Anytime you can enter text in your Mac by typing it at the keyboard, TypeIt4Me can do it for you - faster and more accurately. And since it actually fools the system into thinking that YOU are doing the typing, it can go places where you wouldn't be able to use the Paste command (if you click on its icon on the left of the Apple menu, it will even pop up during a Modal dialog!).
However, since it's not at all based on the Clipboard mechanism, it can only enter text and will never be able to handle graphics of any sort. If you can live with this limitation, read on.
*****How do you use it?
TypeIt4Me is a startup document (INIT). To activate it, place its icon into your System Folder and restart the Mac. If all goes well, you should see a new small icon in the menu bar, just left of the Apple Menu. Clicking on it will cause a menu to pop up, presenting you with several choices allowing you to:
- create and edit the text entries that TypeIt4Me will later type out for you;
- configure various settings and options;
- create and choose the file(s) in which to store the entries;
- have the date (in short, medium and long format) and/or the time (with or without seconds) typed out for you, either in your system language or in an alternate language or customized format;
- pick a predefined entry name and have it typed out for you.
*****Where can you use TypeIt4Me?
Anywhere you can type characters yourself using the keyboard.
*****When does TypeIt4Me type?
The typing will occur wherever you are currently entering text, be it in a word processing document, a Finder Get Info box, a Save as… dialog, a folder or file name field, a database entry field and so on.
The text stored in one of the entries will be typed out for you, either when you select its name from the pop up menu or when you type its name and follow it with either:
- ANY punctuation sign (such as a space, comma, full-stop, question mark, etc.)
or
- JUST a space or carriage return (by checking the "Only space bar causes expansion" box in the Configure dialog).
The font and style of the text will be those CURRENTLY applied to any text you may type yourself in your document, NOT the font and style that the entry text was in when you defined the entry.
Similarly, the location of the text will be affected by the CURRENT ruler settings in your document.
NB
Remember that anything you type on the keyboard will replace whatever text is currently selected in the frontmost window. Since TypeIt4Me simulates your typing, don't be surprised to see a disk or a file icon renamed if they are selected in the Finder when you have TypeIt4Me start typing something.
Also, some users have clicked on the Register button (found in the Help screens) while they were just running the Finder (as opposed to having a word processor's document open for text input). Since the registration form takes a fair while to type out, they thought their Mac had frozen, while in fact it was just being subjected to a steady stream of characters with nowhere to go! Just remember that simply clicking the mouse button will immediately cause TypeIt4Me to stop typing.
Finally, you may notice a slower display of the characters you type. This is due to TypeIt4Me doing very frequent accesses to its data file on disk. It will be more noticeable with slower and/or fragmented hard disks.
*****Let's have a date
Before you even begin to define your own personalized entries, TypeIt4Me "knows" how to enter the current date and/or time of day into your document (or wherever else you are typing). Simply pop up the TypeIt4Me menu and select the date or time from either the Sys(tem) Date&Time or Alt(ernate) Date&Time menu. The latter menu will initially show (and type) the US format, but without the name of the day of the week in the long date, as requested by several users. A little ResEdit work will soon have you customize the Alt Date&Time menu to your own specifications. If you don't know what ResEdit is or have never used it, I'm afraid this document is not even going to attempt to teach you about it. Several articles and manuals on ResEdit have been published to date and you should refer to them.
The Sys Date&Time can also be invoked by typing one of five abbreviations which you can define by choosing the Configure… menu item and then clicking the Edit date/time abbreviations button.
*****Roll your own
Naturally, you'll want to create your own personalized entries and have them typed out when appropriate.
Once you've created an entry, you can simply select it from the pop up menu and let the Mac do the typing for you.
For even faster typing, you can give short, easily remembered names to your entries and watch the Mac take over and expand them before your very eyes as you type them in your document (for this to work, entry names mustn't contain any spaces or other punctuation characters, since they are responsible for triggering the expansion).
There are two ways to add your own entries:
1) Use your favourite word processor to type the name of the entry, a carriage return and the text you want it to expand to. You then copy (or cut) the lot to the Clipboard and choose "Add an entry" from the pop up menu.
2) Select "Blank entry" from the "Edit an entry" menu item, type (or paste) the text you want TypeIt4Me to type and Rename the entry.
