Hello,
Since there is the great feature of text replacement, I thought it would be really practical to be able to add a list of text replacements to BTT. It’s a question similar to this one:
Today, you can do this with espanso, which is a great tool. It would be leaner to have fewer tools running in parallel, that’s why I’m suggesting it here.
Have a great day!
This comes pretty close, and it’s really great!
However, it only works for clipboard replacements, but I still wanted to mention it in case anyone would be happy with this solution.
@Andreas_Hegenberg — if you had any idea of how to achieve this, it would be really great, and would qualify BTT as a replacement for Text Expander and the likes?
Have a great day!
Yes, it's a good idea. I'll add a simple importer soon.
Do you maybe know how the format looks for other apps?
Importing straight text to text replacements is clear. But is there maybe some standard on how these apps express modifier keys (shift,cmd,opt etc.)
The two big formats I know are espanso (more in the Mac-world), and Autohotkey (Windows-world).
Espanso is well documented here: Matches Basics | Espanso In my opinion, it takes up quite a lot of space, and misses some of the Autohotkey options.
The most widely used format is probably the one used by Autohotkey. It’s pretty easy to understand and very powerful: Hotstrings - Definition & Usage | AutoHotkey v2
If I were you, I’d go with Autohotkey, even if it’s from the Windows-world. On the same occasion, you’d be a good candidate for all the converts from Windows missing Autohotkey (AHK).
Have a great day!
unfortunately I think none of them will work well for BTT.
Espanso seems to limited, and AutoHotkey seems to work on the character level (e.g. @), which BTT can not do.
in BTT something like "test@" would need to be expressed as test<option>l BTT is able to translate all basic keys, but it can't handle special keys.
So maybe I'll just have to go with my own basic format.
Yes I see. What I liked about both formats is that they include some options. And I believe at least part of them are or will be available in BTT. And reusing those options might be something attractive for people switching from AHK / Windows. I don't know of any other solution allowing to import AHK settings.
Another solution could be to use Apple's format when exporting the text strings as plist, as mentioned in this feature request:
Have a great day!