11/08/12 22:00:11

How to overobsess email signatures with TextExpander

In Germany we are required to include a “business” signature in emails. Here’s a reference on the English Wikipedia, Germans can read this article on the specifics.
In short: we need to include address, commercial register number and some other information in business related emails — by law.

So, to make things more entertaining I figured I should come up with a TextExpander snippet that does everything and more.

Andreas Zeitler

my street
postal code city
%fillpart:name=tel?%my phone number%fillpartend%
––––
%fillpopup:name=mail add:default=main_address@zettt.de:other_addresses@other_domains.com%
%fillpopup:name=www:default=www.macosxscreencast.com and www.macosxscreencasts.de:www.macosxscreencasts.com:www.macosxscreencasts.de:www.zcasting3000.com%
%fillpart:name=affirmation%––––
%snippet:aff..%%fillpartend%
%fillpart:name=nowplaying%––––
%snippet:#nowplaying%%fillpartend%

 

Ok, so how does it work? Expanded it includes my name and address by default, an optional part can be included with my phone number. Then below are two popups for my email address (I use several) and the domain I want to refer to, most of the time this is Mac OS X Screencasts.

I wrote a snippet that uses my Vocab script to parse a list of affirmation messages. You know, to make my tax consultant feel good.

The last part is an AppleScript that checks whether iTunes is running and includes the title of one of my most favorite songs. The last two snippets are optionally of course.