Nice, really useful. I do or have done every one of those and had problems. Then some
Keyboard Maestro has a good clipboard function that is worth learning I found. I am in a similar place to you otherwise I think. I dropped Launchbar as I found it has become glitchy on Catalina and installed Alfred which, though I used Launchbar for years, I preferred straight away.
hmm I tried this before and was turned off by some feature I was used to with LaunchBarā¦ Gotta think about this and return once my memory is back. Iāve been experiencing some LaunchBar issues as well
It is tricky and in fairness I am replacing my Mac in a week or so, if they can get it to me of course, I havenāt had a clean install for maybe six years, maybe longer. So it is not really fair for me to be too critical off the bat. However I feel Launchbar has deteriorated though I wouldnāt swear to that. Alfred just feels better to me. There were things on Launchbar that I thought were great but really never used. Calendar entries for example. I always found I had to go into the app for some fiddly reason or other to do with my own ways of doing things and really Launchbar was making me slower not faster. I found snippets hard to manage too unlike in Alfred.
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Overall I really enjoyed the episode and the thoughts shared were well said. My one disagreement is with Google Docs. Sure it is t the nicest interface but its great for people that forget to save stuff as it automatically saves. Ulyssess and Scrivener do this too but a lot of people are willing to use Google documents versus more specialized programs like that. I highly encourage any college student to be using Google Docs simply because it saves and I view that as āidiot proofā. The worst is when I was in college and something didnāt save. Currently Iām trying the app Just Press Record. I like the app but prefer Drafts on iOS as it allows text preview. Just Press Record is multistep based on audio files that then need to be transcribed and then exported. The syncing with iCloud isnāt as intuitive either. Drafts on the other hand syncs with iOS and Mac allowing me to dictate into my iPhone and get synced to my Mac.
Iād be curious what everyone else says about the idea of keeping things in Scrivener when writing a longer form thing like a book or manuscript versus keeping it in an app like DEVONthink. Maybe thereās a line where it just gets to be too large in Scrivener to juggle though I do love itās dual pane ability. This episode also solidified that I have on my wish list a 27 inch iMac someday, though in the meantime a 27" monitor for my 13 inch MacBook Pro would be adequate.
I donāt know how yāall missed it, but a big automation feature of Word is mail-merge. Once the template is set up and the data is too, itās just a matter of a click. Use it all the time to send letters to clients and witnesses for trials.
This was a great episode for me as getting text into documents has always frustrated me because, well, I donāt type well! Iāve started dictating and that has been great to get lots of words onto the page that I am happy to go back and tidy up. I will try and be more effective as time goes on.
Question to the group on touch typing.
When Iām back at work (soon, hopefully) dictating may not be the way to go in an open office. Anyone have a ābest in classā typing tutor theyād recommend. Going to spend my down time learning new skills.
Thank you
Great episode.
+1 for Markdown-focussed episode.
Bonus points if you can get John Gruber as a guest 
.
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Maybe the option to easily create or assign abbreviations in LaunchBar was something that wasnāt equally obvious to me with Alfredā¦?
All in all LaunchBar does have some aspects I donāt like. Iām not sure if itās handling indexing properly. And even though there is an option for Spotlight search, it doesnāt show me previews of search results. If it did I could turn off Spotlight and not have that put a burden on my computer as well.
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In terms of test replacement, is there a way to have multiple lines in the system iOS text replacement? Iād love to have multiple line replacements from the system tool (e.g., email signature) without needing to use a third party keyboard.
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Sadly, no. And email signatures are where Iād probably use it the most since Mail doesnāt have TextExpander support.
Itās possible to use multi-line text replacements on Mac, iPhone, and iPad, though you would need to use a Mac to create these text replacements.
On the Mac:
- Open System Preferences. Click on the āKeyboardā pane then click on the āTextā tab.
- Click the ā+ā button to add a new text replacement.
- Enter the shortcut text in the Replace column.
- Paste some multi-line/multi-paragraph text into the With column.
This text replacement syncs across all of your device using iCloud.
I hope this helps!
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iOS has per-email account signatures now. Would that work for what you want to do?
I love Gruber, but I think Iād actually like to hear from someone new on markdownāmaybe Fletcher Penney!
The reason: Gruberās take on markdown is pretty narrow. Iād bet most of us are actually using the expanded tool sets available via extensions like Fletcherās multimarkdown, and Iād be curious about the way these tools are growing (and how they relate to other tools like Pandoc).
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I donāt want the signature in every email.
I canāt tell you what a mixture of anger and happiness Iām feeling. Every year, when a new version of iOS comes out, I try this on my phone or iPad and it always fails. It never occured to me that doing the same damned thing on the Mac would work and go on to work on iOS.
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Itās far from ideal, but certainly better than nothing. Hopefully iOS/iPadOS 14 will bring feature parity with the Mac and for Text Replacement. Even better, Iād love to see support for rich text across all platforms. Time will tell. 
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You can even type text with multiple lines in the text replacement field separating them with Alt-Return on the Mac. Itās kind of masochistic, though.
I havenāt tried this on iOS, but now with all the external keyboard support it might work as well.
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Hello Gang,
Longtime listener who finally decided to join the conversation. Great episode!
My question is if anyone can recommend the best way to capture small bits of text from paper book? I often read paper books and want to capture a great sentence or paragraph. I saw one Bluetooth scanning pen that looks like a highlighter. That is what Iām thinking would be great, but reviews are very mixed on the accuracy.
Iāve also tried just dictating it, but awkward when reading in a quiet place.
Iām sure others have the same need. Any recommendations for how to capture a couple lines or a paragraph from a book?
Thanks!
I use this brilliant product for the very situation you describe when Iām reading a book on the train. Iāve had it for a while and I think I bought the $9.99 version. Love it! Thereās companion Mac version in SetApp.