I don’t see the problem much here, then again, my muscle memory is pretty good with Ctrl + C, Alt + Tab and Ctrl + V. I think adding the Shift key will just confuse things.
I would prefer it be like Alt + Tab. Initially, pressing Ctrl + V pastes the most recent item in the clipboard, and holding down Ctrl and pressing V allows one to cycle through the contents. When one releases the Ctrl key, the item selected gets pasted.
I also use PTH Pasteboard on the Mac. Awesome app (and it actually does keep the contents through reboots). It has tons of additional features, such as ignoring items from certain applications (such as your keychain) so that your password doesn’t get stored anywhere. You can have different pasteboards and show them on-screen so you get a quick overview over all of your stuff; you can set how many items to remember, and you can apply filters to copied things (such as fixing windows line endings, capitalizing text, and so on). It’s an awesome application.
http://pth.com/products/pthpasteboard/
Something that I don’t understand is all the resistance to this concept. ClipX doesn’t alter Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V functionality at all, so if you need to copy and paste like you used to, it will always work for you. The Ctrl-Shift-V pops open a list of previously copied items and you can select which one you are interested. Again, it doesn’t affect old functionality at all, so I don’t get the fear.
I went to the site and tried it out. There was one thing missing. I had cobbled together some scripts that had a group of regular expressions and urls and if the contents of the clipboard matched an regex, then it would launch the the url (which had a grouping substitution in it from the regex). I sent an email about it to the author and he added a new Smart Navigiation Plugin to ClipX.
Here are a couple of my patterns:
Name: Bugzilla
Pattern to match: (bug|scr)?[\s:#]*(\d+)
Navigate to: http://bugzilla.inin.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=\2
Name: Perforce
Pattern to match: (cl|change|changelist)[#:\s]+(\d+)
Navigate to: http://perforce.inin.com:8080/\2?ac=10
Name: Email Address
Pattern to match: ([A-Z0-9._%-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+.[A-Z]{2,4})
Navigate to: mailto:\1
Thanks for blogging on this! I am able to remove that old cobbled together script and get multiple clipboards to boot!
Smartphones have cut+paste but you can use it without showing the on screen keyboard and tapping ctr-c/ctr-v. Thats way too long winded to make it useable. On the WM5+ screen you can TAP+HOLD. You’ll see little dots appear round the stylus point, which after about a second completes a full circle and then pops up the applications context menu, which on most apps has Cut/Paste on there too.
cheers,
Rob
Here is my blog entry on his new Smart Navigation Plugin.
http://www.thehubbards.org/blog/2008/01/23/reinventing-the-clipboard-reprise/
I can’t say I like the idea of a persistent clipboard by default. Keeping track of all this copy/paste is the same as using a key logger in my opinion. Tell me, is this clipboard history available to all programs?
If you want history, use/write a journal or a snippets program (or just use Google notebook). Back in the day before nasty spy-ware apps, I’d say you’re right on the money. Nowadays I’m not so sure the benefit outweighs the risk.
I might go a step further in the paranoid security game, and perhaps I’d like yet another windows pop-up, this time asking me if I’d like to allow Program X to see the real clipboard. Yes/No/Allow Once. If I say no, Windows doesn’t need to let the program know it has no access to the real clipboard should I choose, and Copy/Paste would work as advertised internal to the application.
I also use KeePass and like the feature when you copy passwords, it clears the clipboard when it detects a paste operation has occurred. Windows should be telling the app ‘Interactive User Pressed Copy’ and ‘Interactive User Pressed Paste, here’s the token to retrieve the data’, rather than the way it is.
I’d like to see:
In summary, what’s the problem? The clipboard as-is is ‘good enough’, and you’re able to extend it enough to get your ‘power user’ application to run nicely. Does the OS really need more bloat?
Tech Links I found:
MSDN About the Clipboard
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms649012(VS.85).aspx
CodeProject ClipSpy+
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/clipboard/ClipSpyPlus.aspx
Note: I too like my Sony phone that allows mark-copy-paste. It’s brilliant, and why did it take most phones so long to get this?
whoever has time for searching for clipboard solutions should not be employed as a programmer.
offler: Whoever does not understand that time spent optimizing tools makes for better tool-use should neither be employed as either a programmer or a manager.
