Text Macro

I use the freeware Spark for inserting text and for other keyboard macros. Works great. If you use and like it, a donation to the developer would be a nice gesture.

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I checked the web sites for all three programs but was unable to figure out if an fkey could be used as a hot key.

Spark most certainly can use function keys as hot keys, either alone or with modifiers (Shift, Option, etc.). I wouldn't have suggested it to you if it couldn't. I use Spark that way every day to insert text snippets, and in fact just used it to insert the HTML tags that made the above snippet italic.

Rachael Jellicoe wrote:
I checked the web sites for all three programs but was unable to figure out if an fkey could be used as a hot key.

TextExpander doesn't work like that. It uses snippets. So you'd pick a short, easy to type snippet and it gets expanded. So you might type "sy", and it would expand to:

Sincerely yours,
Rachael

But it doesn't look like it does function keys.

charlie

Documentation for Spark is lacking, so here's a "quick start";

Launch Spark

Go to "New Hotkey" under the File menu and choose "Text / Keyboard"

Click the "click to edit" next to "Shortcut" and press the function key you wish to use as your shortcut

Name the shortcut whatever you wish in the "Name" field

Make sure the "Text" tab is selected

Paste in the text you wish to use in the block below the Text/Date/Keystroke tabs.

Click the "Create" button.

That should do it. You'll want to have the "Start Spark Daemon at login" option checked in Spark's General preferences. That way your shortcuts will work when Spark isn't running.

Regards.

Message was edited by: Dave Sawyer

Yes, Keyboard Maestro is one of the ways you can do this.

TextExpander is another utility for doing that kind of thing.

charlie