Snippet suffixes?

[Dr. Peter]

Hello all,

 

I just got Alfred. Love the tool (overall)! I'm a long time Windows user, and Alfred is the main tool I miss when I move back to my Windows computer. They just don't have anything that compares to it.

 

On to my topic: I was setting up some text snippet text expansions. (I love the speed of Alfred's expansions! Text Expander is like pouring cold molasses in comparison.)

 

But I was having problems with the snippet suffixes or basically how to end a snippet keyword for the expansion. If I set up a snippet "w" to expand to "with" (I like using text expansions as keyboard shorthand) then typing "work" becomes "withork". I thought unchecking "Expand snippets mid-string" under Options would handle this, but it only watches for the preceding separation character. Shouldn't that "mid-string" option work for both ends of the keyword, much like Word for Mac's AutoCorrect feature where the expansion is only executed for whole keywords?

 

By the way, using a Snippet Trigger with some logic to parse whether the "w" has ended with a space or other punctuation mark is like swatting a fly with a hammer. I've done that in Keyboard Maestro some, and it is overkill. Does (or shouldn't?) Alfred allow an option to trigger the expansion on "word completion"?  Also adding a space as the suffix doesn't handle expansions since for other snippets I might type a , (comma) or a . (period) after the snippet keyword. It seems overkill to have to define "w " "w." "w," "w;" and various like all expanding to "with". That's not even mentioning capitalized word variations.

 

Is there a way to accomplish this that I am missing as a new Alfred user? Regex somehow?

 

If not, I could envision using short regex expressions to solve the issue, but at least just optional suffix characters to end a keyword would be a significant improvement. I very much like Alfred, but the snippets/text expansions could use some work. I do love the speed however.

 

Looking forward to seeing what features are in Alfred version 5.

 

Peter