Author Topic: NANY 2011 Release: Auspex - a Windows Productivity App (Read 347776 times)

timns · « **Reply #350 on:** January 15, 2011, 04:20 PM »

But we're just getting warmed up

timns · « **Reply #351 on:** January 15, 2011, 04:24 PM »

Barty, don't get upset because I didn't like PE. There are loads of things I don't like in this world that are also perfectly innocuous. As it is, I am learning a great deal here. If you promote your product in this thread, I'm bound to take an interest: it's human nature.

bmms · « **Reply #352 on:** January 15, 2011, 04:41 PM »

Please note, that I did not came here to "promote our product" but to clarify incorrect statements about our product.

The thread is yours and I am off.

timns · « **Reply #353 on:** January 15, 2011, 04:43 PM »

On sage advice from far more level heads than mine, I hereby undertake that I shall refrain from any more banter on the subject of Phrase Express.

I should also point out that any opinions expressed herein are my own and should in no way reflect on the fine folks of Donation Coder.

timns · « **Reply #354 on:** January 15, 2011, 04:44 PM »

The thread is yours and I am off.
-BartelsMedia (January 15, 2011, 04:41 PM)

But how can I refrain from bantering with you if you've gone?

wraith808 · « **Reply #355 on:** January 15, 2011, 07:17 PM »

timns, you started bad-mouthing our product. You should stop it now, OK? It is for no good.
-BartelsMedia (January 15, 2011, 04:16 PM)

He's actually been very civil. He gave his opinion of something in the product, in a non-negative manner, and there you appeared again. He's actually been quite nice, so desisting from the personal attacks and as mouser said being nice would be helpful.

rjbull · « **Reply #356 on:** January 16, 2011, 10:46 AM »

The software seems good but I and others on DC have disagreed with the company's attitude

Rjbull, I believe this describes your posting best. ;-)
-BartelsMedia (January 15, 2011, 02:29 AM)

I made a plain statement to show my point of view. I have said - more than once - that I thought your software was good. So I consider that rude and uncalled-for.

InstantText is absolutely worth its money for its specific purpose and is tailored with awesome capabilities to the specific market of medical/legal transcription. However, I would hesitate to say that it has "more features" than PhraseExpress.

InstantText does not support text formatting, does not offer completion of full sentences and afaik, it has no macro automation programming language. Just to name a few.

PhraseExpress is not only a text auto-completion software, but also a text/code snippets organizer. Well, ...Merylic already provided the list of features.

I agree, to an extent. You have correctly described Instant Text's value to its target market, where its focus on shorthand expansion rather than completion is appropriate. I used it for mostly for making abstracts bulletins and I was very happy with its set of features; sentence completion would have had no real value to me. Coding snippets is a different matter. Instant Text has crude keyboard macros in that you can tell it to send things like Alt-keys and Function keys, but its key feature that I haven't seen anywhere else is the ability to examine a corpus of pre-existing text (including Word docs) and work out a set of expansions based on it. IT gives you further tools for massaging the short forms so generated into whatever style you prefer, e.g. John Knowles' ABCZ Typing Abbreviation System. IT also has separate lists of words and phrases, with separate triggers for them, and allows you to use no specific trigger beyond punctuation, which is a great help to typing flow.

The feature I was interested in was being able to use the same short form for more than one long text, e.g. "apon" for "application," "apparition," and "apportion."

I am happy to tell, that this feature always was and is available in the free version and I am sorry if you missed that.

Yes, I did miss that, thanks for pointing it out. Which leaves me ruefully remembering I paid extra for the Pro version 7 to get it

One more thing, not special to you, but with plenty more software companies. You sent me an automated e-mail recently to tell me version 8 had been released. My key is for 7 (also have 6) and this would be a paid upgrade. When sending out notifications, is there any way you can make it clear in the e-mail that it is a paid upgrade? I don't like installing something and only then finding it isn't still registered. Your licensing is now slightly more complicated than it was, too, as I think you only used to have two versions, where you now appear to have three?

bmms · « **Reply #357 on:** January 16, 2011, 11:23 AM »

I have said - more than once

I thought you would bring up this very old "company's attitude" topic again which really would be beating dead horses. Everything has been said at that time and it should not be brought up again in Tim's thread.

