TypeIt4Me - 4.2

After 28 days of trying to get an answer from Ettore about the sudden failure of TypeIt4Me to retain its registration data, I have come to a sad conclusion. Ettore must be out of business. Most of the published email addresses they give have been bouncing. At least one of those addresses doesn't bounce, but it also doesn't produce any response. I enlisted help from their payment processor, Kagi, and they tried to reach Ettore, also without success. I don't know what has happened -- they used to provide good support and were quite responsive, and the software (when it works) is great, but without a means of registering it, it becomes quickly unusable. I can't recommend that anyone send a shareware payment for it under the circumstances.

On my machine(s) I use it since many many years and rely on it. It's extremely helpful. In contrast to the last posting I can even correct misspelt words and still get expansion. Developers feedback and help (seldom needed) is very prompt. A real time and nerve saver, worth every penny.

I did not use typinator, which seems to offer about the same features. I use(d) popchar from the same company and there I get nerve killing offers for (payed) updates - so I do not see a reason to try out something different.

I have been using TypeIt4Me since it was first released or shortly thereafter (about 20 years ago). I really couldn't live without it. I think it's the best expansion program around. I've tried others, but nothing compares with TypeIt4Me. Over the years there have been problems when a new release was introduced, but those were quickly resolved by the developer. The tech support offered by the developer is the most responsive and personal help I've ever received from any software company.
I have only praise for this great little application.

I've been using this product for over a year and have been at the developer for most of that time to deal with an infuriating issue with the text expansions. I've found the developer to be much more interested in adding features than fixing issues. On the average, about once in every couple dozen expansions (I have a library of over 2500 expansions) the expanded text gets all mangled e.g. the result is some combination of the abbreviation and the final text, or it fails to include the trigger character, or the expansion occurs in the middle of the following word etc. It's true you can really blast along typing at higher speeds (although I'm just a medium speed 4 finger peck and shoot typist), but I'm sure spending a lot of time having to meticulously proof read the result of my typing to fix all the expansion mangling. I also own Typinator and TextExpander and they don't have this problem. The ONLY reason I've been putting up with TypeIt4Me is because it does single-character expansions and the competition didn't. I've been urging the developer of Typinator to implement this feature and he's finally released a version that does it! However, his implementation has a couple killer limitations that must to be addressed before I jump ship, but he's getting there.

I've worked as a professional feature film and television writer for over a decade, and TypeIt4Me is the one program I've used since the beginning - back when I started with a Powerbook 170 (what a great machine, three inches thick with its tiny black-and-white screen). Why? Because it's simple and reliable.

The first thing I do when I start a new script is make a copy of my abbreviations file and store my new character names.

Do I use it a lot? I got my MacBook Pro with Leopard last week and installed the newest version of TypeIt4Me. According to the program (it keeps track of these things) in 5 days of use it expanded 5060 abbreviations, saving me 38,940 keystrokes, which, at my typing speed, saved me 1 hour and 50 minutes of typing. Not bad.