Whoa Jeff I just installed this puppy (Clipx)and man is it great. It’s a HUGE time saver! Thanks for the tip!
Great Post. I actually just launched a product to help developers manage code snippets and everything else they copy and cut.
It docks to the edge of your screen so you can use it with any program. It can also be minimized to the tray or configured to autohide. And more related to this post, it monitors the windows clipboard saving everything you copy and paste.
AAARGH! Don’t mess with my sub-concious routines!!
Hmm, I’ll just cut this sentence and–WHAT THE–There’s a floating palette blocking my email! Go away!
Oh no! Now I’ve got too many items in the clipboard and I have to read a whole dialogue box. I dare not dismiss it without reading, because who knows what will be in my clipboard then? The oldest item? The second to last one? I’ve forgotten where I was going to paste this!
Maybe some time in Excel will help. Nice calming grid lines…Why are those marching ants still going? I don’t need that selection any more! Must focus but my eyes keep getting drawn back to that animated border, can’t…look…away!
If you’d like to try a good freeware clipboard, try Hamsin Cliboard. It doesn’t need installation so you can carry it with you and use it wherever you go, and it is only a few hundred k. What I like about it is not only does it save history if you desire and can give you a list of saved items,but you can also use the Win-key +1-10 to paste any of the last ten items.I use it to have my sig and other bits I use a lot saved as an easy to use portable macro. Now matter what app I’m in the short text bits I need are just Win+1-10 away!
thrax: nothing happens when you cut a sentence, or paste for that matter, the dialog will never appear unless you specifically request it. It’s here to let you go back to previous clipboards, not to make you think each time you use your clipboard in the normal fashion. duh.
I don’t understand how people can dismiss this out of hand on the basis that it makes things more complicated, when the article actually mentions that: “you can OPT to press Ctrl+Shift+V”, that should be a pretty good clue that unless you do opt to do that, the clipboard works the way it always has.
But I guess asking them to read the article before commenting on it is too much.
Bottom line, whether you use clipx or another of these tools, they are HUGE time savers, especially for developpers and writers. If you don’t use your keyboard that much, then yeah, it’s probably not that useful to you, but it certainly doesn’t make copypasting any more complicated than it currently is, it just makes it more useful.
I’m not trying to sound like a linux troll, but Linux comes with 2 clipboards by default: the normal one, like you have in Windows, and a hidden one in the X server: whenever you select something, this is copied onto the hidden clipboard, and middle click pastes the contents.
This is useful for quick copy-pasting without interfering with your default clipboard.
I’m happy with this, because it’s still just a one-action method, and doesn’t make me search through a menu before pasting.
However, for the ones who do like the menu with a list of recent copies, in KDE there is an application that starts up at login by default, called Klipper, that does this exact thing. It even works when you log out and back in again, reboot, …
http://www.controlc.com/ just came out recently, which saves your clipboard history to the web!
Great Post. I actually just launched a tiny app to help people searching on Google using the clipboard.
Google It! is a simple, unobtrusive widget used to search the content of your clipboard automatically on Google. It’s a snap to setup and works on Windows Vista and XP running .NET Framework 3.0.
To use Google It!, copy any text from any program, the Google It! widget will appear, click on it, it will then automatically search the content of the clipboard on Google.
http://www.zypto.com/labs/googleit/
http://www.zypto.com/labs/googleit/releases/latest/googleit.zip
http://www.zypto.com/labs/googleit/media/googleit-howtouse_800x600.wmv
Thank you Jeff for your great work!
Very very useful application, Jeff!
I have been using it for a couple of days, and I feel much more comfortable when copy-pasting text, code, or whatever.
Thanks so much for sharing this little things!
Indeed cut/copy and paste seem to be the most used commands. There used to be a Microsoft Office Keyboard (1998?) with seperate buttons on the left for cut/copy/paste - fantastic !!
I can’t find a replacement anywhere. Any ideas?
Hey, Jeff, thanks. I read this post with a lot of interests.
I never used ClipX before. As you said in your article, “In this era of 3 GHz processors, 1 GB memory, and 500 GB hard drives, why is the Windows clipboard only capable of holding a single item”, the single item is limited. That’s why I could not copy all the output text in Visual Studio to the clipboard though computer’s memory was enough.
I am going to install ClipX on my computer and I think I would be happy with it. 