There are two different formats for snippets: Plain Text and Formatted Text, Pictures. While the former is nothing but a string of unicode characters without any style information, the latter lets you combine both formatted text and any number of pictures of your choice.
When snippets in Formatted Text, Pictures format consist of exactly one picture, TextExpander automatically uses its single-picture mode for maximum application compatibility. Single-picture snippets are especially useful for applications that refuse to accept pictures from snippets that contain both formatted text and pictures. In these cases, TextExpander inserts the picture in question by simulating a picture paste operation. You can experiment by trying both the llaugh
and the wwbr
abbreviations from TextExpander's default configuration in Microsoft Word, and you'll notice the difference.
To insert pictures into a given snippet, paste them from the clipboard or choose Picture... from TextExpander's
[+] pop-up menu just below the content input field (↑ Overview).
TextExpander lets you add the following kinds of special content to your snippets:
•
|
Date and Time
You can insert the current date and time into your snippets by means of strftime-style conversion specifiers the first two snippets in TextExpander's default configuration should give you a basic idea of how this works.
|
•
|
Clipboard
By adding a clipboard placeholder (%clipboard), you can have TextExpander insert the current clipboard content into a snippet on expansion. Please note that only the clipboard's plain text representation is used; format information is discarded.
|
•
|
Cursor Positioning
If you're a web designer, you have to type this phrase quite frequently: "<a href=""></a>". Creating a snippet which abbreviates <a href=""></a> with ahref or any other abbreviation will already make things easier, but you'll still have to move your cursor back in between the quotation marks to enter a URL. That's exactly what TextExpander can do for you automatically. Just put a "Position cursor here" specifier (%|) somewhere in your text snippet. Or add the appropriate number of left-arrow keystroke specifiers (%<) to the end of your snippet's content. In the present example's case, you will end up with <a href="%|"></a> or <a href=""></a>%<%<%<%<%<%< , depending on the strategy you have chosen. Please note that TextExpander only recognizes the first "Position cursor here" specifier in your snippet. Cursor keystroke specifiers (left, up, right, or down) are ignored when a "Position cursor here" specifier is found. Moreover, TextExpander only recognizes cursor keystroke specifiers at the very end of your snippet.
|
To insert date/time conversion specifiers and cursor positioning specifiers into a given snippet, choose the appropriate entries from TextExpander's
[+] pop-up menu just below the content input field (↑ Overview).
A good abbreviation is...
• short
• easy to remember
• unlikely to be typed by accident
• unique
There are many different ways of meeting these criteria. Duplicating an abbreviation's first character is one way to make it unlikely to be typed by accident. Since TextExpander never expands typed characters in the middle of a word, this works perfectly in most of the cases. For instance, li
would be a bad abbreviation for lorem ipsum
, as quite a lot of words such as "life", "like", etc. start with "li". Enter the duplicated first character: lli
is still reasonably short, you don't have to move your hands more often than when typing li
, and there are hardly any words that start with "lli".
As far as the "unique" criterion is concerned, things partially depend on your settings. With TextExpander's default settings, the abbreviations lli
and llid
would interfere with each other. In fact, you would never get to enter llid
, because TextExpander would expand the matching abbreviation as soon as you typed lli
. You can, however, configure TextExpander to only Expand automatically when... a delimiter character is typed after an abbreviation in the Preferences section of TextExpander's preference pane. (Delimiter characters are [Space], [Tab], and [Return].) Once you've done that, lli
[Space] and llid
[Space] no longer interfere with each other.
The Expand automatically when... a delimiter character is typed after an abbreviation setting also makes it easier to choose an abbreviation that is unlikely to be typed by accident. For example, If the word "li" does not exist in your language, choosing li
as an abbreviation won't cause any problems.
Having settled for an abbreviation, you'll want to think about how the abbreviation is supposed to work. TextExpander offers three choices:
•
|
Case Sensitive
Example: If a given snippet's content is lorem ipsum , and if its abbreviation is lli , then...
...
|
typing lli (exact match) makes TextExpander insert lorem ipsum .
|
...
|
typing lLi , LLI , LLi , lLI , LlI , Lli , or llI (anything else) does not trigger TextExpander.
|
|
•
|
Ignore Case
...
|
typing lli , lLi , LLI , LLi , lLI , LlI , Lli , or llI (any case variation) makes TextExpander insert lorem ipsum .
|
|
•
|
Adapt Snippet with Case of Abbreviation
...
|
typing LLI (all capitals) makes TextExpander insert LOREM IPSUM .
|
...
|
typing LLi , LlI , or Lli (leading capital) makes TextExpander insert Lorem ipsum .
|
...
|
typing lli , lLi , lLI , or llI (anything else) makes TextExpander insert lorem ipsum .
|
The Adapt Snippet with Case of Abbreviation mode is particularly useful for phrases that may appear at the beginning or in the middle of a sentence.
|