You assign a "hotstring"/"trigger" and a method of triggering your text or script and when Texter catches it, voila, it does whatever you've assigned it to do. Scripting is a little advanced so I'll cover that another time probably, but text replacement is all you really need for basic writing and forum tasks. If you do any HTML or CSS coding, this van be freaking invaluable as well.
To start I'll just give some examples of practical uses. I originally started using this for posting attendance on past linkshell websites that used BBcode, here was what I used:
Code:
Hotstring: img
Text:
[img]%c[/img]
Text:
[img]%c[/img]
The trigger I set for this "hotstring" was the tab key as seen in the picture, meaning when I typed "img" followed by pressing the tab key, the stuff listed as text was immediately spit back out.
Here are some more forum-oriented examples (along with some short-cuts which I'll explain afterwards):
Code:
Hotstring: url
Text:
[url]%c[/url]%|
Text:
[url]%c[/url]%|
Code:
Hotstring: utube
Text:
[youtube]%c[/youtube]%|
Text:
[youtube]%c[/youtube]%|
Code:
Hotstring: iset
Text:
[itemset]%c[/itemset]%|
Text:
[itemset]%c[/itemset]%|
*when you see the "%c" and "%|" strings, they simply stand-in as another level of text-replacement. %c means to paste the contents of the clipboard, meaning whatever I recently copied, and %| tells Texter where to put my cursor after it completes the text replacement. The same thing could be done through a script in Texter (which is probably exactly what was done by the developer) but this is just a much more simple method.
Taking that explanation into account, it's not difficult to see what these hotstrings do now. If we use "img" as an example, suppose I copy the url of a picture I want to post, when I put my cursor into the post box, all I need to do is type "img" and then press tab and my code is written out along with the link I just copied put into place. Same deal with the others. This can also be used for general HTML write-up because you can easily create a skeleton HTML page in Texter with your tags and proper syntax, streamlining the process for every future case. You're doing it once anyway, may as well make it count. I liked to think of it as Spellcast for the internets. haha Hope someone gets some use out of this!
PS. For more in-depth and advanced use, see the link above for the author's words and more videos!