In this article, I'll briefly go over what shortcuts are and where to define them. I will then talk about the undocumented "@" macro, which allows you to insert the current date and/or time using a shortcut. I'll then discuss a couple of add-on applications that will also aid you when entering Graffiti; and finish up with a few ideas about using shortcuts that will make your use of Graffiti quicker overall.

Understanding Shortcuts
For those of you that might not know about shortcuts, let me briefly explain them. Shortcuts are a way to quickly enter text by issuing a shortcut "command" followed by a unique shortcut identifier. These identifier/text combinations are maintained in the Preferences application, by selecting Shortcuts from the drop down list. Once there, you can add, delete, and edit existing shortcuts.

If you've never used shortcuts before, you might be surprised to see several shortcuts already defined when you first visit the Shortcuts Preferences screen. As with most aspects of the PalmPilot, the folks at Palm Computing have thought about us, and pre-defined shortcuts for things they expected to be fairly commonly used.

Something else you might notice, if you poke around in the Buttons Preferences a bit, is that some of the pre-defined shortcuts use an "@" and some letters to place the date, time or date and time when used. This is the "@" macro that I spoke of earlier, and I'll be going over using this feature later in this article.

To utilize shortcuts, you must first enter the shortcut Graffiti command. This command looks like a cursive lower case "L", as shown in Figure A, and can be issued anywhere on the PalmPilot where you would normally be able to enter text. After issuing this command, you will see the shortcut character appear. This character will look different, depending on which OS version you are using: on a PalmPilot running OS 2.x, you'll see a character that looks like the Graffiti stroke and on a PalmOS 1.x machine it will appear as an open brace ("{") character.

FIGURE A

The shortcut Graffiti command is used to trigger shortcut text replacement.

Now that you have issued the shortcut command, enter in the text of any defined shortcut. As soon as you complete the last character, the shortcut will be replaced by the text defined in Preferences. Yes, it's that simple!

Now, let's take a look at the "@" macro that I mentioned earlier.