Harrie,
I have to abstract lots of journals, hence I find this kind of tool useful. Apart from PC-Write's built-in feature, the only one I've tried myself is AHK, apart from a very quick dabble with PowerPro. That is an impenetrable program, except that text snippets are the easiest part of it. They're attached to buttons rather than hotstrings (I daresay you can have those too, but I never got that far).
-rjbull
You're getting me interested in all sorts of things now! Speaking of PowerPro, I believe I had tried that. It's a program I didn't give enough time to. I found it difficult. But sometimes when programs are a bit challenging for me, with lots of features to learn, I give up too soon when I know that if I'd only give it a little more time.......Anyway, buttons sound good so long as you definitely could have them in hotstrings for folks who never want to go the clickie route, LOL.
Abstracting journals - that sounds very interesting. I don't feel I really know what it involves, but for some reason, it brings to mind a program I just recently learned about, from a member of my board, a translator. This program is cool! It's called TextSTAT and it's free. Here's a
link It can sort words by frequency for you. What I went crazy over was, if you double click on a word, all the phrases that it's in (in your documents) come up. Wow! For MTs, that can be a heavenly gift, to let you add your most frequently used phrases in your expander. Runs on Mac and Linux, too. Probably has nothing to do with what you do, but........maybe.
I hadn't realised the quality of Instant Text when I first posted. I see it costs $189, and if price is anything to go by, it should be good! The ColorPilot one is only about $25 (from memory). The author of the KeyNote organizer/outliner recommends IntelliComplete, which is about $50. IntelliComplete is here http://flashpeak.com/icomp/
Instant Text is high quality. I did post my review, and in that thread, IntelliComplete came up there, too. Thanks for the info. Gotta check out ColorPilot. Another good expander is Shorthand for Windows. It's excellent and does have a downloadable demo. But, there can be no changing for me. That's how incredible I feel Instant Text is.
In his smallwares list, MarkTAW http://www.marktaw.c...voriteSmallware.html
says he uses PC Magazine's RoboType for standardized text like signatures and bits of code. You have to pay an low-cost annual subscription to access PC Magazine utilities, but subsequent use is free (i.e., I think, subscribe for a year, grab what you want, and use if forever without further payment).
I've read about RoboType for years! I think it is very, very popular!
Of course, the good thing about AHK is that's it's completely free (with donation possible) and hotstring files are simple plain text, which makes them very easy to share, though AHK hotstrings on their own don't have a point-and-shoot interface. Also they won't work on Win9x, if anyone but me is still a dinosaur 
AHK is awesome! And to be able to make executables, too, for people who don't have it and maybe only want one or two certain scripts! Yes, easy to share, plain text, working in any application, working off a USB stick, I'm with you, it's great. The one thing I will disagree with is that I've seen reviews that say it is "easy." To me, it isn't easy to learn to program in AHK. Not that it should be, you understand. I'm just saying, if you don't know anything about programming languages, a review should not claim that it's simple.
Maybe one day I'll talk about ActiveWords! I love that program to death. Doesn't have the power of AHK, but it has a whole lot of power nevertheless. And although it does text substitution, I don't use it for that. Rather, for automating all sorts of other things.
Dinosaurs interest me! Some older apps remain the greatest. Oh, this reminds me about a freeware site, I think it's called Pricelessware, and I think it offers up a lot of older programs, unless I'm mistaking it for another site.
Hi, Brother. Sure will! I have a habit of wanting to wait until everything is squared away and then tuck it all into a neat little package with everything together and all instructions, etc. straightened out. Did post about DC in a general post, too. Love this place!
