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Finished Programs / Re: DONE: an "importer" for abbreviations into AHK
« Last post by rjbull on March 03, 2006, 03:53 AM »Harrie,
The first program I ever learnt - I started in late 1988 - was a mid-period version of the best DOS shareware word processor, PC-Write. I still use a later version today. PC-Write has what it calls "shorthand expansion," which is very like AHK hotstrings, though naturally limited to the program. It's easy to remember ones I use frequently, but not so the rare ones, and there were times when I wanted a point-and-shoot means of adding boilerplate text. In my case, that's normally short phrases, words I often mis-spell, and bibliographic references so I get them in consistent format. I never found a freeware or shareware one, and didn't discover commercial medical transcription text expanders until far too late. In retrospect I could probably have used the DOS macro program Newkey in earlier days, but it doesn't work very well in a Windows DOS box.
Recently, I find that under Windows2000 at least, AHK hotstrings work even in a DOS box (which is now an emulation apparently, not "real" DOS). It isn't perfect if you insist on using DOS programs, but it does mean I can port the relevant bits of my shorthand expansion file into AHK to make it available to other programs, both DOS and Windows. This is a great convenience, or it will be when I get round to doing it, but I'd still like a point-and-press pop-up so I can access less frequently-used phrases. Hence, I'd certainly be interested to hear about Instant Text, when you a moment.
As for the "language bit," it seemed a pity for jgpaiva to build a new tool when (with a small amount of augmentation) ones already exist to do the job, and might even be faster on big files. However, as an old-tyme DOS hand, that's just the way I'm used to working.
The first program I ever learnt - I started in late 1988 - was a mid-period version of the best DOS shareware word processor, PC-Write. I still use a later version today. PC-Write has what it calls "shorthand expansion," which is very like AHK hotstrings, though naturally limited to the program. It's easy to remember ones I use frequently, but not so the rare ones, and there were times when I wanted a point-and-shoot means of adding boilerplate text. In my case, that's normally short phrases, words I often mis-spell, and bibliographic references so I get them in consistent format. I never found a freeware or shareware one, and didn't discover commercial medical transcription text expanders until far too late. In retrospect I could probably have used the DOS macro program Newkey in earlier days, but it doesn't work very well in a Windows DOS box.
Recently, I find that under Windows2000 at least, AHK hotstrings work even in a DOS box (which is now an emulation apparently, not "real" DOS). It isn't perfect if you insist on using DOS programs, but it does mean I can port the relevant bits of my shorthand expansion file into AHK to make it available to other programs, both DOS and Windows. This is a great convenience, or it will be when I get round to doing it, but I'd still like a point-and-press pop-up so I can access less frequently-used phrases. Hence, I'd certainly be interested to hear about Instant Text, when you a moment.
As for the "language bit," it seemed a pity for jgpaiva to build a new tool when (with a small amount of augmentation) ones already exist to do the job, and might even be faster on big files. However, as an old-tyme DOS hand, that's just the way I'm used to working.
