Applications and Advanced Options

Applications

You can restrict which Applications recognize which abbreviations, either globally or based on the Group the abbreviation is in.

If a Group lists any Application Groups, it overrides the global default settings.

Click on the Applications tab to look at the default Application Groups. Each Application Group categorizes a set of applications. You can either choose which applications are in the group, or by checking the Except box, the group will consist of all the applications not listed.

Note the difference between the Enabled checkbox and the Except checkbox. The Enabled checkbox specifies whether that particular group allows AutoTyper expansion by default. The Except checkbox specifies whether the group includes all the applications listed, or whether it includes all applications except those listed.

How to restrict an abbreviation group to specific applications

In the Abbreviations tab, select a group you wish to restrict to specific applications.
Click on the plus ["+"] below the Application Group table. Add any groups of applications that you want to respond to this set of abbreviations.

How to globally disable expansion for specific applications

In the Applications tab, uncheck the Enabled box for all groups that contain the application you want to disable.

Note that in the standard groupings, you need to disable several groups for most applications. For example, to disable expansion in TextEdit you would need to uncheck All Applications and Everything Except Games and Text Editors. This may unintentionally disable other applications as well. Carefully setup your groups so that you include or exclude all the ones you want to be active.

Advanced settings

Most of the custom settings in AutoTyper can be set at three different levels. Globally in the Settings tab. By group from the action menu [] beneath the groups table, and per individual abbreviation from the action menu [] beneath the Abbreviations table. If an abbreviation has the default value, it looks to the group value. If the group value is default, it looks to the global value.

Expand Type

Type can be either:

plain text: This will not change the font attributes when it is expanded.
rich text and graphics: Font information will be retained when inserted into the document. The expansion may contain any kind of rich text and images. Some, but not all applications will not change the font if there is just one image, but no text.
image: Expansion may contain only one image. Expansion will not change the font.
applescript: Applescript will be run, and plaintext will be expanded.
shell: Shell script will be run and plaintext will be expanded.
Smart Spell: Makes an intelligent guess about spelling errors.

Delimiters

There are four options for expanding text. expand after delimiter (keep delimiter) means that the abbreviation will be expanded after you type a delimiter such as space or tab. expand after delimiter, (remove delimiter) means it will be expanded after a delimiter, but the delimiter will be discarded. expand immediately means that as soon as the abbreviation is seen, it is replaced, even before a delimiter like space is seen. expand after expansion hot key means that expansion is not automatic. You have to press the expansion hot key to cause expansion. This hot key is setup in the Settings tab as Hot key to attempt expansion.

Case Mode

There are three options for dealing with upper and lower case. Case sensitive means that the expansion only takes place if the abbreviation matches exactly the case of the abbreviation that is typed in. Case insensitive means that the case of what is typed in is ignored when considering whether to do the expansion. Adapt case to abbreviation means that the expansion will be adapted to the case of the abbreviation. For example, if you had an abbreviation of xp for the expansion xylophone, then typing Xp would result in Xylophone, xp would result in xylophone, and XP would result in XYLOPHONE.

Abbreviation Type

There are three ways abbreviations are recognized: standard recognises words normally. Regular expression matches patterns. Smart Spell intelligently recognises spelling errors.

Sound

You can choose from a number of sound effects to indicate that an expansion has just taken place.

Growl

You can enable a Growl notification when an expansion takes place. You may find this especially useful with Smart Spell so that you can verify that the expansion is what you want.

Enabled

You can disable abbreviations or groups of abbreviations by unchecking the Enabled check box. Both the abbreviation and its group must be checked for the abbreviation to be active.

Import / Export

You can import or export abbreviations to a CSV (Comma separated values) file, which can be opened by most spreadsheets. Two columns are required, the abbreviation and its expansion. Currently other attributes are not imported or exported.

Import from TextExpander

If you were a former user of TextExpander, you can export TextExpander snippets from TextExpander, and into a ".textexpander" file and import the file here. Currently date/time special tokens are not converted. Select the Group you want the snippets imported into, and select Import TextExpander from the Group action menu [].

Predefined Groups

There are several predefined groups you can add into AutoTyper. Common English Misspellings is a list of corrections for common spelling errors. Accented words is a list of words that are commonly accented.