Text to get smarter in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

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  • Reply 41 of 52
    paxmanpaxman Posts: 4,729member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ZachSpear View Post


    Yes, this is a dilemma that has troubled journalists for centuries. (Have journalists been around for that long? Do pamphleteers count? Great. Moving on.) The problem with using Apple over and over again is that everyone reads words in their head differently. Some people don't like how "the Cupertino-based company" sounds, while others don't even notice it. Some people hear "Apple" too many times and they start to go insane. That said, I'm always trying to find a good balance. It's pretty hard to keep using the same word, Apple, or words like "It" or "the company" over and over though. I'll keep your comments in mind as this is something I'm always thinking about.



    I have a done a little bit of journalistic writing myself so I know that repetitive phrases and names / titles are permanent issues. I barely notice these journalistic 'tricks' when I read. It was the use of the term 'the Cupertino based electronics maker" which once drew my attention and now I can't help but notice. (Its like a bad song in my head) Maybe Apple, or 'the company' or whatever is used ten times each in an article and I won't notice but if I see "the Cupertino based..." once, it jumps out at me. But like I say, I'm not complaining...
  • Reply 42 of 52
    All this sounds great, iff one belongs to the sanctioned language zones, which actually have a spelling dictionary
  • Reply 43 of 52
    Microsoft refers to the feature in Word (below) as part of AutoCorrect called "replace text as you type."



    This is NOT original with Microsoft. Alessandro Montalcini brought out TypeIt4Me in 1989.
  • Reply 44 of 52
    How aboutAlso implementinv these in the iphone the sms and contacts of the iphone to be severely lacking..



    No copy and paste, no forwarding of sms, no way to delete individual text messages, no way to send and accept contacts etc. I hope apple improves this come the next update. I'm seriously considering to jailbreak my iphone to get these services..
  • Reply 45 of 52
    asciiascii Posts: 5,936member
    Substitutions are a good idea. The alternative: adding smiley keys to the keyboard, would be a little tacky
  • Reply 46 of 52
    inklinginkling Posts: 768member
    I'd be happier if Apple would quit trying to mimic the more irritating features in Word, like text substitution and all the "you're stupid, but we can fix that" stuff. If I want Word, I'll use Word. Apple should concentrate more on making Cocoa Text better and less on making it like Word.



    1. Give us tabbed text to tables and tables to tabbed text. The current table function in Cocoa text is almost worthless. It can't convert tabbed text into a table, forcing users to enter the table's text by hand. Doesn't anyone at Apple use what they create?



    2. Text to speech starting at cursor. Reading an entire document or only a selection isn't what we need. What we need is reading that starts at the cursor and stops and restarts when we want, placing the cursor where we stop. Text-to-speech is a good way to proof and catch errors our eyes don't see.



    4. Text-to-speech-to-iTunes. Give us the ability to take text in any application and send it to iTunes to listen to later. It'll help sell iPods.



    4. Finally, if they're going copy ideas from Word, they should copy its ability to apply named paragraph and character styles to text and export those tags in an rtf file. When I move text from application A to application B, I don't want every little font name, size and color to come along. It that's what I wanted, I'd just print from application A and be done with it. What I want is the tagging to transfer, so I can give that tagged text a different look. Again, doesn't anyone at Apple actually work with high-quality documents?



    Adding these features to Cocoa Text would add them to dozens of applications that use its features.



    They should also:



    1. Add Growl notifications to OS X. Notifications in OS X are little changed from those in the 1984 Mac. They pop up in ugly little windows that have to be manually dismissed. Enough of that!



    2. Make it easy for applications to have a standard full screen mode with easily changed parameters for the text and background.



    3. One by one, applications are hand-coding in tabbing for windows, even the latest version of InDesign has it. Make it easy for developers to add the feature with a standard feature set.



    [Descends from soapbox looking relieved.]
  • Reply 47 of 52
    jnrhjnrh Posts: 1member
    1. Give us tabbed text to tables and tables to tabbed text.



    This would make a good Services menu item; it would then be system-wide.



    4. Finally, if they're going copy ideas from Word, they should copy its ability to apply named paragraph and character styles to text and export those tags in an rtf file.



    The Cocoa text system is RTF based, and RTF is antithetical to hierarchical styles. You can ape hierarchical styles in a text system based on narrative styles, which is what Word and others do, but that is not a good foundation for a text system. If Apple ditches OS X at some point, the next text system will be hierarchical.



