Existing users, 
I need to be able to expand abbreviations whenever I type them, not when the program decides to expand them. As it is, it requires you to place a delimiter- a space - before each abbreviation.
For instance, lets say I tell it to expand the abbreviation 'an' to 'anti'. If I type 'I bought an anque lamp' it automatically expands to 'I bought an antique lamp'. But if I type 'I am going to sanago', it does NOT expand to 'I am going to santiago', in fact it does nothing at all, because there is no space before the abbreviation. There is no way to turn this behavior off. It even does this is you set it not to use delimiters. Very poor design.
Now, it does give you a way to include a backspace in the abbreviation (it displays as %<) - so you could set the expand text to to '%<anti', and then type 's aniago' to have it automatically backspace over the space, so you get 'santiago ', except, this feature doesn't actually work at all, and what you get is 's %<antiago'.
I actually need to be able to expand shortcuts in the middle of words, in fact what I want to do relies on it, so this program is worse than useless: it actually made my work slower than just typing out the full word every time. Add to that the time I wasted setting it up and testing it for nothing, and I feel like I should be sending a bill to the developer.
1 star, only because it won't let me choose 0 stars.
TextExpander
Use abbreviations for frequently-used text strings & images.
Version: 2.7.1
almost works as described = FAIL
Feedback Type: Review
Contributed by: mikirby Monday, February 02 2009 @ 04:58 PM PST
Product Platform: MacOSX
Used Product For: Less than a month
Recommend Product: NO
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Comments
almost works as described = FAIL - Glasgow
> Used Product For: Less than a monthRead Documentation For: Less then 5 seconds
Explored Preferences For: Less than 5 seconds
<snip>
> As it is, it requires you to place a delimiter- a space -
> before each abbreviation.
Go and read the documentation. Don't just assume. Then you might even come back and apologise...
The program is not perfect - personally, I've had one or two minor issues with it - but it's a damn sight better than you've made it out to be.
Thursday, February 19 2009 @ 04:01 AM PST
but wait... it gets even MORE idiotic! - mikirby
So, since the cursor-positioning features don't function as advertised. I though I'd try an applescript snippet. I used this:tell application "System Events" to tell process (path to frontmost application as string) to key code {123}
-- the above is a backspace, to backspace over the required pre-abbreviation whitespace that they don't tell you about anywhere
tell application "System Events" to tell process (path to frontmost application as string) to keystroke "q"
which works fine in script editor. And of course -- like everything else about this app -- it <i>almost</a> works as advertised, and consequently is useless.
The problem is this:
1) Everytime you execute an Applescript snippet, the combuter beeps like you've made a mistake, which is endlessly irritating; and, more seriously:
2) Every time you execute an applescript snippet, it swallows whatever you type in the next half-second. So if you have set up "q" as an abbreviation for "qu", you might assume that if you type "re qiem" using the above applescript, it will expand to "requiem". WRONG! If you type at 50wpm, like I do, it expands to "requem" because it swallows the letter following the abbreviation unless you purposefully wait a half a second - thereby eradicating <i>any</i> time savings you might have had by using abbreviations!
What an idiotic program. I am fuming over having my time wasted by developers who can't document their program properly, so you have to waste time discovering that the way it works ain't exactly how it was described.
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Monday, February 02 2009 @ 10:57 PM PST