I run a board heavily leaning toward MTs (but not totally, anyone, including you all, are so welcome there).
In fact, I'm trying to get more non-MTs there, but it's difficult. I made
-Harrie
I've briefly looked at your board, and may look further. I expect most people could benefit to some extent from a text expander, but such things only come into their own when you have to type from a more or less large lexicon of technical jargon. MTs are an extreme case of this; your jargon is both voluminous and polysyllabic.
Then, there are MTs still in the student phase, who generally have not used one of the major expanders yet. I'm interested in offering as much as I can there and discovering as many tools for our trade as possible,
Good (and public spirited) idea; not everyone can afford top software, especially when just starting out.
I think we are way too tunnel-visioned in general.
It always seem so much easier to narrow one's mind than broaden it
Since starting the board, I have found through others AHK and ActiveWords, and I now consider these two programs indispensable.
Yet you use Instant Text, the leading program. So are you using AHK for its more general features?
Another good reason for this script is that a lot of MTs work on company computers where they can't download anything, and you can run AHK on a USB stick.
This is becoming a serious problem. Companies are big on paranoid security policies but don't want to know about their destructive effects on productivity. I wish more Windows programs could be run without having to be installed.
And some people won't spend the money or don't have it for certain expanders.
I can relate to that
I'd seen where there were good scripts already made in AHK, but none that were exactly geared towards what we need, that including the tooltips.
It's easy to make basic hotstrings, but I wouldn't have thought to extend them to various forms of capitalisation, etc. Good for jgpaiva
If you found ABCZ you found a jewel. It so cuts down on remembering, it's not even funny.
I wish I'd discovered it before. I've just rejigged the shorthand expansion file I use with (DOS) PC-Write using more ABCCZ ideas, with some input from the TextStat program you mentioned before to see which words were most "worth" abbreviating. The PC-Write manual points out that the letter "q" is uncommon, so many of my old shorthands ended in "q". I've now realised that this is in many cases redundant, but some of the shorthands are now so deeply embedded I don't think I can change them
Of course, the basic ABCZ teaching doesn't always work. E.g. "quality" would become "quay" which is a legitimate word in itself. Although it's one I'd be highly unlikely to actually use at work, I didn't want to confuse shortcuts with normal words. But in many cases the system works excellently, especially as you can have a family of related abbreviations;
incd:included
ince:include
incg:including
incs:includes
I used to struggle with a less organised system.
still don't think I could get along very well without a visual expander, though. Not when you have thousands of entries. But many MTs do!
I've used Lil Red Notebook before. Mostly for medical terms to reference when I needed to.
I would prefer a visual expander, though my problem is nothing like as acute as yours. And I thought asking for that would be a bit more than a coding snack
But with LRN, I don't think they make it clear whether it types both shorthand and expansion, or whether it's more like a glorified "grep" that just helps you look things up, a bit like my acronym file. What really made me perk up and take notice was LRN's ability to type things into DOS programs. AHK can do that under Windows 2000
but SuperKeys, for example, can't.
I do think there are better programs, though. I suggest trying mouser's PopUp Wisdom for remembering your rarer shorts. Tell me what you think!
I hadn't thought of that, as it's been "advertised" as more of a fun program. Thanks for the idea
PS: By the way, on my home page I've had a link to DC for awhile now. I love this place!
And how incomparably better than usenet
Golly, what a lot of smileys. I'll have to be more abstemious...