Please note that entry names should not exceed 25 characters. Also, if you later want an entry to expand automatically as you type its name, make sure the entry name does not contain any punctuation or other special characters.
For example, to create an entry that types out my address every time you either select it from the menu or type the word "REadd", you would copy the next five lines to the clipboard and then select Add an entry from the TypeIt4Me pop up menu:
REadd
Riccardo Ettore
Attn. TypeIt4Me
67 rue de la limite
1970 Wezembeek-Oppem, BELGIUM
That's it.
*****Did you say private scrap or major bother?
Well, almost: Most applications maintain a "private scrap". That means that when you select Copy, the text in the selection is not copied straight to the real Clipboard shared by all applications, which is where the Add an entry function expects to find it. TypeIt4Me tries to overcome this by issuing suspend/resume events to which most modern applications should respond properly by writing out their private scrap to the Clipboard. If you ever encounter a program that doesn't respond to these events, you should be able to obtain the same result by simply opening any Desk Accessory after issuing the Copy command (or switching to a different application and back, if you’re under MultiFinder).
*****Removing an entry
To remove an existing entry, select it from the hierarchical menu that pops up next to Edit an entry, then click the Remove button in the dialog that follows. *Be sure you really want to delete it, since you won't be asked to confirm!*
*****Editing and entry
Select the entry as in the previous paragraph, edit its contents in the standard way and click Update. (Click Done instead of Update if you don't want your editing changes saved.)
*****Pop it up!
TypeIt4Me can also pop up anywhere you click on the screen if you simultaneously hold down a combination of the three so-called "modifier" keys, that is, Shift, Option and Command.
To determine which combination of keys will cause the menu to pop up when you click anywhere, select the Configure… item from the TypeIt4Me menu and choose the combination by checking the boxes next to the key(s) you wish to use.
***Disabling automatic expansion
If you ever want to stop an entry while it's being typed, simply click the mouse.
If you ever want to prevent an entry from being expanded at all, you must press the ENTER key (on the right bottom corner of the numeric keypad of most keyboards) right after the last character of the entry. For example, say you've defined PM to type out Post Meridiem: Whenever you actually want to have the word PM in your text and not the expanded phrase, you'll have to type PM+ENTER ("+ENTER" here means press the ENTER key).
Whenever you wish to temporarily turn off TypeIt4Me's automatic expansion of abbreviations, you can type shift-option-command-T (that is, type a letter "T" while holding down the shift, option and command keys). To turn it back on, type the same combination.
If you want to permanently turn it off (even across system restarts, that is) you can check the "Disable automatic keyboard expansion" box in the Configure… menu item.
If you don't want TypeIt4Me to expand your entries when you type any kind of punctuation character, such as a full stop, comma or even a parenthesis (which Hartmut Berner of Laatzen, Germany finds surprising), you can check the "Only space bar causes expansion" box in the Configure… menu item. If you do, only pressing the space bar (or the carriage return) will cause the preceding entry to be automatically expanded as you type. This, incidentally, allows you to have punctuation marks as part of the abbreviated entry. For example, "psy." could expand to "psychology" (as wished by Mark Davies of Derby, England).
***Hiding the icon in the Menu bar
If you'd rather not see TypeIt4Me's small icon in the menu bar, simply check the "Hide menubar icon" box in the Configure… dialog.
***Moving TypeIt4Me's hot corner
If you'd rather have TypeIt4Me pop up when you click in the right-hand corner of the screen instead of the left, just check the "Put icon on the right" box in the Configure… dialog.
*****What's in a (file) name?
TypeIt4Me stores its entries in one or more files which you can name anything you like and store anywhere you want on your hard disk.
Use New file… to create a new file for storing your entries.
Use Open file… any time you want to switch from one set of entries to another.
*****Type clipboard function
Instead of typing out a predefined entry, this will type out the contents of the Clipboard (assuming it contains any text at all).
*****A word on Word
Previous versions of this document mentioned an incompatibility between TypeIt4Me and MS Word. Joining the large number of Microsoft bashers, I implied that it might be their fault rather than my own.
I was wrong and wish to publicly apologize to the good people at Microsoft. TypeIt4Me is compatible with Word now that I've figured out what I was doing wrong.
*****A word on WriteNow 2.2 (my favourite word processor)
Steve Schulin from Derwood, MD, first reported a weird phenomenon where TypeIt4Me seems to be causing WriteNow to repeat a certain letter (alternating it with a space) for as many times as it takes to reach the next tab stop. However, the characters are not discrete but form a single block which can be deleted with one single backspace.
After much puzzlement, I have finally managed to cause WriteNow to do this even after removing TypeIt4Me (and all other INITs for that matter) from my system folder. It then occurred to me to read WriteNow's user manual (who ever reads Mac software manuals?) and it does indeed turn out to be a feature of WriteNow, documented on page 104, which says, and I quote:
"If, when inserting a Tab character, you type another character before releasing the Tab key, that character will fill the space up to the tab stop: WriteNow will display the fill character at evenly spaced intervals equal to the width of the widest character in the font. The fill characters will be lined up on subsequent lines. This allows you to create "leader lines", as in the following example:
Even with fill characters superimposed on it, a Tab character is still treated as a single character." end of quote.
The effect this has on TypeIt4Me is that if you press the tab key while TypeIt4Me is busy typing for you, you'll get a very weird result (try it, it's not dangerous)!
Also - and I've yet to figure out how to avoid this - occasionally a certain character will become "sticky" and repeat itself to the next tab marker even if you don't press Tab while you type it.
*****TypeIt4Me and Ragtime
For TypeIt4Me to work properly, Ragtime's automatic hyphenation option must be turned off (in the Preferences dialog). This is because Ragtime automatically inserts a special character in the places where the word you're typing can be hyphenated (you can see that, by selecting show invisible characters in Ragtime). When TypeIt4Me issues the necessary number of backspace codes to erase the abbreviation before typing out its expanded text, it obviously doesn't know that Ragtime has inserted these characters "behind its back" and ends up erasing only part of the abbreviation.
*****TypeIt4Me and Stepping Out II
To avoid problems, rename TypeIt4Me so it loads before Stepping Out (any alphabetically lower name will do, such as aTypeIt4Me ).
*****Some users have reported that TypeIt4Me displays a cross on its icon at startup and won't load. The most likely reason for this behaviour is that it was denied the (small) amount of system heap memory it requires. Try renaming TypeIt4Me in such a way as to cause it to load at a different point (say before all other INITs or at the very end or somewhere in between) and see if that helps.
*****Safe as houses?
If you've read the notes accompanying my other shareware programs, you'll know that I am always very careful about giving any guarantees and assurances.
In the case of this program, I can be a lot less cautious (though you'll never find me categorical) about claiming that it's safe to use.
Not only I, but a fair number of friends and colleagues have been using TypeIt4Me since July 1989 on all sorts of different Mac configurations and it has so far peacefully co-exhisted with the multitude of INITs and cdevs that take turns at populating and occasionally conflicting in our system folders (I have been known to startup with over THIRTY different INITs and cdevs, but I usually restrict myself to a mere dozen or so).
Get this straight, I'm not claiming it's totally bug-free (God knows I've fixed many in the last few months!) or that it won't have a problem in your own environment, just that I feel safe in recommending that you try it out and see if it can save you time and effort while you type.
So please try TypeIt4Me out on your particular system and let me know how it performs. A number of people are obviously satisfied with TypeIt4Me or they wouldn't have paid their registration fee. Some have even written to me pledging to pay if I could fix certain problems (which I hope I have done).
One thing is for sure: I will definitely continue to support and improve this program, since I for one could not do without it and I'm sure you too will want to make it a permanent denizen of your System Folder.
*****What can you use it for?
That depends on who you are and what you write about. In my case, I find it extremely useful for typing the current date and my return address at the top of a letter, for my standard end of letter salutation (for which I type "ys" and get
Yours Sincerely,
Riccardo Ettore
) and believe it or not, for typing two single characters which are essential to my C programming, yet always manage to disappear from the keyboard when I most need them. Ironically, I find it faster to type the word "tilde" to get "~" and "monkey" (don't ask) to get "@", than to try and memorize their position on the keyboard. It's a strange world, isn't it?
TypeIt4Me is also very useful for entering repetitive data in a database file.
And by defining a set of mnemonic abbreviations for the most frequently used words, you can type faster yet more accurately with less effort. Read page 387 of the May 1990 MacWorld for a description of a commercial program that does the same - at nearly twice the price ("inexpensive;saves keystrokes;has potential to help RSI sufferers").
