Investigate Espanso.org for shared text expansion/snippets
Some of us already use tools like Alfred, TextExpander, and others. Some can export & share the snippets, but the formats I've found so far are either binary or XML, which aren't great for collaborative editing.
Our ZenDesk macro collection mostly human-readable YAML, but at least partially vendor-locked, and it requires a more complicated workflow than individually installed tools.
Espanso.org seems to be a possible middle-ground here with the advantages of:
- hub of published packages
- active community
- many power-user features like executing shell commands, calling custom scripts or building simple forms
Possible benefits
- with any text expansion tool: faster writing & avoidance of typing-related health problems
- with any shared snippet collection: faster on-boarding
- with Espanso: ability to merge published & self-made snippet collections
Espanso's current limitations
- package hosting only on GitHub
- only recognizes
masterbranch - packages can't be updated
As an experiment, I've migrated a few of my TextExpander snippets to GitHub.com/katrinleinweber/espanso-effective-markdown and toolbox/espanso. Please find instructions in their README.md files.
CCing who expressed interest internally: @vbrodsky @dnldnz @sabinecarpenter