gem before.
I’d love to see the ability to insert images, move the cursor to a certain point in the expanded phrase and the ability to store passwords (I have some long passwords I keep typing a thousand times a day) – Leopard seems to have it’s quirks with this when I try it in textexpander (the field remains empty).
For number 2, I think this app can be a lot of help for bloggers, writers and developers, functionality for programming code, HTML formatting for bloggers. Personally, I think the greates use for it is to fill out forms (name, address, password, website, email).
Cheers
Since I do work for a small local business, I need to often answer mails which have repetitive content. I would map each of the paragraphs (corresponding to eanswer to each query) to keywords, and them while replying, instead of having to copy paste, I would just use the abbreviations to add the paragraphs I need for answering the mail.
Features I would like to see: A way of using the same abbreviations for multiple snippets. This way, I would have to remember less. I could map all my signatures to xxsig and just cycle through them while expanding. This would considerably lessen the burden to rember shortcuts.
Being able to password protect snippets would be great, so that we can use it to store passwords used often (although I mostly use 1password for that).
For being able to deal with the way I handle mail, I would also like the snippets to be able to take parameters like customer name and order number. This way it will be able to generate customized snippets for me.
An automatic spell-checker is most useful, but then it has to be able to do it in British English on top of American English (I hate those “-ize” words).
I’ve never used any such software, but as a student who takes lecture notes on a laptop, there are many words and/or expressions that come forth often when you listen to a professor (as a law student, things like “Common Law”, “Constitution”, “Double Tax Treaty” and so forth are repetitive and long to type, even if you type fast). While abbreviations are good if you are going to keep your notes to yourself, they won’t help other people.
So personally, the first use I would make of Typinator is exactly that: save time while typing my lecture notes that I make available to everyone in my class of 400.
Another use is Spotlight-related: to optimise your chances of finding just the right document (now that Spotlight has almost replaced the need for Quicksilver in my experience), you need to use tags (”app:”, “document:”, …) to force Spotlight to come up with exactly what you want. Enters Typinator, and you can write two letters and a space, and you have your 10-lettered search tag.
However, as a person who actually likes to type words in full, I think that it would really be for the occasional word or expression that is a bother to type that I would use it, not for the smaller words I use all the time.
As Arjun mentioned in the above post, using it for HTML, PHP, …, would really be useful, because of all the tags you end up using repetitively: “
I’ve used both SpellCatcher and TextExpander, but I’m always open to any product that streamlines my workflow. I work with several parents and their children to help with speech and language difficulties. I often need to send them URLs, home help tips/worksheets, and feedback. Typinator would significantly cut down on my repetitive typing/cut-paste process. Features I’d like to see is a service to select text and then have it immediately create a Typinator shortcut. Another thing that would be cool is a way to capture a URL into Typinator, Typinator automagically creates an imbedded keyword that you could then shortcut into an email or document.
I would like to have the posibility of have typinator hidden. They are really useful, but I don´t like to have this kind of programs in the dock, i would like to have it just there, but hidden.
I would like to have typinator to answer my technical support mails. I´m going to write the most typical answers to the FAQS and then one code for each. When i receive one mail I write the code answer1, answerb, etc, so i save a lot of time.
Being able to share databases would be great. For example, in the medical field you would use certain vernacular, same with law etc…being able to create and share those with your colleagues would be fantastic. Being able to sync those online would be even better.
In terms of workflow, it is obvious that you would increase its efficacy and efficiency. If possible, it would be nice for it to “learn” as you go on though…after you use a word…say…100 times, it would know that it is legitimate, even if not in its memory, and then it could make suggestions later based on that.
I’ve got an older version of the app which I love! (I got it as part of a bundle deal – for the current version only at that time). Whenever I use my laptop I’m always expecting the text to magically while typing my 2, 3, 4 or 5 character combos – but as it’s only installed on my PowerMac, I’m left disappointed.
I need to write out certain web addresses often so I have these logged for quick access. (www’plus a 1-2 character abbreviation’ is replaced with a url complete with the ‘http://’ start which some things need to recognise it as a link)
I have the usual ‘Kind regards’ type thing which they suggested on their site – but on a lighter note, my chat comments have become more descriptive with things like ‘be right back’, ‘no problem’, ‘by the way’ and ‘lol’ being ‘laughing so much that my kidney’s are hurting’ taking a fraction of a second to activate. Amusement all around.
It’s options per abbreviation are great – making sure it’s matched to lowercase/uppercase or mixed text, to whole words or just after the the characters have been typed (which, if not available, would be annoying if a word happens to include those character combinations).
As to what I’d like to see in a future version, I suppose I’d like a bit of syncing action – so my abbreviations would be the same for both my macs without finding out that my emails are full of garbled letters where I’d expected certain words and phrases to have replaced them.
A brief but worthy suggestion. How about some type of voice activated trigger? Like so you could insert your signature simply by saying ‘insert signature’.
I checked out the Typinator trial a while ago and it fit right into my work flow which involves a lot of copywriting and oodles of email. Great tool. Here’s hoping for a license.
This kind of app is great productivity booster for people who type a lot
I would be great if Typinator potitioned on the menu bar
Like me with Entourage, using snippets I could save repetitive standard words, like Regards, Dear John, etc Even a whole letter (so I just need to change the minor details)
I would like to see an automatic learning system of your most used phrases with the option to monitor what you write when ever you want.
I could use it in mail replies and in ichat,call numbers,
I use Typinaotr 1.x to easily input my daily orders, and to write phrases I use very incredibly often as a course of business.
One thing I’d love to see would be application-specific sets, so that I could use one shortcut to achieve one result in Mail, and another result in Excel. Both would relate to the same item, but refer to the different fonts, capitalization, spacing/punctuation, and other errata.
Another thing that might be very useful is a “learning mode” I could turn on, where Typinator would actively monitor keystrokes – as it does anyway — and detect where I hit the delete key, log it as a possible typing correction in need of a suggested shortcut.
And, yes, I’d love for it to leave the dock and jump to either the menubar or, better yet, reside in preferences.
ok, the first feature that would make this a killer app for me is an obvious one: .mac-syncing!
i am working on different computers during the day, yet i have to work with all kinds of repeating text snippets. right now, i upload such texts to .mac manually, but i am some kind of sync-fetishist, i guess
the second one would have to be mail.app-integration, maybe even with an applescript. i would like to be able to create a rule that, when the conditions are met, replies with a certain text block. that´s also the reply to how i could use typinator to improve on my own workflow
I’ve missed this since giving up office.
The best thing to me would be if it were a preference pane with the option for a menu item. Especially when I’m teaching something like this my shortcuts an easy way to add them in the menu bar is crucial. But as time goes on, it’s pretty much just something to use in the background.
As far as work flow goes, it is simply stress relieving to be done writing and not see red squigglies under my freinds and all thier poeple.
I love this company. They produce some of the best applications that most OSX users, such as myself use. Typinator is an awesome tool for those that need there work to flow.
[...] after the new year we reviewed a very useful and quite popular text utility from Ergonis called Typinator. Typinator hates keystrokes and helps you eliminate making them unnecessarily by adding spell [...]