TextPander: System-level predefined text snippets for your Mac

TextPander
(http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?section=textpander)

Another Whooa! application for OS X.

It does tag expansion, but does it at the OS level. There is a system preferences panel that is the interface. Typing the keywords will auto expand then on the fly. many expansion are simple string replacements, though date and time expansionas are supported. It would be nice to have the ability to execute any script (including ruby) and return the result. This might allow things like code completion to be done.

In general, adding context awareness and the ability to execute anything would be nice.

It’s a beautiful example of what I have been thinking about in the way of using the full system to build an application, rather than trying to suck everthing into a “abstracted”, “change protected” and massively overcoded app.

As an example of it’s use, I use a context menu in VoodooPad to enter the crrent date and to add

"------ ----- ---- --- -- -"

The problem is that these items are on a sub-context menu. So I set up entries to replace those: ”==.” => ”
------ ----- ---- --- -- -
” “ddtt” => Tuesday; November 1, 2005 6:44 PM
plus, I added the convienient:
"uupdate" => (updated Tuesday; November 1, 2005 6:44 PM)
and now I don’t have to even right click and navigate down. It’s soo fast!

For code, I added (just as a starting point)


"cclass" =>
class XXX
def initialize(arg)
@attr = "val"
end
end

I would add similar stuff for java loops, if I typed many these days.
Best of all, it’s free.