I apologize if I have misread your posting.

Which leaves me ruefully remembering I paid extra for the Pro version 7 to get it

This confuses me as the feature you desired was always working, including the free version. It was never disabled in any variation for the last 5 years since it has been introduced.

When sending out notifications, is there any way you can make it clear in the e-mail that it is a paid upgrade?

We actually do that at http://shop.phraseexpress.com and at http://new.phraseexpress.com. Also the update notification window in the software informs you, that it is a major new version and not a free but a paid upgrade. I am sorry, if you missed that and we will gladly make sure to make it more clear in the next version. We will add a counter to emphasize the nature of the upgrade, so it can't be "clicked away" so easily.

Your licensing is now slightly more complicated than it was, too, as I think you only used to have two versions, where you now appear to have three?

I fully agree with you. However, this was requested by many users. We would love to go with one version but users wanted different variations at different prices. However, you can quickly review the differences in the product feature matrix of the shop page.

I am not too sure from reading your postings about PhraseExpress whether you are still interested in it but I gladly would offer you a free upgrade to 8. Please contact us directly.

but its key feature that I haven't seen anywhere else is the ability to examine a corpus of pre-existing text (including Word docs) and work out a set of expansions based on it (..) IT gives you further tools for massaging the short forms so generated into whatever style you prefer.

The new PhraseExpress v8 offers both, too. Check out "Generate Autotext" and "Learn from text". In a slightly different fashion though. IT's greates feature is, that it takes sentences apart and offers fractions of a sentence for completion. This is the unique and distinctive feature. We only offer either complete sentences or single words.

Technically, it would be no rocket science for us to follow IT's approach. However, PhraseExpress is designed for office workers and general PC users and not only professional full-time transcriptionists. Normal users would be too disctracted by a permanent text suggestion box as in IT. And IT delivers just fine anyway.

As a final note: It is somehow difficult to handle PhraseExpress related issues/questions in another product's thread. On the one hand we don't want to appear that we would ignore any such question regarding our product as we consider any feedback very important. On the other hand, I also don't want to "hijack" other's threads for this purpose.

So, it would be great if you would contact us directly if anything is unclear about the features or open a separate posting to debate our company or products.

Thank you for your understanding and my apologies to Tim.

tomos · « **Reply #358 on:** January 16, 2011, 01:33 PM »

mouser · « **Reply #359 on:** January 16, 2011, 01:54 PM »

As a final note: It is somehow difficult to handle PhraseExpress related issues/questions in another product's thread. On the one hand we don't want to appear that we would ignore any such question regarding our product as we consider any feedback very important. On the other hand, I also don't want to "hijack" other's threads for this purpose.

This is definitely a problem that everyone who writes software that gets mentioned in threads faces, and there is no good easy answer when you see someone make a negative comment that you think is misinformed.

Appreciate the positive tone

Now let's get back to our normal productive discussions and focus this thread back on topic.

robbero · « **Reply #360 on:** February 03, 2011, 03:08 AM »

Very nice piece of software

I used texter till now, today I switched to auspex.
I really like the calculator function.

Regex is also great to use

Just a few thoughts:
- Would it be possible to trigger with a popup?
  p.e. now I use \\a" to write an "ä"
   and \\a^ to write an "â"
   and so on
  It would be nice if Auspex can do this:
  write an "a" --> trigger --> popup with â,ä,à etc
   and "A" --> trigger --> popup with Ä,Â,Á etc

- Triggered by.... can it be set to a customized default trigger
   p.e. only "return"
- I noted that I always double click the system icon hoping that the auspex window will be shown.. Would this be possible?
- All my hotkeys in texter are with instant triggering
  so writing \\a" gives me immediately this character "ä"
  There is not an instant triggering in auspex?
- I have a folder with the name "AutoCompletions", don't know what it is.
  Can't delete it.
  Oeps... Now I receive an access violation:
  Access Violation at address 0091B427 in module Auspex.exe. Read of address 00000004
  Oh no... all my new keys are gone. Program crashed.
- Started again...
  btw what does "Hot Keys" mean in Program Options.
  I have a grey page when I click on it and don't see anything.
- a suggestion: copy a current key and paste with new name. This is easy if you want to create a new key which is almost the same as an existing one.

