the Handicapped Fanatical Scrivener user needs help!

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

Hi Everybody,

For those of you who dont know who i am, 'm the guy that bugged keith to put in the preferences that allow you to have a square cursor if you wish and also made it possible to turn off cursor blinking… and now I have a ghost in the machine problem that just started today and its driving me nuts…

I use Typeit4Me to insert anything that involves using two hands - like using the shift key to insert quotation marks – i accomplish this by using switches like // which inserts " ," and so on… now all of a sudden it doesn’t work - at least not properly… when im in regular display mode and i try to use the // nothing happens. when im in full screen mode and type it as soon as i hit the space bar or return, which is supposed to activate the // switch the // disappears and the cursor moves backwards to the point where it was previous to typing the switch… now here is the crazy part - as soon as i move my mouse to the top of the screen and the Scrivener menu appears at the top the text that should have appeared appears – and i have reproduced this “bug” if it is one fifty five times in a row to ensure that ijm not seeing things as a result of my medication.

now - i havent worked in scrivener in 4 days or so but prior to today everything worked in harmony and i have been cruising at an incredible rate. ive written pretty close to 15k words in the week prior to my four day break and to make this short i either need to know how to make Scriveners auto completion system replace typeit4me’s functionality or i need to know whats wrong with my system… If I have to i will completely blow away my partition and roll my system back using super duper if i have to… but either way i need a way of using switches like // to be replaced by " ," - i dont care if i accomplish this through scrivener alone or through Typeit4Me and Scrivener working in tandem – as long as one way reliably works… i simply cant go back to using the shift key and typing out names the long way because my stellar production rate is going to plummet and im never goiing to get anything done. what i really dont get is – this system worked with the latest version of scrivener and TIFM 4 days ago and now they’re acting like they hate each other for no reason. what gives?

Please help me – I was finally getting serious work done - I cant stop now or ill lose the momentum and theres no way Im going back to microsoft word. Can somebody that uses typeit4me help me out? Because it was a Scrivener user that suggested I get it and use it in the first place… Im also going to send an email to Scrivener support - because this is either a true gghost in the machine or a bug that didnt exist ever and suddenly cropped up without provocation whatsoever which makes no logical sense.

Please - I’m sending out a major SOS - I’ll PAY whoever can fix this if it comes to that. Thats how important text replacement via autocorrect switches is to my workflow. without it ill never finish a book.

Chris

2

Well, Mac OS has a setting under System Preferences -> Languages (I think) that allows you to substitute one series of characters for another. Mostly it’s for things like common fractions like 1/2, which are then converted to a single character (if I recall correctly) that represents the fraction in fancy looking typography. You can add your own set of substitutions that might work for your purposes.

I turn all of that stuff off, and don’t have my mac handy, but that’s a line of investigation I would go down first.

3

Hi Chris

I don’t use TypeIt4Me (I use Typinator) but I noticed, looking at the TypeIt4Me website, that a new update (5.0.5) was released on 31st December.

Did you download this? If so, could that be the source of your trouble? Whether it is or not, I know from experience that text expander applications like these can occasionally interact with other applications in unexpected ways. In fact, not just unexpected, but hard to fault-trace.

You could take this up with the TypeIt4Me developers, or alternatively abandon and uninstall it (text expanders sometimes need to be completely quarantined to stop them having an effect on your typing), and start using Scrivener’s own auto-substitution arrangements, which tap into the system-wide set-up, are extremely easy to use and are described in the Manual on page 344 (Section B7.4).

H

4

Chris–

This is pure speculation, but did you install the 10.6.6 update in the last couple of days? Is it possible that changed some of your preferences in settings (or is creating some conflict between the two apps)?

5

Hugh -

Thank you for the help and the suggestion of typenator. When I bought typeit4me i saw review after review for typenator that sang its praises and gave cause to feel confident in its rock solid stability but money was tight at the time so i went with the cheaper option…

i have since installed typenator, found that it works far better than its predecessor and i will never again opt for inferior software due to the fact that in the short term it saves me a few dollars… many thanks to everyone else who contributed to this thread, and for those of you that are curious, i installed 10.6.6 via the combo updater before installing typenator and testing it with Scrivener - thanks to this program I now have custom auto-correct in any major application window. had i realized how powerful this little utility it is i would have forked over the $25 (thats what 19.99 in euros works out to without tax) eons ago… thanks again everybody… Im going bto be thousands of times faster at everything and far more productive now thanks to this thread and the application it led me to.

I also have yet another application to Blog about now.
Cheers and Best Regards to All,
Chris
aka
ShadeofGrey