Sunday, March 08, 2009

Text to get smarter in Mac OS X 10.6

One of the reasons I like the mac so much more than windows is that in general it seems that Apple puts innovation into system-wide frameworks that anyone can use while Microsoft puts it into Office. Their system-wide frameworks (like .net) enable systems to work together but don't have actual end-user features. They can let you build a dictionary module that other apps can use but (AFAIK) MS doesn't provide one, except in Office.

On the mac, Apple has put some of these things in the text widget. Any application can enable a popup dictionary in any text field. Same with spell-checking and editing keys (emacs-like by default but customizable). In 10.5.6 it seems Text will to get smarter.

Spell-checking will be extended to spell-correction (from iPhone and MS Word).

Text substitutions will allow you type some text string and have it expand to another string (like TextExpander or abbrevs in Emacs).

Services will be included in the context menu, making them more obvious to use. Also some new text based ones will be included, like capitalization.

Data Detectors introduced in Mail in Leopard will be available in any text field. So e.g., the system can recognize text that's a phone number and offer easy easy to commands for phone numbers (add to Address Book or maybe dial).

Great stuff. I hope it's implemented well.

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