Thank you very much again.

ps: my os = win xp pro sp3

Ath · « **Reply #361 on:** February 03, 2011, 06:43 AM »

- Would it be possible to trigger with a popup?
p.e. now I use \\a" to write an "ä"
and \\a^ to write an "â"
and so on
It would be nice if Auspex can do this:
write an "a" --> trigger --> popup with â,ä,à etc
and "A" --> trigger --> popup with Ä,Â,Á etc
-robbero (February 03, 2011, 03:08 AM)

Windows does have the "US International" keyboarddriver available, that can be installed next to the much used US keyboard, and is easily activated/switched by a left-ctrl-shift press. Then it's even easier to type "a to get ä, 'c to get ç, ^o for ô. If you need the accent without the following letter, just press space.
I wouldn't use Auspex for that. It's correct that the standard keyboarddriver doesn't facilitate to show a popup.

timns · « **Reply #362 on:** February 03, 2011, 09:57 AM »

Hi Robbero,

Thank you for all the comments and feedback. I'm planning a new release of the software this weekend and I will add as many features as I can from your excellent list.

Sorry about the crash - the AutoCompletions folder is where Auspx stores words that it has learned from you. I'd better prevent that from being deleted

I'll add your comments to redmine so we can track them.

timns · « **Reply #363 on:** February 03, 2011, 10:00 AM »

Windows does have the "US International" keyboarddriver available, that can be installed next to the much used US keyboard, and is easily activated/switched by a left-ctrl-shift press. Then it's even easier to type "a to get ä, 'c to get ç, ^o for ô. If you need the accent without the following letter, just press space.
I wouldn't use Auspex for that. It's correct that the standard keyboarddriver doesn't facilitate to show a popup.
-Ath (February 03, 2011, 06:43 AM)

Which of course totally blows my IDE's out of the water, where control+space is autocompletion for variables and functions. I don't think that keyboard combo can be changed?

robbero · « **Reply #364 on:** February 03, 2011, 10:15 AM »

Hi Robbero,

Thank you for all the comments and feedback. I'm planning a new release of the software this weekend and I will add as many features as I can from your excellent list.

Sorry about the crash - the AutoCompletions folder is where Auspx stores words that it has learned from you. I'd better prevent that from being deleted

I'll add your comments to redmine so we can track them.

-timns (February 03, 2011, 09:57 AM)

Thank you very much for your kind reply.
Happy to read that there will be a new release this weekend.

@ath,
I've read about the international us keyboard driver. I already have a "dead key" system on my keyboard (using microsoft keyboard layout) but I find it much easier to use a pop-up for it. I don't remember me all the dead keys on my keyboard

robbero · « **Reply #365 on:** February 03, 2011, 11:08 AM »

I noted a few more things:

The drop down in Action has space for only 4 words. Replace text is on top (hidden) and to have it back I have to scroll up to the top. (see attachment) Can you please change the drop down menu to 5 lines?

I changed the Add predefined text to Date-day.
What is the function of this predefined text field?
Has it to insert the %dd% in the replacement field?
Nothing happens when I use the Mnemonic.
I have an english keyboard but use an italian regional settings (even if I'm not italian).
Can that be the reason?
I tried to switch back to the default but do not see the word Tokens anymore (see attachment).

Once "time" was expanded but I could not use the format hh:mm:ss
Time was inserted with a "dot" between the numbers.

I noted also that my Mnemonic field was expanded a few times with the text in replacement.
Maybe I have to add Auspex to the exception window

Sorry for all my questions.

