So Long espanso. Hello, Neovim Plugin.
The App That Once Worked
I used espanso1 as my text expander2 for the past few years. I haven't done much with it. Everything is configured through yaml3. It's pretty fiddly.
I stopped using it a week back. Or, rather, it stopped working a week back. I ran a homebrew4 update and something went sideways. I spent maybe an hour trying to get it working. I even tried turning my machine off and on again5.
No luck.
Tapping Out
I could spend more time digging in and eventually figure it out. That's not worth the effort. I'm punting.
I've got a little Neovim6 command launcher menu plugin thingy7 I started earlier this year. Instead of spending time on espanso, I'm updating it to do what I need.
A side benefit is this'll get me to do more stuff with the plugin in general. I want to do things like automatically open posts I'm editing in a browser. I've been thinking about that forever. It never quite made the cut for where to spend time.
Now that I'm in the menu in general, futzing with it is a natural next step.
-a
Footnotes
I really want to like Espanso. It's open-source and privacy focused, but was always a little hard to use since everything is configured through YAML files. If they ever put a user interface on it like the titular TextExpander it'll be killer.
(I'd still be using TextExpander if they hadn't gone to a subscription model. I've got no problem paying for software in general but the subscription model burns me. I get why they do it and I don't fault them for it, but I'm out at that point.)
A text expander being something where I can type date; and it gets replaced with a piece of text that has the actual date in it (e.g. October 17, 2025).
You can get an idea of what YAML looks like by visiting the official YAML site which is formatted like YAML, which is... a choice.
The go-to tool for managing command line (and some non-command line) apps on the mac.
It's awesome, but it also tends to lead to broken dependencies when things update.
A bit of a pain, but way less so than if it didn't exist.
My daily-drive app for editing text files. There's a non-trivial learning curve for it. Totally worth the effort if you're a coder.
My little menu plugin. It doesn't do much yet, but the foundation is in place to build on. I like thinking about things on twenty years timelines. I'm excited to think what this will become.