Smile Blog

TextExpander version 3.3 [download] introduces AppleScript support, primarily oriented toward automating snippet and group management. TextExpander includes AppleScript support for:

• creating and deleting groups
• editing group properties
• creating and deleting snippets
• editing snippet properties
• adding (importing) groups from files or from URLs
• enabling/disabling expansion

These capabilities should be broad enough to allow for some interesting scripts to be created. As you develop scripts, you may encounter some limitations. Your feedback will help determine future expansion of TextExpander’s AppleScript vocabulary.

Here are a couple of sample scripts to get you started. The first one creates a new group and then creates two snippets within it:

tell application “TextExpander”

–– create a new group

make new group with properties {name:”My New Script Group”}

set newGroup to the result

tell newGroup

–– create a snippet, then set the major properties one by one

make new snippet

set newSnippet to the result

set the abbreviation of newSnippet to “tastytreat”

set the plain text expansion of newSnippet to “Toasted marshmallows are a tasty treat”

set the label of newSnippet to “Snippet from AppleScript”

–– create a snippet, setting properties immediately

make new snippet with properties {label:”Second Scripted Snippet”, abbreviation:”scrptwo”, plain text expansion:”Eat Two Marshmallows”}

set secondSnippet to the result

end tell

end tell

The second script checks for the existence of a URL-based group. If no such group is found, that URL is imported:

–– This script checks to make sure that a group based on a particular URL is present.

–– If not, it imports that group

set success to false

set groupURL to (“http://www.smilesoftware.com/te/example.textexpander” as text)

–– note coercion above: TE group source is type text, not URL

tell application “TextExpander”

set sourceList to the source of every group

if sourceList contains groupURL then

–– the desired group is already present

set success to true

else

set newGroup to import URL group using URL groupURL

–– the returned group is a placeholder for URL contents, which are downloaded asynchronously

repeat with i from 1 to 10

delay 1 –– allow some time for download, then poll the group placeholder

tell newGroup

–– find the number of snippets in the group

–– unless the group is supposed to be empty, zero snippets indicates download failure

count snippets

set snipCount to the result

if snipCount is not equal to 0 then

set success to true

exit repeat

end if

end tell

end repeat

end if

end tell

if not success then

beep –– real error handling goes here

end if

Again, we welcome your feedback on TextExpander’s new AppleScript capabilities.

In addition to plain text and formatted text, pictures snippets, TextExpander also supports AppleScript and shell scripts as content types. Your abbreviation will expand to whatever the script returns. This allows you to extend TextExpander in whatever ways you need. Here’s a recent example which started with a support question:

> I've created the following snippet with abbreviation: ,getdate:
>
> %date:EEEE% %date:d% %date:LLLL% %date:Y% - día %date:D% del año
>
> Which is converted to the following on my system:
>
> jueves 30 septiembre 2010 - día 273 del año
>
> However, I would like the day of the week and month to be in uppercase, as follows:
>
> Jueves 30 Septiembre 2010 - día 273 del año
>
> Do you know how to do this?

It seems that the Unicode date formatting doesn’t offer a way to specify that the month or day names should be returned in uppercase.

I was able to write a Perl script and to nest the ,getdate snippet to convert the first and third words to uppercase. I set my abbreviation to ,date and my Content: to Shell Script:

#!/usr/bin/perl
$_ = "%snippet:,getdate%";
m/(\S+) (\S+) (\S+)(.*)/;
$_ = ucfirst($1) . " $2 " . ucfirst($3) . "$4";
print "$_\n";

Here is what ,date returns right now with my system set to return date information in Spanish:

Miércoles 13 Octubre 2010 – día 286 del año

That which wasn’t possible before is possible now, thanks to the power of shell scripts in TextExpander.

Further to our post about disappearing snippets, we have identified at least one issue and have fixed it in TextExpander 3.1.1. We’ve seeded this fix to several customers and have received positive feedback that it fixed the problem for them.

Please download and install the TextExpander 3.1.1 update. If you do experience a snippet loss, please let us know. If there are any other issues, we want to find them.

Per our earlier post, please do the following if you experience the problem:

If you experience this problem, you can restore your snippet library by quitting TextExpander and restoring this file from your Time Machine or other backup:

[Home]/Library/Application Support/TextExpander/Settings.textexpander

Before you re-launch TextExpander, please also send a copy of the restored file to us at textexpander@smileonmymac.com. This is especially helpful if you find the problem recurs for you. If we gather enough settings files, hopefully we’ll find one with which we can reproduce the problem. If we can reproduce it we can almost certainly fix it. In the meantime, we’re very sorry for the inconvenience.

We appreciate your help in making TextExpander the best it can be.

TextExpander 3.1 and TextExpander touch 1.1.6 now support Unicode Date Format Patterns.

This means TextExpander now has support for time zone, era, day of year, and calendar quarter.

For example:

This is day number %date:D% of the current year. We’re now in the %date:qqqq% (%date:qqq%). I’m expanding in %date:zzzz%. Today is %date:yyyy.MM.dd G%.

Expands at the time of writing this post to:

This is day number 216 of the current year. We’re now in the 3rd quarter (Q3). I’m expanding in Pacific Daylight Time. Today is 2010.08.04 AD.

There’s tons of detail in the Unicode Date Format Patterns documentation. Feel free to write us if you have questions.