    3. One by one, applications are hand-coding in tabbing for windows, even the latest version of InDesign has it. Make it easy for developers to add the feature with a standard feature set.



    If that feature were a part of NSDocument, that would be wonderful. Just a checkbox: [x] Single-window tabbed interface



    Also, how about:



    NSTextList that renumbers items properly when an item is deleted from the list



    A proper API for NSTextList that allows items to be moved north or south in a list, etc.



    A ruler that can be set to reverse direction for right-to-left languages like Arabic and Hebrew



    Support reading/writing footnotes, header & footers, etc. to and from RTF -- why not?



    Option to save/read images to and from RTF (RTFD is Apple only)



    Expose regex engine already in OS X to text system's Find/Replace panel
  • Reply 48 of 52
    manjumanju Posts: 2member
    The (A, Current symbolic-linked to A) is part of the structure of a Mac OS X framework, which JavaVM.framework is. This framework may have C or Objective-C code in it, in addition to the actual JVM installations. Thus it could potentially be linked against from some C or Objective-C code in addition to containing the JVM alongside that.



    Note that you should not change the CurrentJDK link to point at anything but what it is set to by Mac OS X. Unlike on other platforms, the Java virtual machine is an operating system service on Mac OS X, and changing it in this way would put you in an unsupported (and potentially untested, unstable, etc.) configuration.
  • Reply 49 of 52
    drudru Posts: 43member
    I wonder if there's any hope for getting custom pronunciations out of Text-to-Speech.



    You can already specify such things for the VoiceOver feature but it only works there. Such things are ignored if you use the Speech service.







    While I'm musing, the "on screen keyboard" needs to gain sticky shift, control, command and option keys so you can click those and then click the modifier and not have to use a physical keyboard. It's absolutely ridiculous not to support such a thing.
  • Reply 50 of 52
    macgregormacgregor Posts: 1,434member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by elroth View Post


    Sounds good, but Apple has gone the other way - they don't want to give you a full size keyboard. The mini keyboard is now the default on iMacs - no home or end keys, no right delete key, no page up or down, and inconvenient smaller arrow keys (and no number pad).



    You can only get the full-size keyboard with your new iMac online (BTO) from Apple - even the Apple Stores can't sell you an iMac with full-size keyboard! So I doubt Apple is going to put much effort into adding functions for those keys.



    The tech and secretarial and word processing intensive folks can probably buy the extended keyboard ... and they should. I thought OSX allowed changing keyboard combo's anyway, and is there not the option for switchers to map out the windows preferences?
  • Reply 51 of 52
    ohkineohkine Posts: 2member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by dak splunder View Post


    While Apple's getting some good ideas from Microsoft, here's hoping they copy Windows' system-wide use of the HOME and END keys (and other related keys):



    Like someone else said, OS X has equivalent short-cuts for all this stuff. However, if you would like the more 'standard' Windows/UNIX short-cuts, you can try this:



    Code:


    cd ~/Library

    mkdir ./KeyBindings

    touch ./KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict

    open -a /Applications/TextEdit.app ./KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict







    paste:



    Code:


    {

    "\\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:"; /* Home */

    "~\\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfDocument:"; /* Opt + Home */

    "$\\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /* Shift + Home */

    "$~\\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfDocumentAndModifySelection:" ; /* Shift + Opt + Home */

    "\\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLine:"; /* End */

    "~\\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfDocument:"; /* Opt + End */

    "$\\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /* Shift + End */

    "$~\\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfDocumentAndModifySelection:"; /* Shift + Opt + End */

    "\\UF72C" = "pageUp:"; /* Page Up */

    "\\UF72D" = "pageDown:"; /* Page Down */

    "~\\UF72C" = "scrollPageUp:"; /* Opt + Page Up */

    "~\\UF72D" = "scrollPageDown:"; /* Opt + Page Down */

    "$\\UF72C" = "pageUpAndModifySelection:"; /* Shift + Page Up */

    "$\\UF72D" = "pageDownAndModifySelection:"; /* Shift + Page Down */

    }







    (Pretend AI didn't strip out all the spacing. What kind of dumb-ass pointless code tag doesn't preserve spaces anyway?)



    Anyway those are the settings i use, they affect all standard Cocoa-based applications.



    ps pretty psyched about text expansion and 'make upper case'
  • Reply 52 of 52
    well I've been using DOS/Windows OS for over 8 years and recently I decided that I want something new and somethign mroe advanced. So I inst...
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