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.

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, you started bad-mouthing our product. You should stop it now, OK? It is for no good.

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.

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.

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.

- 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

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.

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.

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?

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.

Quote from: timns on February 03, 2011, 04:00 PM

... where control+space is autocompletion for variables and functions. I don't think that keyboard combo can be changed?

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).

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,

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.

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

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

Quote from: robbero on February 04, 2011, 10:33 AM

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

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.

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.