On TextExpander cursor positions and why the Dock hiding feature no longer works

Users of the fantastic TextExpander who are also fond of the cmd+opt+d shortcut for hiding/showing the Dock might have noticed a weird behavior with this shortcut as of late. To be specific: the shortcut doesn't quite work anymore, even in 10.4.8; pressing it will cause the Dock to hide (or un-hide), but the Dock quickly reverses the behavior as soon as you let go of the shortcut. I know I thought it was a mere illusion brought on by sleep deprivation when I first stumbled across this, but occasional attempts at troubleshooting revealed not only that I was seeing just fine, but that a solution or even the culprit were seemingly nowhere to be found.

Fortunately, watching the latest MacBreak #63 in which Leo Laporte and Merlin Mann cover TextExpander taught me not one but two useful things about this typing tool (three, if you count that I now know that Merlin has a mind-boggling 700+ text snippets). First is a handy way to control where your cursor is positioned once a snippet is expanded. All you need to do is include a specific string - %| - in your snippet to dictate where you cursor is inserted after your snippet unfolds itself. This is great for creating snippets in which you still need to include something specific on the fly that can't be snipped, such as creating [a href] links.

Once Merlin covered this hint, however, I was inspired to open TextExpander's Help file to see if there were any other hidden gems. While perusing their FAQs, I discovered an explanation to this aforementioned bizarre Dock hiding behavior (it's towards the bottom of the FAQ page if you're curious). As it turns out, the specific way TextExpander is designed to hook into Mac OS X has uncovered an alleged bug in the OS that causes this unfortunate drawback. SmileOnMyMac is pretty sure this is a bug in Mac OS X rather than TextExpander, and I hope they have alerted Apple, in which case we could hope to see a fix possibly in 10.4.9. For now, the easiest way to get around this quirk and hide/show the Dock is probably to right-click the Dock divider (the line between Applications and the Trash/docs/files sections) and use that contextual menu.

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Users of the fantastic TextExpander who are also fond of the cmd+opt+d shortcut for hiding/showing the Dock might have noticed a weird...

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Serge

Thanks Greg for the tip about RapidoWrite !

February 17 2007 at 10:17 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Arif

I had this problem too. I didn't install Textpander but maybe it was SpellCatcher that was ruining my relationship with my Dock. Uninstalling Spellcatcher didn't help. Changing the shortcut from cmd+opt+D to Crtl+Shift+D didn't help too. Deleting the dock.plist file was also useless.

Finally, the IT admin genius came up with this solution:
We created a new profile and found that the Dock worked fine there. So, we copied the plist file from the new profile to the old one and ..... Vola! I've not reinstalled Spellcatcher just yet, don't know if it will cause the problem again.

Cheerio,

Arif
Bangalore, India

February 16 2007 at 9:23 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

greg

Hi, there is also RapidoWrite from app4mac.com ! It's a freeware.

February 15 2007 at 3:31 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

bene

Is it not possible to use the Keboard and Mouse preference pane to set a key command and use that while running TextExapander (or everything, for that matter)? I don't use TextExpander, but I'm running 10.4.8 and my key combo of choice (cmd+F12) works like a charm.

February 15 2007 at 12:35 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jack

I accidently discovered that if you use the control+command+D shortcut to display the definition of a word and then try to hide the Dock with option+command+D while the defintion is still displayed, the Dock hides and reappears just as described above. If you close the definition window, the Dock action works normally again

February 14 2007 at 10:36 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Phosphor

(Sorry for the Doppelganger post, my previous one got truncated)

>>>>"All you need to do is include a specific string - %| - in your snippet to dictate where you cursor is inserted after your snippet unfolds itself. This is great for creating snippets in which you still need to include something specific on the fly that can't be snipped, such as creating [a href] links."

Bloody excellent!

I use TextExpander 20 or 30 times a day to drop text-link URLs with specific formatting attributes. This is gonna speed the process about 300-500%, if I were to hazard an estimate.

February 14 2007 at 9:48 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Erik J. Barzeski

TypeIt4Me is also susceptible to this bug.

February 14 2007 at 6:50 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Adam Christianson

typeit4me has the same dock hiding bug, so they must operate similarly.

February 14 2007 at 6:19 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

FoxyOrb

This problem drove me nuts. I could not find the reason for the misbehaving dock and totally did not suspect Texpander [when it was a freeware]. I was kind of mad and relieved when I finally found out. This "OSX bug " as they say has been there for a few years. There are similar alternatives that do not interfere with the basic system functions. I just can't accept the OS not working properly.

February 14 2007 at 6:04 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply