Smile Blog

We regularly get requests for a way to choose a random snippet from among a set of snippets. To date, we’ve pointed folks to this technique:

http://nerdgap.com/how-to-randomly-selected-snippets-in-textexpander/

Now that TextExpander itself is AppleScriptable (as of version 3.3), there’s an easier and more flexible way to do this:

1. Choose File -> New Group
2. Name the new group Random
3. Add snippets that you’d like to be chosen at random into the Random group. You can drag existing snippets from other groups into Random, or you can create snippets expressly for use in Random.
   Tip: if you are creating new snippets for use only as random snippets, you can save time and work by not assigning abbreviations to these snippets.
4. Make a new snippet in a group other than the Random group
5. Set the Content: of the new snippet to AppleScript
6. Enter this for the snippet:

   tell application "TextExpander"
   	set groupCount to count (snippets of group "Random")
   	set randomIndex to random number from 1 to groupCount
   	return plain text expansion of ¬
   		snippet randomIndex of group "Random"
   end tell

7. Set an abbreviation for this new snippet, for example: rrand

Any time you type rrand, you’ll get a random selection from among the snippets in your Random group.

The advantages of this technique over the one linked above are:

• You need not know the abbreviations for all of the snippets in advance
• You can add to and remove from your Random group without changing anything

(Thanks to Sheree Peña of Black Pixel for the inspiration for this post.)

Virtual keyboards are on-screen representations of a keyboard which allow you to enter characters by clicking the mouse or other pointing device. That is, you move the mouse to the part of the screen where the ‘v’ key is, click the mouse, and a ‘v’ appears in your text document. (Note: there are other types of virtual keyboards in addition to the on-screen, mouse-driven variety, but this post does not cover them.) One reason to use a virtual keyboard is if you have trouble typing on a physical keyboard.

Mac OS X built-in Keyboard Viewer

TextExpander has some issues with virtual keyboards. When you click the mouse, TextExpander assumes that you are moving the text insertion point within a document, selecting a range of text, changing to a different window or text area, or performing some kind of formatting or other command. Thus, when you click the mouse, TextExpander clears the buffer of typed characters it maintains to track when you type a snippet abbreviation.

For example, with the ‘ddate’ snippet, when you click the ‘d’ key on the virtual keyboard the first time, TextExpander clears the buffer because the mouse was clicked, then notices that a ‘d’ has been typed. When you click the ‘d’ key the second time, TextExpander again clears the buffer, then stores the ‘d’. The snippet never expands because TextExpander keeps clearing its buffer, never tracking more than one character at a time.

TextExpander version 3.1 fixed this problem by adding support for typing with the system’s built-in Keyboard Viewer and for Corallo Software’s VirtualKeyboard application. TextExpander 3.2.4 adds support for AssistiveWare’s KeyStrokes application.

If there is another virtual keyboard program that you are using, there is a “hidden” setting in TextExpander that will allow you to use it before support is “built-in” to TextExpander. Just contact support@smilesoftware.com for details.