Second Half

Another adjustment I've had to make having taken a new job is the need to have a "professional" mail signature that includes all my contact information. I modeled mine after several others I've seen at Princeton.

Now to the problem. I continue to communicate with people outside of Princeton on non-Princeton topics, and there are communications with those inside of Princeton where they do not need to see all of my contact information and where I also don't want to send 1-line message with a 10-line signature.

There were a couple of alternatives: (1) use Apple Mail's signature capabilities and then at the time of composing an email, select the appropriate signature (involving cursor movement and clicking), or (2) find a utility that would, in effect, allow me to type in an "abbreviation", or snippet, which would automagically epxand to be my signature of choice.

I tried the Apple Mail signature approach, but found it dreadful as the signature seleciton is "out of the way" of my focus when typing and requires selection from a drop-down menu.

Prior to getting a new MacBook Pro as part of the new job, I had used a shareware application called Typeit4me, which did exactly what I wanted, yet acted a bit flaky. It would sometimes bring its "hidden" application window to the foreground under indeterminate circumstances.

After spending a little time searching for a suitable replacement, I took a look at Quickeys and found it far overweight for what I wanted.

I decided to go back to Typeit4me, only to learn that it does not work on the Intel-based Macs. This was to be "good news in disguise".

I did some more digging earlier today after browsing various Mac sites. In my search, I came upon a wonderful, maximally transparent utility, called Textpander. It does exactly what I want, and no more.

I hope to use it on some other fronts, far beyond the signature front.