TextExpander for the Mac has been one of my favorite utilities for several years. The ability to define "snippets" of text which expand into words, phrases, sentences, or even the outline of entire documents has been invaluable.

When I heard that TextExpander was coming to the iPhone/iPod touch, my first reaction was "WHAT!" and my second reaction was "How?"

On the Mac, TextExpander sits in the background, waiting patiently for you to type some set of characters which matches an abbreviation that you have previously defined. For example, when I type "/address" TextExpander jumps into action and replaces "/address" with "10 Main St." If I type "!phone" TextExpander will automatically replace that text with my work, home, and cell phone numbers.

On the iPhone, third party applications are not allowed to sit in the background, even if they promise to wait patiently. That's a limitation of the iPhone OS, and whether you think it's a smart move by Apple or an unnecessary one, the reality is that TextExpander touch can't do everything that TextExpander for the Mac can do. SmileOnMyMac has posted about this on their blog and has even released an SDK for iPhone developers who wish to integrate TextExpander's technology into their iPhone applications.

Let's just take it for granted that most of us who use TextExpander would love to see it running on the iPhone like we do on the Mac. That said, there is still a lot this app can do.

When launched, TextExpander for iPhone gives you a "Compose" window where you can type a message and have it expand your shortcuts, and from there you can: "Send to Mail" (which will put the text into a "compose" window in Mail), "Copy All Text" (which does exactly what you'd expect), or "Send To Twitter Client" which will send the text to a Twitter client (which you have to choose in the app's preferences).

TextExpander for iPhone supports the following Twitter apps on the iPhone: Twitterrific, Twitterrific Premium, Tweetie, Twittelator Pro, TwitterFon, and TwitterFon Pro.

Before TweetDeck and Birdfeed users form an angry mob to march on SmileOnMyMac headquarters, let me direct your attention to the TextExpander touch FAQ which explains that:

Some Twitter clients, such as TweetDeck and Birdfeed, do not support a URL schema such that they can be launched by TextExpander along with message content.

If you're not familiar with the phrase "URL schema," it means "There's no way for one iPhone app to send text to these apps, unless these apps are updated to offer the kind of programming 'hooks' which are present in the supported Twitter apps." Or, to put it another way, imagine TextExpander doing its best Han Solo impersonation saying "It's not my fault!" So please, save your torches and pitchforks for the inevitable zombie attack.

TextExpander is all about saving time, so you'll be glad to know that you won't have to re-type all of your favorite "snippets." You can sync all of the TextExpander shortcuts that you have defined on your Mac, so they'll be at your fingertips when you move over to TextExpander touch. I have some "snippets" that I use when responding to emails which I've been unable to answer on my iPhone. Now I can use those same responses easily and not have to worry about forgetting about them later.

TextExpander touch is now available at the App Store. The introductory price will be $1.99 until September 9th. After that it will be $4.99.

Although obviously held back by the restrictions imposed by the operating system, TextExpander looks like a great utility for sending messages through your iPhone. Longer messages don't have to take a long time. I hope that some industrious Twitter client developer will look at integrating the TextExpander touch SDK.

SmileOnMyMac has released a major update to PDFpen, their PDF editing software which we examined at a while back. PDFpen allows you to edit PDFs to fill out forms (e.g. scans of existing forms), mark-up documents, etc. The biggest new feature for version 4 is the inclusion of basic OCR functionality that will turn a scanned document into editable text. In addition there is support for new file formats including importing Microsoft Word documents.

PDFpen comes in two versions, a basic version for editing PDFs and a pro version that also allows you to create editable forms (i.e. forms that can be filled out by users with a PDF reader like Acrobat or Preview). PDFpen is $49.95 (or $99.95 for the pro version). Upgrades for to version 4 from previous version are $25. Demos for both standard and pro are available for download.

TextExpander is another favorite utility in the TUAW tool belt, as it can save a boatload of time with repeatedly typing anything from email signatures to canned customer service replies and even code. In fact, SmileOnMyMac just made HTML coding a bit easier on web designers and hackers everywhere by posting an HTML snippet file that contains abbreviations for over 60 common pieces of HTML, ripe for cutting down on the time it takes to hand code your sites. This file should serve as a great example of the power of TextExpander, since SmileOnMyMac made sure to use some of the app's tricks that insert the cursor in a useful place after expanding a snippet, such as in between the quotes of: <a href=""></a>, allowing you to easily fill in the blanks. But don't stop there - a little exploring of how these snippets are put together should enable you to build your own for the specific kinds of work and code you use.

This snippet file is free from SmileOnMyMac's site, and the highly recommended TextExpander sells for $29.95 with a whopping 90 day money-back guarantee.

SmileOnMyMac has released TextExpander 1.4, an update to their customizable typing utility that allows users to assign keywords to snippets of text, ultimately saving gobs of time in re-typing things like phrases, websites, signatures and more. New features in this indispensable tool include:

• User-specified delimiters ("Set Delimiters..." button in Preferences tab)
  
• Import comma and tab-delimited text, RTF, and RTFD files
  
• Choose TextExpander or Textpander style menu bar icon in Preferences
  
• Sort snippets by date created (helps when locating import groups)
  
• Sort snippets by date modified (helps when tracking recent changes)

Also of note on TextExpander's new features list at VersionTracker is 'Mac OS X 10.4 required,' but I don't know if that's a new feature in this particular version or of the actual product switchover from the old Textpander.

Either way, this is a free upgrade and is available from SmileOnMyMac, as is a fully functional 30-day demo.

[UPDATE: Jean from SmileOnMyMac let us know in the comments that this new 1.4 version is, in fact, Tiger-only. The 1.3.1 version which still works on Panther (10.3.9) is still available from their site. Thanks Jean!]

Textpander, an application we have blogged about before, has been acquired by SmileOnMyMac. SmileOnMyMac plans an update for the application that will add features to this program that let's you save time by typing in a kind of short hand. They will also be renaming the application TextExpander (just so people get what it does, I suppose).

[via MacTech]