I just bought a new piece of Mac shareware and thought you might be interested in it. The software is called “Typinator.” What it does is essentially the same as what Microsoft’s AutoCorrect function does–it looks for you to type specific text strings, and when you do, it replaces them with other text strings that you have listed in the app. For example, if I want to type “The Blog from Another Dimension,” I could abbreviate it in Typinator as “bgd”; then, whenever I type “bgd,” the entire phrase is automatically replaced.

This function is also similar to the long-time Mac app called “TypeIt4Me” (around for close a decade), but from reports it works a lot better. TypeIt4Me works in the input menu, meaning you can only use it with the standard keyboard layout, and not, for example, Dvorak or any language other than QWERTY English. Typinator works differently, so you can use it with any keyboard layout; I’ve tried it by assigning English letters to activate Typinator to place Japanese characters, and it works. Typinator also allows for you to input images by typing specific strings. Typinator can also deliver date and time stamps, pre-formatted the way you prefer them. Finally, Typinator is cheaper, $19 shareware compared to TypeIt4Me’s $27.

In my case, I plan to use it as an AutoCorrect feature, system-wide. I want to switch over to using Pages more, and rely on MS Word less. However, Pages lacks an AutoCorrect feature; Typinator now fills that need, and not just in Pages–it does it everywhere. If I visit a blog and want to leave a comment, people usually require an email address, and I might want to type my own blog’s URL–but that can sometimes be a hassle. Yes, I know, I’m lazy as hell. But it’s nice to be able to type just a few easy keys in each text box and have a full email address and URL in a second or so.

Another good feature is that Typinator allows multi-line fill-ins. MS Word 2004 for the Mac allows this also, but not on Windows. For example, you can enter your entire multiple-line home address into Typinator, and get it back in a split second. Another good use would be in scripting web pages; if I want to make a quickie web page, it’s a hassle to type the basic HTML, HEAD, TITLE and BODY commands; takes a few minutes. But I can type them once, copy and paste the whole lot into Typinator, and from that point on I can insert the whole structure with only a few keystrokes. I can create similar fill-ins for TABLE or FORM tags, or any tag and attributes I please–which could save a lot of time writing basic HTML.

Typinator can also pay attention to your capitalization, so that if you have the string “typinator” with the trigger string “tpn,” then typing “Tpn” will similarly capitalize the “Typinator” expansion.

Typinator does have a few down spots. For one, whenever it’s activated, the automatically-replaced expansion text gets placed into the clipboard, kicking out whatever was in there previously; this has caught me up a few times, but I can live with it. Typinator is also a version-1.0, having just come out of Beta, so it’s not as feature-rich as it could be. Future versions may include a workaround for the clipboard problem, and other new features, whatever they may be.

I also had some concerns about security. What Typinator does seemed to me to be similar to what a keylogging program might do: watch what you type. I emailed their support department, and got a detailed reply back explaining why that was not a problem. Typinator uses an Apple feature introduced in Panther called the “event monitor” which allows them to watch what you type without logging anything except very temporarily; furthermore, password fields in Mac OS X are protected from prying eyes (Typinator can’t see what you type in a password field). It uses a completely different kind of technology to do its job. It would be easier for a hacker to simply create their own keylogging program than to somehow use Typinator for that purpose, so the security seems tight. Good enough for me.

TidBits reviewed Typinator, and you can find some user reviews on its download page at Version Tracker (assuming the reviews are genuine and not sales-related), or you can go to the product page at Ergonis. You can use Typinator as a trial, but it will only remember five expansion strings and no more, until you pay for the license.

As a side note, this app, along with the Dictionary now integrated into Tiger, make up the key elements I felt were lacking in Pages, which is now my first-string word processing application.