Keyboard Shortcut - paste "plain text" with single keystroke?

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Keyboard Shortcut - paste "plain text" with single keystroke?

I am running the same task over and over and over again (and I want to simplify this task). Basically, I want to paste a text fragment into a document (a piece of HTML code). I'm doing it over and over again, and I would like to designate a keyboard shortcut to perform this function.

Can I do this with Keyboard shortcuts (it looks like I can't). Do I need to write a script, and activate the script with a keyboard shortcut? Please ... I've searched database and web, and nobody seems to want to do this, or describe how it can be done. I think it would be amazingly useful for those of us who find ourselves typing the same text string over, and over, and over, and over, and over and over again.

Many thanks in advance.

PowerBook G4, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Feb 3, 2009 6:30 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 3, 2009 6:45 PM in response to idyl

Pressing command-v will do this if you have the text copied (which is command-c after the text is highlighted).

That's 2 keys, not 1, but it's easy once you get the hang of it.

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Answer 2

idyl Author

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Feb 3, 2009 7:43 PM in response to Campsalot

Thank you campsalot. Yes ... that's a pretty basic solution, but I am cutting and pasting all the time, and so my clipboard is usually full of other stuff. So that would be three or more steps ... I would have to find or create the item, cut, and paste (and perhaps navigate between different documents and applications in the process). This is too many steps, and adds a great deal of clutter and wasted effort to my workflow.

I need to be able to paste this "plain text" string with a single click, from different files and at intervals stretched out over days, weeks, and months. Having the item stored as a single keyboard shortcut would save a considerable degree of effort and time for me.

This should be a relatively easy task to perform ... but for some reason I can't find any documentation for how this can be done? Is there syntax that would work in a custom keyboard designation for the task (type="sample text here").

Message was edited by: idyl

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Answer 3

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,240 points

Feb 3, 2009 8:16 PM in response to idyl

There's Typinator.

That also sounds like a task for a good text editor like BBEdit or Textwrangler. You can use both to globally search and replace with pattern matching (grep) over multiple files. If there is a pattern to the text within which you need to paste the string, you can probably do it faster and easier in either of the two programs.

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Answer 4

idyl Author

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Feb 4, 2009 1:29 PM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks Barney-15E

Typinator seems to do the trick ... pretty cool program. Not sure if eventually I'll need to pay for program (if the trial version is time limited or limited to a small list of entries). But it's working for me for now.

It seems to me that I should be able to do something like this within the Mac OS ... but this will do. Thanks for your help.

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Answer 5

biovizier

Level 5

7,931 points

Feb 4, 2009 1:32 PM in response to idyl

..." It seems to me that I should be able to do something like this within the Mac OS"...

From what I can gather from your posts, setting up custom Cocoa key bindings should do what you want, at least for Cocoa apps...

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