Using Myinfo to "Copy" text into other Programms

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texasaxel
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Dec 17, 2010 7:16 pm

Using Myinfo to "Copy" text into other Programms

Post by texasaxel »

Not knowing whether it has been a subjekt befor, I´d like to suggest some ability to use Myinfo
for pasting text into other applications.

Tools like »Phrasexpress«, »Textbausteine« or http://www.typer.de/ do this very well and include a lot of possibilities.

Myinfo can´t beet them but some basic functionality would make it better.

This could be:

1. a) Klick on an document in the tree would fill the Clipboard with the content (information) of that point.

2. »Drawing« a document (while holding the mouse) from the tree into another programm would paste the content of that document at the desired place. For ex. an adress, textpatterns, user names etc..

This would increase the use and might be an easy way to use stored information while writing letters.

Cheers from the cold Black Forest

Texasaxel
Fred
Posts: 216
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2010 8:07 pm

Post by Fred »

I

I would like to give my 2 cents to PhraseExpress and others. I tried about 25 "expanders", and indeed, PE is the best of them: why?

First, you can freely decide on any expansion's behavior: be it expanded everywhere, e.g. 7r, 7t, 7x, etc., or in the case of sign combinations also occuring in words, only at the end of words, for example. This gives you various possibilities for prefixes, suffixes, syllables, and so on, whereas NO other program of my knowledge allows for this INDIVIDUAL pre-setting of expansion behavior - some macro programs (and even some - the worst - expansion programs) even only allow for "expansion everywhere", thus just allowing in fact those weird key combinations like 7r, 7t, 7x, etc., since otherwise you always risk unwanted expansion of key combinations in the middle of normal words.

II

BUT... there's a very big BUT:

In fact, most frequent words are very similar to others, and rather short; thus, "this", "that", "thus", "there", "those", "then", and many others cannot be easily distinguished by abbreviations, and it's the same problem in any of the three languages that I write and speak, English, French and German, and I thoroughly analysed the 100 / 200 most frequent words in any of them (since statistics of those frequencies are available on the net), in order to try to set up an abbreviation table.

Since those frequent words are rather short AND rather similar to other frequent words, it's unlikely that any expander utilitiy will give you a real advantage in time and keying time / efforts, and if you try to make abbreviations for longer words, the theoretical advantage may be sensible BUT if those words are not recurring again and again in your texts, "searching" (= in your mind, that is, incl. mistyping false abbreviations) will counteract your typing less.

Of course, you will lose your free will in this exercise: In order to have enough "hits" for abbreviations, your vocabulary (= be it in your mother language, be it in a foreign language) will shorten, will dry up, will impoverish your vocabulary (the term "will" gives us another example: will, want, what, where, etc.: of course you can distinguish those frequent words, by wl, wa, wt, wh (but not "we"), etc., but you'll spare 1 or 2 characters, having to type weird things for this minute savings).

Thus, at any time, I can PROVE that the use of an expander program inescapably impoverishes your style, and to a very great extent: Expect to maintain perhaps 30 per cent or less of your former vocabulary.

Even for lawyers, this would be totally unacceptable... or perhaps, very intelligent ones would apply this exhaustion ONLY to the real "specialized" part of their "dictionary" but refrain from applying abbreviations to any "normal" term, in order to maintain a certain choice in their general wording; perhaps it's doctors ONLY that would really take some profit of those programs, since indeed, their TOTAL vocabulary (= in the trade, i.e. in writing reports to their confrères) is standardized to an extreme.

III

Thus, the better expander program is a dictating program - even the best expander program, PhraseExpress, is an assault on your thinking integrity - since you think in the terms you're going to write, and if any program cuts down your vocabulary, it inevitably whips down your thinking (capacities).

Thus, except for doctors, refrain from expanders.

Besides, it was "Mark Twain" who said, "Those who don't read have no advantage over those who can't."
texasaxel
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Dec 17, 2010 7:16 pm

Post by texasaxel »

Tks for Your detailed experience, Fred.
Yes, the automatic suggestion of PE and others might influence the writers personal style.

However, if You have to handle lots of other text snippets for business use, for example offers, explanations, descriptions, you wis to paste them easily into other mail or Dokuments, either by "Klick an draw" or by shortcut.

If MY would offer some basic way to to do this, there wolud be no need to use another Software, provided You don´t expect the same functionality like PE.

Cheers, Texasaxel
Fred
Posts: 216
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2010 8:07 pm

Post by Fred »

You are perfectly right, and I don't want to criticize the use of standard pieces to be inserted into commercial texts; of course, this sort of use was included in my comments about legal uses, and the same remarks apply: Never ever fall for employing that macro / expander (part of your) program for "normal" words if you don't want to impoverish your writing style by three quarters or some.

I said it elsewhere in this forum: The absence of such program features in ALL "exceptional" programs is constantly driving users to the main programs we all know, and even newer MS Works version have expanding features, not only MS Word has.

But then, the above-mentioned acceptable use of such programs, standard phrases (instead of also "common words expanding"), is perfectly feasible with almost any external macro program, since then the shortkey way "7a", "8r", "7ky" (for "Kindly Yours," Return, e.g.) would suffice, without your having to bother with key combinations that could occur in real words... but that's why I propose "7ky" instead of just "ky", since just "ky" could bring you much trouble then.

NOT ONE of all those special programs of this "information managers for one-man shows" type (of my knowledge and remembrance) gives macro functionality, but NOT ONE of those programs could seriously do without it, so in order to have some acceptable workflow, you must emply some external macro program of your choice anyway, and indeed, it would be smart to have a look at their "standard phrases insertion facility" in chosing them: Key combinations like "7ky" that are translated everywhere should indeed be the strict minimum in this respect, whereas key combinations like control-t or shift-alt-z are not enough since not sufficiently mnemonic.

You must see that any such program does check your input every 50 milliseconds or so, in order to analyse if it has some translation work to do, and thus, the long-awaited TIMER - see the related posts in this forum - would be a csqn (conditio sine qua non) for any macro / expanding feature in MI.

When I sometimes insist on some basic features, it's because I know that there are fundamental to a better MI. There is, often, an inherent natural order of things, you cannot always proceed in any which way but loose; sorry for appearing, then, a little bit too straightforward, then.

Besides, TECHNICAL translators often have specialised programs (that sometimes are very expensive, so "often" means, "when they can afford them") that do exactly this, translating whole phrases in always the same way - for "technical" (incl. medical, legal...) standard terms, this standardization is not only a desireable, but a mandatory thing, even when we all know that even legislators don't seem to employ them too often, creating by this, as by multiple other means, a lot of work for the subsidient legal professions. ;-)
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