Using AutoHotkey to Save A Second Here, A Second There

For auto-replacing typed text in Windows, I had been using RoboType, which is super-easy to set up, but doesn’t play nice with Lotus Notes (grr). Now I use AutoHotkey, which does the same thing and doesn’t make Notes choke up. (And on the Mac at home, I use TextExpander.)

I can replace “sd” with today’s short date, like “10/13″. You would be amazed how often you have to type today’s date during the day.

I also replace “dt” with today’s international ISO-standard date and a colon (”2006-10-13:”), which I usually paste into text files or logs or my copy of the d3/GTD flavor of TiddlyWiki.

You have to create an autohotkey.ini script to specify your strings and their replacements. Here’s mine:

:*:dt:: ; This hotstring replaces "dt" with the current date and time.
FormatTime, CurrentDateTime,, yyyy-MM-dd:
SendInput %CurrentDateTime%
return

:*:sd:: ; This hotstring replaces "sd" with the short current date and time.
FormatTime, CurrentDateTime,, M/d
SendInput %CurrentDateTime%
return

::dond:: ; I use this one all the time in email replies. hee.
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Done - thanks!
phil
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