For example, "u r rh ab teh cgs" could type out "you are right about the changes".
Another application of TypeIt4Me should become apparent if you look closely at the previous example:
Notice how the common mistake of typing "teh" instead of "the" gets automatically corrected as would "adn" for "and", plus any others that you can think of. So assuming, of course, that you create the appropriate entries first, TypeIt4Me can help you eliminate your most common typos on the fly.
Naturally, you will probably find your own, novel uses for this program. If you can spare the time, I would definitely appreciate hearing how you use it and share your tips and hints with the other users.
*****Here comes the commercial part
TypeIt4Me is NOT a public domain program. It's just as proprietary as any commercially distributed program you may have bought from a dealer. The only difference is that it's distributed on a "try it before you buy it" basis, generally referred to as "shareware". What this means is that not only it's not copy-protected, but you are actually urged to give copies to your friends. The only restrictions are that this document must always accompany the program and that you cannot modify it in any way, sell it, or include it on a disk which is sold without my prior written consent (this also applies to PD distribution outfits such as, but not limited to, BudgetBytes, MacClub Benelux, Educorp et al.).
(Of course, the other BIG difference is that by avoiding the overhead of advertising and dealer margins, I can still make a fair profit by asking you for less than half of what I should price it at, were I to distribute it via commercial channels.)
I sincerely hope you'll find TypeIt4Me useful as an aid to increased productivity.
If you don't, just throw it away and you'll owe me nothing (or better still, tell me what would make it useful to you and worth paying for and I'll see what I can do to satisfy you).
If you do, and therefore decide to keep it in your software collection, I ask that you abide by the shareware code of honour and pay for it. The licence fee is a very modest $30US and I’ll acknowledge your payment by sending you an 800K disk with the latest version of this program and as many of my other shareware and freeware programs as will fit on the disk. Sending me your registration fee will also ensure that I keep improving this program (possibly implementing one of your own suggestions) and write other reasonably priced utilities. If you like what I write in my very limited spare time, imagine what I could come up with if your payments supported me full time…
Thank you in advance for keeping the shareware spirit alive!
Yours Sincerely,
Riccardo Ettore
*****Acknowledgements
Thank you to Guy, Paul, Knud, Giuseppe, Massimo, Diego, Jeremy, Denis, Ansfried & JBQ for the trust and courage with which they've opened their System Folders to early versions of this program.
A special thank you to Guy Fiems, who once again provided me with invaluable debugging help!
*****System Requirements
Because it calls PopUpMenuSelect, this program REQUIRES that you run System 4.1 or later. It would crash under earlier systems.
As far as I know, it runs under System 7.0 (It's been running under 7.0 for over a month on my IIsi).
*****Release History
New in version 3.2
Monday, March 16, 1992
- when expanding, the text will be typed in UPPER CASE if CAPS LOCK is engaged (but only when expansion is triggered from the keyboard)
New in version 3.1
June 30, 1991
- in response to several users' wishes, if the first letter of the expanded entry is created in lower case, it will now match the case of the first letter of the abbreviation at the time you type it. So given 'Riccardo Ettore' as an entry abbreviated to 're', typing 'Re', 'rE', 're' or 'RE' will still give 'Riccardo Ettore', as usual. On the other hand, if you defined the phrase 'many happy returns' to be triggered by 'mhr', then typing 'Mhr' would give 'Many happy returns' (with a capital 'M').
- in response to reports that the entry file seems to get lost a bit too often, I have added the file system error codes in the "I seem to have lost…" alert. For example, if you rename the file or move it to a different folder, you'll get "error -43 at point 3". If you rename the volume (i.e. the hard disk or diskette the file it's on), you'll get "error -35 at point 1". If you trash the folder the file was in, you'll get "error -43 at point 2". If you do indeed get these errors often and you don't think they are justified (i.e. you haven't explicitly renamed, moved or trashed any of the above), please make a note of the incident(s) and try to provide me with as many clues as possible if you do decide to write to me.
New in version 3.0.1
March 3, 1991
- James Bethin from Bethpage, NY reported last week that Type clipboard would not type into dialog boxes: it's fixed.
New in version 3.0
(final release January 13, 1991):
instead of having the Alt Date in Italian, it's in English but without the name of the day as requested by James R. Quick and several other users.
(beta12 pre-released January 6, 1991):
- Vincent Magos reported that choosing space bar only expansion would cause entries not to be expanded after a carriage return: it's fixed.
(beta11 pre-released December 18, 1990):
- Vincent Magos reported that accented characters (such as éèçà etc) would trigger the expansion: they weren't meant to (read:it was a bug) and they no longer do!
(beta10 pre-released December 9, 1990):
- fixed bug reported by Hartmut Berner (TypeIt4Me made Font and Style menus in Ragtime 3 disappear!)
- added option in Configure dialog to trigger expansion only when the space bar is pressed (as opposed to ANY punctuation character)
(beta9 pre-released December 2, 1990):
- fixed bug that prevented accented characters from being typed into Word and PageMaker
- added code to allow TypeIt4Me to work under System 7.0 from the Extensions folder
(beta8 pre-released November 30, 1990):
- fixed bug where configuring TypeIt4Me to pop up with a modifier combination including shift would cause several word-processors to get stuck in text selection mode until next click (first reported by Don Denny)
(beta7 pre-released November 27, 1990):
- supports multiple files for storing entries according to a particular subject or theme
- INIT file can now be renamed (e.g. when wishing to alter the loading order of INITs) with no adverse effects (however, the new name is only "noticed" after rebooting)
- added Type clipboard function
- date and time abbreviations are now user definable via the Configure… dialog
- supports one Alt(ernate) set of date & time strings
- entries can now be renamed and edited with a standard edit field
- duplicate entry names are rejected
New in version 2.1.4 released July 17, 1990 :
- corrected a problem I found yesterday using WriteNow (an invisible NULL character was being erroneously appended after the delimiter)
New in version 2.1.3 released July 15, 1990 :
- Check screen depth is >=4 for RGBBack/ForeColor
- Fixed obob that caused punctuation not to append itself to expanded text
- Last character of expanded text is no longer repeated (this bug only affected some applications and only when running under Finder)
- Tab now works properly in FileMaker (as per Knud Posborg's request)
- No new features
New features in version 2.1 (a short-lived version only released locally on July 6, 1990) :
- Configure includes "Hide menu bar icon" and "Put icon on the right" items.
- Icon in menu bar now respects menu bar color even when different from Black on White.
New features in version 2.0 released June 27, 1990 :
Complete code overhaul to fix many reported problems:
- should now peacefully coexhist with MasterJuggler
- entries expand properly in MS Word whether entered from the keyboard or selected from the menu
- typing speed is much faster
- characters you type while TypeIt4Me is typing no longer get mixed in, but correctly append themselves at the end (Michel Debar and other fast typists rejoyce!)
- new checkbox in Configure… dialog allows you to permanently disable the automatic expansion of entries as you type
New features in version 1.4 released February 28, 1990 :
- as per Frank Easterbrook's request, TypeIt4Me now leaves a few pixels for PopChar to pop up.
New features in version 1.3 released December 12, 1989:
- three preset abbreviations allow you to type the date without using the mouse to access the menu (thanks to Diego Friso for insisting that I implement this feature):
'dts' (pronounced "date short") expands to this 12/12/89
'dtm' ("m" for medium) expands to Mar 12 Déc 1989
'dtl' ("l" for long) expands to Mardi 12 Décembre 1989
Note that the language of the date (in French in these examples) will match that of your system.
A feature I would personally find useful (yes I do actually USE this program myself!) but have not had the time to add yet would be a choice of several languages. If any people who register also ask for it, I suppose I'll just have to add it…
Also useful would be to have a user option to change these abbreviations to something else (it's impossible in this version).
- a bug preventing the pop up key combination from being remembered is now fixed (thanks to Carlos Pedro Rodríguez and Ansfried D'Hoekers for reporting it)
**************
To register, you may wish to print out the following text, but even sending a scrap of paper with your name and address on it will do (just don't forget to include the dough):
Air Mail this form to:
Riccardo Ettore,
Attn. TypeIt4Me,
67 rue de la limite,
1970 W-Oppem, Belgium
TypeIt4Me Registration Form
I wish to become a registered user: apart from a clean conscience, I'll also get an 800K disk with the latest version of this and your other shareware programs and written notification should you further upgrade the program.
_ I'm enclosing US$30 in cheque/cash
_ Charge US$30 to my VISA/MasterCard/AmericanExpress
