Company: Ergonis SoftwarePrice: $27.96 (individual business license)Rating: 5Hot: Many new date calculation possibilities;
Magic Keys; assistant allows for
complex expansionsNot:New Features Include Magic Keys
and Usage StatisticsTypinator 8
Text expander Typinator has reached version 8, and in addition
to Regex capabilities and its assistant for creating forms to enter
variable data in an expansion, Typinator 8 now also offers a statis-
tics mode where you can see the number of times you’ve used
abbreviations and sets, as well as how long ago an abbreviation
was used.
That’s useful if you want to clean out your collection of expan-
sion sets from time to time. Better yet, you can sort your entries
(ascending/descending) by clicking on the tiny clock icon in the col-
umn header. That way, you can instantly see which abbreviations
you use frequently, and which ones you may have forgotten about
that may be ready to be thrown out.
A feature that I was really surprised to see in version 8 is what
the developers call “Magic Keys.” These are the modifier keys—
Shift, Control, Option, and Command—that you can now use in
abbreviations as if they were regular characters. If you’re puzzled,
don’t worry; I was too, until I started using them and found that
this novelty is actually very efficient. The reason is that you can use
them as additional trigger characters, so you can use the same
abbreviation for different extensions and still avoid conflicts.
The new mini menu bar, right above the expansion field,
improves the UI by grouping together all of the markers and edit-
ing functions. New also is the integration with Ergonis’s own Pop-
Char 8.2 or newer. You can now use Typinator to search for and
insert arbitrary Unicode characters by their name or Unicode num-
ber. You first enter a prefix for PopChar in Typinator’s quick search,
then the number or the name. To me, this was the least attractive
novelty of the upgrade. nReview by Erik VlietinckREVIEWS › ›> PHOTOSHOP USER>^ AUGUST 2019[ 110 ]