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Last post Author Topic: NANY 2012 Release: Ethervane Echo  (Read 291259 times)

tranglos

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Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #75 on: November 28, 2011, 10:01 AM »
Thanks for the new version tranglos. May I add a suggestion (this may exist but I haven't found it) :

  • a hot key to connect/disconnect to clipboard

It doesn't exist, but it's on my to-do list with a big question mark icon next to it:

tododetail.png

The reason for the question mark is that, knowing my own fat fingers, I could press the hotkey unintentionally. When that happens, Echo will disconnect and I'll only find out about it when I need to paste something in. For that reason not only is there no hotkey, but not even a keyboard shortcut inside Echo.

I guess I should add the hotkey along with an option to disable it.

joiwind

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Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #76 on: November 28, 2011, 11:55 AM »
Thanks for the new version tranglos. May I add a suggestion (this may exist but I haven't found it) :

  • a hot key to connect/disconnect to clipboard

It doesn't exist, but it's on my to-do list with a big question mark icon next to it:
 (see attachment in previous post)
The reason for the question mark is that, knowing my own fat fingers, I could press the hotkey unintentionally. When that happens, Echo will disconnect and I'll only find out about it when I need to paste something in. For that reason not only is there no hotkey, but not even a keyboard shortcut inside Echo.

I guess I should add the hotkey along with an option to disable it.


Yes, good - I agree that there should be the option to disable it or not AND a significant change in the tray icon to reflect its state.

PS : what do you use as a to-do lister ? (Curious)

tranglos

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Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #77 on: November 28, 2011, 04:03 PM »
PS : what do you use as a to-do lister ? (Curious)

My Life Organized Pro. Not optimal for this task (e.g. can't include screenshots of bugs or link a particular idea under multiple headings), but quick and easy, and I already have it. I can't stand the internet-based bug-trackers, and for a single home developer they don't really make sense. MLO does a good thing with prioritizing tasks - one click and I see all the most urgent tasks on top.



joiwind

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Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #78 on: November 28, 2011, 04:13 PM »
PS : what do you use as a to-do lister ? (Curious)

My Life Organized Pro. Not optimal for this task (e.g. can't include screenshots of bugs or link a particular idea under multiple headings), but quick and easy, and I already have it. I can't stand the internet-based bug-trackers, and for a single home developer they don't really make sense. MLO does a good thing with prioritizing tasks - one click and I see all the most urgent tasks on top.

Thanks - I'm still looking for my ideal to-do ...

yksyks

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Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #79 on: November 30, 2011, 02:53 AM »
To the recently mentioned issue with mixed-up application icons:

I disabled the automatic minimizing on focus losing. The topmost clip is displayed correctly, until I start MS Excel 2003. Then the clip's icon is immediately changed to Excel regardless of what it has been before. So far I didn't discover any similarly behaving application.

Can you reproduce that? Do you need more details? Verified on two PCs, one WinXP, the other Vista 32-bit.

tranglos

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Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #80 on: November 30, 2011, 05:28 AM »
I disabled the automatic minimizing on focus losing. The topmost clip is displayed correctly, until I start MS Excel 2003. Then the clip's icon is immediately changed to Excel regardless of what it has been before. So far I didn't discover any similarly behaving application.

Yeah, Excel is an unending nuisance when it comes to clipboard. I cannot reproduce the exact behavior you describe with Excel 2007 on Win7, but in general, it is common to see this happen when Excel runs - so much so there is a long paragraph on that in the Help file (Useful Information -> Bugs and limitations).

In short, there is no way to be sure which application has just copied data to clipboard. You can only guess. Usually a good guess is the application that is active (has focus), because 99% of the time clipboard operations are initiated by the user. If you press Ctrl+C in an app, it has to be the active app, so Echo makes the correct guess, and gets the icon from the correct application.

Problems start when an application changes the clipboard without you doing anything. That's what Excel (sometimes) does. Perhaps version 2003 does that more than 2007. Basically, Echo sits there waiting until Windows tells it that clipboard contents have changed. You start Excel, and Excel rewrites the clipboard all by itself - that's a bad thing to do. Now Echo knows there is a change on the clipboard and when it checks, Excel is the active app, so it updates the new clip (which in this case is the same text that was on clipboard before) and grabs the icon from Excel.

So everything really works as it should: there is a clipboard change, Echo gets the notification and processes it. The problem is, Excel didn't really put anything new on the clipboard and it had no business messing around with it in the first place - but from Echo's point of view, it's just a clipboard change like any other.

There's no obvious solution beyond just giving up on collecting icons (but the source application name will still be changed to Excel, and the clip's date will be updated). I could do some special processing for Excel and ignore the change if the text on clipboard is the same as it was before. That would probably work, but then Echo would drop legitimate copy operations in Excel. For example:

1. You copy a cell in Excel
2. Then you realize you need the cell to be bold, so you press Ctrl+B.
3. Then you copy the cell again.

The workaround would cause Echo to ignore the second copy operation in (3).

Excel 2007 doesn't seem to be causing this problem on startup, but yes, I have seen the icon "shift" in other situations. Sometimes it happens in the opposite direction: you copy something in Excel and Echo catches it. Then you close Excel. As it shuts down, Excel again sometimes modifies the clipboard for no good reason. Echo detects the change, but by that time Excel's window is already gone, and another app's window is active. So Echo gets the icon of some completely unrelated app and replaces Excel icon with it. And again, there's not much I can do if Excel "fakes" a clipboard change just because it is starting or shutting down.

Ath

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Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #81 on: November 30, 2011, 06:15 AM »
That's what Excel (sometimes) does. Perhaps version 2003 does that more than 2007. Basically, Echo sits there waiting until Windows tells it that clipboard contents have changed. You start Excel, and Excel rewrites the clipboard all by itself - that's a bad thing to do.
Is there a possibility that this is caused by some Excel add-in installed on the users' system? Some VBA scripters take rogue steps 'to get it working', and never look back after that. :o

yksyks

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Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #82 on: November 30, 2011, 07:16 AM »
Oh yes, that's what I was afraid of... What you described makes perfect sense from any point of view, except the Microsoft's. Couldn't this issue be somehow connected to Office Clipboard? Of course I have it disabled, but still... I have no add-ins installed, as far as I know.

robbero

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Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #83 on: December 06, 2011, 12:50 PM »
Beautiful software :)
I left Ditto and changed to Ethervane Echo.

But... I searched for the always on top feature.

I often put the clipboard manager beside my text-editor and use keep it there.
(it would be nice just to have an icon at the top of ethervane echo (in the header) just to put the software on top (of/off click).
Something like this:
pin icon

(please also for win xp)


robbero

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Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #84 on: December 06, 2011, 02:17 PM »
And maybe an idea for futur versions:

programs from Ethervane Echo does not capture text
p.e. password managers

tranglos

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Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #85 on: December 06, 2011, 02:22 PM »
And maybe an idea for futur versions:
programs from Ethervane Echo does not capture text
p.e. password managers

Already possible - please see the Help file: Advanced Topics -> Privacy Considerations -> Excluding applications.

Also, good password managers should implement (and several do implement) a technique invented by the author of ClipMate for just that purpose. It relies on the password manager setting a special clipboard format CLIPBOARD_VIEWER_IGNORE when copying any sensitive data to clipboard. When Echo sees that special format, it doesn't capture the clip. You can check with the author of your password manager whether it uses this technique, and if not, ask them to do so. It's the best solution by far, and extremely easy to code.



tranglos

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Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #86 on: December 06, 2011, 02:26 PM »
Beautiful software :)
I left Ditto and changed to Ethervane Echo.

But... I searched for the always on top feature.

I often put the clipboard manager beside my text-editor and use keep it there.
(it would be nice just to have an icon at the top of ethervane echo (in the header) just to put the software on top (of/off click).

Well, Echo does not have a toolbar and it won't get one in the nearest future (maybe later). As for the stay-on-top feature itself, it's been requested before and it's on my to-do list. But, I'm getting some unusually weird behaviors when setting Echo's window to stay on top - looks like side effects of recent changes in the Delphi compiler. It used to be simple and problem free in earlier versions of Delphi, now it just produces some unacceptable side effects. If I can find a workaround, I'll add the feature.

(Echo does and will continue to work with XP. No earlier versions of Windows will be supported though, because they can't handle Unicode-enabled apps compiled in Delphi.)



robbero

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Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #87 on: December 07, 2011, 01:33 AM »
Thank you tranglos.

Excluding application works fine :)

on top question:
In my hotkeyP (a hotkey software) I added the shortcut WIN+O to put applications always on top. You're right. It does work in other applications but not in Echo.
I noted also that it doesn't refresh the new clips when echo is open.

I think its correct nog to add another toolbar.
I spoke about the "on top" icon in the actual window header.
(please see clipcube http://www.computera...0x358.jpg?1298897584)
« Last Edit: December 07, 2011, 02:14 AM by robbero »

limelect

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Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #88 on: December 22, 2011, 08:43 AM »
Can you make a "Real portable Application"?
"PortableApps.com"

PhilB66

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Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #89 on: December 22, 2011, 08:54 AM »
Can you make a "Real portable Application"?
"PortableApps.com"

That's a joke, right?

Ath

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Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #90 on: December 22, 2011, 09:00 AM »
Can you make a "Real portable Application"?
"PortableApps.com"

That's a joke, right?
Must be a joke, the installation instructions explicitly explain how to install the portable version :Thmbsup:

Oh, and a laugh for the (silly) joke ;D

panzer

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tranglos

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Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #92 on: December 28, 2011, 06:21 PM »
Can you make a "Real portable Application"?
"PortableApps.com"

Phil and Ath are right, Echo already is as portable as it can get :)

I was not sure what was involved in having it distributed via portableapps.com. I kind of assumed they were the ones actually packaging applications with their special installer. However, I have now seen there is some sort of API to follow, and a required directory structure to which Echo does not quite conform. So it's not a priority right now, I'll investigate further as time allows.

(There's already Ditto Portable there, too, so probably no need for another one.)


tranglos

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tranglos

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Re: NANY 2012 Release: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #94 on: December 29, 2011, 08:02 PM »
New version released December 30: 1.0.4.103

See the top post in this thread for download links.

This is the first non-beta release, just in time on the finish line! So not many new features this time, just a couple of hotkeys as requested and a few minor bug fixes.

What's new in this release:

ADDED: System-wide hotkey to paste clipboard contents as plain text. By default this action is assigned to Shift+Win+Insert. When you press this hotkey, Echo checks if the clipboard contains text. If so, Echo removes from clipboard all formats that are not plain text (in effect, "clears" the clipboard of any rich data) and performs a paste in whatever application is current. This gives you a "Paste as text" command in any Windows application that supports rich text editing. Useful especially when an application does not have such a command readily available. (Of course, Echo already had a "paste as text" command for the selected clip. This new feature works without opening Echo, and it operates only on current contents of the clipboard.)

ADDED: System-wide hotkey to clear clipboard contents. By default this action is assigned to Shift+Win+Delete. When you press this hotkey, Echo erases all data currently on clipboard. Useful when you want Windows to instantly "forget" whatever has been copied to clipboard last. (Of course the clip may still exist in Echo's database.)

FIXED: Broken in previous release: Delete key could no longer be used in the in-place editor. It can be now.

REMOVED: Dependency on the FastMM_FullDebugMode.dll library. This file is no longer needed, since the current release is no longer a debug build. If you are upgrading from an earlier version of Echo, you can delete this file manually in a file manager.
Miscellaneous internal fix-ups.

Happy clipping!

To everyone who asked for triggering items on 0-9 keys: I'm afraid this won't happen soon. I literally sat down to implement this, and then realized it requires a fairly major rewrite. Here's why: when you look at the Echo screen, it's really not at all easy to tell which item is seventh, say. Or whether an item you're looking at is fifth or sixth. Meaning, the feature is meaningless without Echo being able to display the actual digits next to each item (the way FARR does). While it may seem simple, it isn't quite, because the numbers are not part of each item's text: items get different numbers assigned to them (or none at all) whenever you scroll the view. Long story short, this requires a different (virtual) control to display the items, and changing that now pretty much means ripping everything open. Can't do that at the moment, but it is certainly a possibility.

joiwind

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Re: NANY 2012 Release: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #95 on: December 30, 2011, 07:37 AM »
Thanks for the new version tranglos and especially for :

FIXED: Broken in previous release: Delete key could no longer be used in the in-place editor. It can be now.

which really bothered me !

Happy new year and all.

tranglos

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Re: NANY 2012 Release: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #96 on: December 30, 2011, 10:58 AM »
Thanks for the new version tranglos and especially for :

FIXED: Broken in previous release: Delete key could no longer be used in the in-place editor. It can be now.
which really bothered me !

I know, my oversight. Sorry about that!


panzer

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Shades

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Re: NANY 2012 Release: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #98 on: December 31, 2011, 07:03 AM »
From the same site(addictivetips.com)...check number 44!  :Thmbsup:

rgdot

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Re: NANY 2012 Release: Ethervane Echo
« Reply #99 on: December 31, 2011, 10:42 AM »