For many years I used the handy Mac app TextExpander. I was loyal, very. When OS X Mavericks made life with TextExpander (temporarily) difficult, I bought aText, and sad to say, I never went back to TextExpander.
A simple explanation of aText: “aText accelerates your typing by replacing abbreviations with frequently used phrases you define.” It can get much more complicated and much more wonderful than that. A fairly simple example: I’ve created an abbreviation to make a hyperlink, ,paste. (The abbreviation could be anything; I find that the less cryptic, the better.) The content that goes with this abbreviation:
<a href="[clipboard]">[|]</>,paste. The result:<a href="http://somelink.com">|</a>TextExpander now sells for $44.95. The price for aText: $4.95. Seeing the price for the latest update to TextExpander ($19.95) prompted me to write this post. I know which app I’d buy if I were starting out.
Both apps remind me of early adventures with MacroWorks, a Beagle Bros program that modified AppleWorks. MacroWorks gave me my first practice in getting a computer to do things my way.
A tenuously related post
Beagle Bros disk-care warnings
comments: 2
Thanks for recommending this. I was one of those caught up wondering how much TextExpander was worth to me. I like aText quite a lot so far -- feels much faster than TE. Even on a pretty fast Mac, there was always a bit of a lag before TE would fire.
I’m glad it’s working well for you, Mike. I too remember it as being more responsive than TE.
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