Instant Text 8: New Technology

Prioritizing quality over frequency, Textware Solutions has consistently unveiled major versions of Instant Text at approximately decade‑long intervals over the past two decades:

Instant Text 8 is the direct successor of Instant Text 7, while Instant Text 9 introduces a new concept where Words and Phrases are displayed in a single table.

If you have worked with previous versions of Instant Text, you will see that all the main concepts and underlying components familiar to you are still there. Below, you will find a quick overview of the major enhancements.

New Glossary Format

The glossary format has changed. Glossaries are now saved in an xml format with the .xglo extension.

• There are no more limitations on the size of expansions.
• Expansions can now contain rich text with images.
• Expansions can now mix plain text and rich text.

New Tables

The following tables have been implemented anew with the same look and feel as before:

• Word Table
• Phrase Table
• Glossary Table

Fonts and colors can be extensively customized with the new Visual Configuration Wizard:

Short Form Coloring enables you to choose:

• the color of characters you skipped and
• the color of remaining characters that you may still type to reach the desired expansion.

Phrase Table Navigation Changes

You can now skip letters inside Phrase Entry Short Forms immediately after the first character.

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When Pick Lists are displayed, you can narrow down the choices to items starting with a given letter by typing that initial letter, and then even further by typing subsequent letters of the displayed forms. This makes it possible to have a lot longer pick lists.

{Pick}day{/Pick}	Typing s	Typing sn
The Phrase Table displays a pick list with the days of the week.	Typing an s has reduced the scope to pick list items starting with an s.	Typing sn has reduced the scope to pick list items starting with an s which contain a subsequent n.

New Glossary List

There are no more limitations on the size of the Glossary List

A new Reorganize Glossary List dialog enables to open multiple glossaries in one shot.

New Glossary Types

New Glossary Types were introduced:

• The Hotkey Glossary can be used to expand hotkeys.
• The Snippet Glossary can be used to define reusable snippets that can be referenced inside expansions using the Snippet Command.
• The Variable Glossary can be used to define variables that can be referenced inside expansions or command parameters. This glossary is more for advanced users with acute skills in commands. It can be easily ignored by others.

New Glossary Viewer

The Glossary Viewer has been completely redesigned:

• It now has multiple tabs similarly to a web browser.
• You can change the font in which entries are displayed.
• You can color your Includes. Different includes can be colored with different colors.
• Includes are now supported for all Glossary Types.
• Mass dialogs enable you to:
  • Mass Delete Glossary Entries
  • Mass Copy Glossary Entries
  • Mass Transfer Glossary Entries
• You can define your own Short Form Rules.
• You can Import Foreign Glossaries which thereby get converted into Instant Text glossaries.
• The Glossary Compilation now uses a third party open source java jar from Apache called Tika to extract text from documents. It is very powerful and it is able to handle quite a wide range of documents.

New Commands

The Instant Text Commands set has been substantially enriched.

Highlighting some of the most popuplar new commands:

• The Title Case Selection command capitalizes selected words.
• The Replace All Selection command swaps all instances within a text selection.
• The Snippet Loop command makes it simpler than ever to repeat an expansion.

New Docking

New docking alignements were introduced: