Author Topic: Clipboard Help+Spell Extended Clipboard Format Data Discussion Thread (Read 88305 times)

mouser · « **on:** January 31, 2020, 03:42 PM »

Clipboard Help+Spell (CHS) is finally getting support for storing extended clipboard data.. This thread is for discussing that feature..

It can now save clips with multiple data formats in the database and restore them properly. It has a whole set of features and options to support this, so that you can see exactly what's being saved, and have fine or coarse grain control over ignore certain formats, etc.

Clipboard Help+Spell Extended Clipboard Format Data Discussion Thread

Clipboard Help+Spell Extended Clipboard Format Data Discussion Thread

DOWNLOAD Alpha Version:
https://www.donation...AndSpellPortable.zip

cranioscopical · « **Reply #1 on:** January 31, 2020, 04:52 PM »

IainB · « **Reply #2 on:** February 01, 2020, 02:52 AM »

Brilliant plan!

djMot · « **Reply #3 on:** February 02, 2020, 05:37 AM »

Sent you an email. Thanks for pursuing this!

mouser · « **Reply #4 on:** February 02, 2020, 11:33 AM »

Getting there..

mouser · « **Reply #5 on:** February 02, 2020, 01:35 PM »

Ok the basics are now working -- and the hard part is done.

The clip database can now save all clipboard formats associated with a clip in the database, and paste them back into targets.

Still a lot more to do to iron out the rough edges and then a lot more to do in terms of adding options and tools to help people avoid having their database size grow astronomically... And then a bunch of miscelaneous options to add to let people configure how they want this to work.

mouser · « **Reply #6 on:** February 02, 2020, 01:40 PM »

Current new tab available when you look at a clip:

Clipboard Help+Spell Extended Clipboard Format Data Discussion Thread

Here you can see what extended format data has been saved alongside the clip.

The idea is that this information might help you later set some filters in the program regarding what formats you want the program to keep or discard. Currently the program is not being smart about avoiding storing redundant formats, that's on my todo list.

djMot · « **Reply #7 on:** February 02, 2020, 05:11 PM »

Will it have a formatted preview in the Clip Text box when there is a non-text item selected?

mouser · « **Reply #8 on:** February 02, 2020, 10:22 PM »

Will it have a formatted preview in the Clip Text box when there is a non-text item selected?

RichText preview panel is implemented; that's probably the extent of the previewing.

Clipboard Help+Spell Extended Clipboard Format Data Discussion Thread

I suppose I could add some way to browse the raw clipboad formats in binary view, but not sure there is any point to that.

mouser · « **Reply #9 on:** February 03, 2020, 10:53 AM »

FOR EARLY TESTERS ONLY:

I have uploaded an alpha version here:
https://www.donation...AndSpellPortable.zip

I have only uploaded the portable version, because I'd prefer people not install this on top of their existing CHS *YET*.

So you should unpack this to a new directory, exit your current CHS instance, and start this one; in that way it will not mess with your existing CHS data.
(backing up your CHS database folder couldn't hurt anyway).

Having said that, this version will happily upgrade your existing database seamlessly, so feel free to copy your existing database files into the new portable install to start with them, and the final version will simply install over your existing CHS as normal.

By default, this new alpha version will capture EVERYTHING on the clipboard with each clip. This can rapidly grow your database size very large if you are using applications which put a lot of data on the clipboard. I added a column to show the clip "blob" size so you can see how much space is being used. You can turn off the capture of extended info in the options, which will make your CHS revert to how it always has behaved with plain text (and optinally image) copying only.

PLEASE NOTE: Because this version inefficiently stores multiple redundant formats in the database, it is *NOT* meant for real use yet. It is storing much more than it needs to (like multiple versions of large image data). As such, unless you are curious or willing to help test, do NOT replace your existing CHS with this, and plan to DELETE any CHS database you build with this.

Future versions will be more efficient about saving extended data formats.

There are other inefficiencies and missing features in this version which will be improved in near future releases. Duplicate handling does not look at extended clipboard data, clipboard contents are captured twice (once for normal data, again for blob), etc.

With all that said, I'm interested to hear any feedback.. Support for extended clipboard formats has been a LONG time coming..

ps. Remember you can right-click or shift-click in the pop-up quick paste menu to choose to PLAINTEXT paste any clip if you want to bypass the pasting of the full extended clipboard blob formats for any given clip.

mouser · « **Reply #10 on:** February 03, 2020, 12:30 PM »

If you have ideas for options you would like to see let me know.
It's hard trying to think of options that would be suitable for non-experts and experts alike.

mouser · « **Reply #11 on:** February 03, 2020, 12:56 PM »

And of course let me know any bugs!

tomos · « **Reply #12 on:** February 03, 2020, 03:17 PM »

A quick initial test:
seems to be working well with vector data, copying, saving and correctly pasting filled vectors and grouped items (line + text).

djMot · « **Reply #13 on:** February 11, 2020, 05:29 AM »

I just got this setup, and it seems to be working fine. All I note so far is that it lacks a proper preview for graphical formats. Is there something I need to do to enable the "Rich Text" tab I see in one of the screenshots you posted earlier, mouser?

mouser · « **Reply #14 on:** February 12, 2020, 11:24 AM »

Just make sure you have the options set to capture RichText, and then try capturing some richtext from MS Word or something similar.
Screenshot - 2_12_2020 , 11_22_30 AM.png

Screenshot - 2_12_2020 , 11_22_30 AM.png

djMot · « **Reply #15 on:** February 12, 2020, 12:48 PM »

Okay, those two checkboxes seem to be checked by default. That would make sense.

When I copy something from the web, I do not get a same-format preview, and there's no Rich Text tab.

mouser · « **Reply #16 on:** February 12, 2020, 12:51 PM »

When I copy something from the web, I do not get a same-format preview, and there's no Rich Text tab.

Yeah you can see in the BlobInfo tab that copying from a web browser does not get you RichText format, it gets you HTML format, which CHS won't preview.. I might be able to add an HTML preview tab though..

mouser · « **Reply #17 on:** February 12, 2020, 06:12 PM »

Try redownloading; new version has html preview and unicode preview.

Another surprise discovery is that the html block saved to the clipboard by browsers has the url of the page embedded in it.. This means I can more reliably grab the source url from modern browsers in the future.

mouser · « **Reply #18 on:** February 12, 2020, 10:05 PM »

New version uploaded.
CHS is a little smarter now about saving redundant formats that it doesn't need to.

mouser · « **Reply #19 on:** February 12, 2020, 10:33 PM »

CHS doing multiformat:

djMot · « **Reply #20 on:** February 13, 2020, 11:10 AM »

Just downloaded and unpacked the zip into my working CHSP folder. This is what I see in the html preview tab of a capture I did from a few posts above this one.

Clipboard Help+Spell Extended Clipboard Format Data Discussion Thread

mouser · « **Reply #21 on:** February 13, 2020, 11:16 AM »

That's normal -- I have the image downloading turned off.. If I turn it on it will look closer to the actual capture of the html, but it would be downloading the images to view them in the preview, which I'm not sure people want and not sure really what the point is.
Remember that CHS is not like a web-page-archiving tool.. There are some of those that download an entire web page and all of it's associated images for offline use.. That's not going to be something that CHS does.

For that you might try the Local Website Archive tool: https://www.aignes.com/lwa.htm

I'd like to hear more from you about how you'd like to use CHS so we can figure out what features might be most important and usable.

mouser · « **Reply #22 on:** February 13, 2020, 03:21 PM »

I've got a big TODO list related to the multiformat stuff, some harder than others.
I'd love to hear what people think are their top priorities for using this new extended format version.

djMot · « **Reply #23 on:** February 13, 2020, 07:38 PM »

Here is one of your competitor's html preview of the same clip I used in my last post. Given the choice, I'd take fidelity in clip reproduction over whatever it is you're going for. When I look at what you are previewing, especially after a few days have gone by, I'd probably be scratching my head over what it was that I was clipping. This one here doesn't leave me with a rash at all.

(sorry, I really haven't figured out how to attach a full-size image in here)

Clipboard Help+Spell Extended Clipboard Format Data Discussion Thread

mouser · « **Reply #24 on:** February 13, 2020, 09:43 PM »

A question to users regarding saving image data:

When I added image clip support to CHS, I implemented it by saving image clips to stand alone standard image files (png typically), stored in a subdirectory organized by date.
I think there are some real advantages of this over storing raw image data in the standard clip database:

Saving images in standard external files makes it easier to browse and view them with a 3rd party viewer, search/filter by date, size, etc.
Keeps the database size more manageable.
Is less prone to data corruption.
Ability to store images in smaller compressed image file formats

But now that I'm adding support for storing larger blobs of binary data in the database, I'd be curious if folks would prefer to have image data stored in the normal clip database as well? Is there any point in adding support for this option?
I can't think of any (other than it would have been easier to implement from the start but that's moot at this point).