SmileOnMyMac Blog

We just added a new snippet file for TextExpander users to download: an autocorrect snippet file courtesy of the nice folks at TidBITs. The TidBITS AutoCorrect Dictionary contains over 2400 misspellings that TextExpander can automatically correct.

Adam Engst, TidBITS publisher, and Micah Alpern put this massive resource together for a MacHack conference years ago. They originally created it for Eudora Mail users, but put it into the public domain so others could use it. Taking our cue from Ergonis Software, which released a version for use with Typinator, we decided to make a TextExpander-friendly version available as well.

This dwarfs our current autocorrection offering, which I compiled last year. That file contains about 100 of the most common misspellings. The TidBITS file is exhaustive – it has 15 variants of misspelling just the word “necessary.”

I’m sure there will be a lot of users who want to avail themselves of this industrial strength correcting, but I’m going to stick to using the original file myself. I just don’t want to load thousands of snippets into TextExpander.

Of course, as the erstwhile spelling champion of Ojus Elementary School, maybe I don’t need quite so many correction snippets.

We’re inaugurating something new: a category we’re calling “Smileworthy” to feature software we use and really like. Philip, Greg and I often trade recommendations on software from other developers, and we want to share those recommendations with you.

We’ll launch this feature (pun totally intended), with LaunchBar from Objective Development. All three of us use LaunchBar and none of us can imagine using a Mac without it. With LaunchBar, you can instantly access applications, documents and information from most anywhere on your hard drive.

When I think how I used to go to the Finder, open a window, click on the Applications folder, find the application and double-click on it to launch it, my fingers and wrists hurt.

With LaunchBar, you hit Command + Space Bar, type a short abbreviation, hit return, and your application opens. LaunchBar learns abbreviations from your choices. The first time you type the letter “P”, LaunchBar will show you a list of choices that begin with “P”. If you choose PDFpen from that list, LaunchBar will assume you want PDFpen the next time you type “P”.

LaunchBar’s handiness is not limited to applications. You can open documents, look up a contact’s information, run Apple Scripts and more. Much more. In fact, I know I don’t come close to using LaunchBar to its fullest. Objective Development just released version 4.3, and I’m inspired to try out some features I’ve overlooked.

If you use LaunchBar and have any tips, please do share them in the Comments.