Ath · « **Reply #366 on:** February 03, 2011, 11:11 AM »

... where control+space is autocompletion for variables and functions. I don't think that keyboard combo can be changed?
-timns (February 03, 2011, 10:00 AM)

It's not Ctrl-Space, but a dead key, like ', followed by a space that produces the '. If it where Ctrl-space I wouldn't be able to use it either

@roberro: The dead keys are so natural and transparent in daily use that it's hardly documented, because most users don't want to live without it after they discover it

Most of them I have to help/learn to add the standard VS keyboard, and switch layout using left-ctrl-shift, because they have the need to disable it at times (mostly developers, using quoted strings in their sources).

timns · « **Reply #367 on:** February 03, 2011, 11:24 AM »

... where control+space is autocompletion for variables and functions. I don't think that keyboard combo can be changed?
-timns (February 03, 2011, 10:00 AM)

It's not Ctrl-Space, but a dead key, like ', followed by a space that produces the '. If it where Ctrl-space I wouldn't be able to use it either

@roberro: The dead keys are so natural and transparent in daily use that it's hardly documented, because most users don't want to live without it after they discover it
Most of them I have to help/learn to add the standard VS keyboard, and switch layout using left-ctrl-shift, because they have the need to disable it at times (mostly developers, using quoted strings in their sources).
-Ath (February 03, 2011, 11:11 AM)

Thanks for the extra info. I've only ever used dead keys when testing applications for language-compatibility, but I can see the convenience aspect.

timns · « **Reply #368 on:** February 03, 2011, 11:32 AM »

I noted a few more things:

I noted also that my Mnemonic field was expanded a few times with the text in replacement.
Maybe I have to add Auspex to the exception window

Sorry for all my questions.

-robbero (February 03, 2011, 11:08 AM)

I'll have a look at that! A list of tokens is available here:

https://redmine.dcis...s/auspex/wiki/Tokens

robbero · « **Reply #369 on:** February 04, 2011, 04:33 AM »

timns,

Without using auspex today, I had a 50 or more access violations (see attachment).

I think it has something to do with autocomplete.
I wrote a few e-mails and text documents and saw that there was a frozen auspex autocomplete suggestion box at the top (left) of my browser with a "0" inside and the letters OV
When I minimized my browser I saw over 50 access violations windows.

timns · « **Reply #370 on:** February 04, 2011, 10:22 AM »

Without using auspex today, I had a 50 or more access violations (see attachment).
-robbero (February 04, 2011, 04:33 AM)

That's a new record!

I've actually just added some code to catch this error and report it back - I have never seen it so am relying on someone to report it to me if the new release does the same thing. The program will dump its code so I can see what's happening. I'll be uploading the new one over the weekend.

timns · « **Reply #371 on:** February 04, 2011, 11:53 AM »

Without using auspex today, I had a 50 or more access violations (see attachment).
-robbero (February 04, 2011, 04:33 AM)

Found and fixed. Will be in build 93 or greater, when I upload that. Along with some other nice features with thanks to all who made good suggestions.

@Cranioscopical, there's something in there just for you

cranioscopical · « **Reply #372 on:** February 04, 2011, 01:14 PM »

@Cranioscopical, there's something in there just for you
-timns (February 04, 2011, 11:53 AM)

Hmmm... waiting for the other shoe to drop

robbero · « **Reply #373 on:** February 05, 2011, 10:27 AM »

Without using auspex today, I had a 50 or more access violations (see attachment).
-robbero (February 04, 2011, 04:33 AM)

Found and fixed. Will be in build 93 or greater, when I upload that. Along with some other nice features with thanks to all who made good suggestions.

-timns (February 04, 2011, 11:53 AM)

Thank you.
I noted also that auspex doesn't start-up when I start windows, even when
"run when windows starts" is enabled.

About autocomplete... would it be possible to add a feature
to avoid Auspex capturing words when I type?
I would like to keep/use Autocomplete but only for words I insert in the key list.

And...
I disabled gauges in the view menu, but everytime I reboot Auspex gauges is active again.

Can't wait to see the new release.

robbero · « **Reply #374 on:** February 05, 2011, 01:59 PM »

I noted that gmote (a mouse gestures software) that I use since years is not compatible with auspex

If both are running, after a while gmote doesn't react any more.
Using a gesture with the right mouse button isn't possible anymore, it opens the right click menu.