I’ve been using the text expansion software PhraseExpander Pro for about three weeks now on a continual basis, as I carry on writing up my PhD thesis. I’m also testing it to fulfil my promise to write a review of it at the end. So far it’s been working very well, as I enjoy its speed, its universal functioning across all of my writing applications, the ease of importing my existing word lists from my previous text expansion application, and the ease of adding new phrases. As I’m not a touch-typist, a text expansion tool for me is a must.
I only had one minor gripe with it so far. I’ve got used to using text expansion software in a somewhat unorthodox way. As I don’t want the cognitive burden of having to remember hundreds of shortcuts, I prefer to set up my phrase lists in such a way that I can just start typing the first few letters of a word, and a list of matching phrases in the drop-down box (that appears by the cursor as I type) gets whittled down, with the intended phrase gradually rising to the top of the list as the match becomes more complete.
Here is an example. Let’s say I want to type the word “conceptual.” I would just type “con” and I would get the following matches in PhraseExpander’s SmartComplete popup window:
Then I would just carry on typing until the desired word gets either to the top, at which point I hit the confirmation key (Tab, in my case) to insert it into the text, or near the top, so I can use the arrow key to select it first (alternatively you could also click on it with the mouse):
Well, PhraseExpander didn’t quite support my use case perfectly. It worked fine most of the time; however, because it was more geared towards supporting the use of shortcuts, its SmartComplete feature would sometimes try to match the final letter of the word after matching the first two letters, rather than produce a 100% front-end match. For example, after typing “con,” I would have a word like “competition” show up at the top of the list, presumably because the first two letters and the final letter had matched. However, that’s not what I wanted.
After I explained my problem to the developer, it only took him a couple of days to come up with the solution. I don’t completely understand what he did to his algorithm, but the new version works even better than I could have ever imagined. Not only does it fully support my way of narrowing down the phrase list in the popup box by matching 100% of my typed letters, but it also allows me to type any letter from the word beyond the first two letters, and the intended word jumps up the list! I discovered this first by accident, when I mistyped my intended word, yet it showed up at the top of my list, as if the software was able to read my mind. Then I realised that I had typed a letter that appeared further down in the word.
Here is how my earlier example works now in the latest version of PhraseExpander. First I type “con” and I get the same list as above. In order to get to the word “conceptual” the fastest way, all I need to do is type one additional letter that sets it apart from the words above it. In this case it would be the letter “l”, as neither of the words above it have it. So, I type “conl”, and, as if by magic, “conceptual” jumps to the top of the list, so all I need to do is hit the Tab key to insert it.
The point here is that the SmartComplete box gives you a visual clue as to what shortcut to type in order to select the desired word, which is much more useful (to me at least) than having to memorise the shortcut—and it also obviates the need to use the arrow key.
How many initial letters and additional ones you need to type will depend on the content of your phrase list. If there are a lot of words starting with the exact same three or four letters, then you need to do a bit more typing to get to the result. But in the case of rarer words, even typing the first two letters plus any one other letter might get you the desired phrase. It is also possible to manipulate the order in which the words usually show up, by shortening the shortcut phrases for those that are more frequently used, which will make them show up nearer to the top of the list. For example, when I start typing “emp,” I want the word “empiricist” to show up sooner than the phrase “empirical description,” and “empirical evidence” sooner than “empirical data.” So I shortened the shortcuts accordingly:
In any case, I was very impressed by the developer’s prompt response and his ingenious solution. If you are an existing PhraseExpander user, I strongly recommend downloading the latest version (v. 3.9.6) that has the new updated SmartComplete feature. And if you have not tried PhraseExpander before, the Pro version (which contains the SmartComplete feature) can be trialled for 21 days. I can highly recommend it to anyone who needs to type a lot of repetitive phrases all day long, every day, or words that are long, difficult to spell, or a nuisance to type (such as Markdown code for inserting an image with a long Dropbox link into an HTML page—I’ll say more about this very useful trick in another post).
