Recent Posts

326

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: PhraseExpress v8, Pro Edition, on BdJ, Tuesday 12 April, 2011

« Last post by tranglos on September 17, 2011, 01:51 PM »

PhraseExpress offers exactly this feature for a long time: http://manual.phraseexpress.com#caps

:-)

-BartelsMedia (September 17, 2011, 01:08 PM)

Ah, indeed, my apologies! But this turns into another problem for me - I'll post details on your support forum. Thanks!

327

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: PhraseExpress v8, Pro Edition, on BdJ, Tuesday 12 April, 2011

« Last post by tranglos on September 17, 2011, 12:05 PM »

Hi folks, we will look into the hidden program window issue. We gladly inform you about improvements in PhraseExpress and new versions. Please sign the spam-free newsletter to stay tuned for news about product releases: http://newsletter.phraseexpress.com.

-BartelsMedia (September 15, 2011, 10:24 AM)

Michael, thank you for sticking with us here May I make a request? I have reinstalled PhraseExpress because, even though I cannot use it for conditional app launching that I do with AHK, I still wanted to try out TypoLearn, which seems like an awesome idea (and I do make a lot of typos).

So this is where I noticed that PE does not seem to support another feature that's crucial to me: adjusting the letter case of the expansion phrase to the typed abbreviation. Many text expanders support it and I was surprised to see it missing from PE. Ideally, it should work like this:

You define a basic, case-insensitive expansion:

shtt = say Hi to Tom for me!

This is a snippet that could be used at the beginning of a sentence, but it might as well appear in the middle.

a) If the abbreviation is typed in all lowercase (shtt), expand it exactly as defined. (I.e., do not force it to all lowercase, the above example shows why)

b) If the abbreviation is typed in all UPPERCASE (SHTT), expand it to all uppercase, OR (perhaps more usefully), Capitalize Each Word (title case).

c) If the abbreviation begins with a capital letter (Shtt), capitalize the first letter of the expanded text ("Say Hi to Tom")

In my line of translation work (software localization) I'm finding plenty of expressions that, in my language, can be used in various contexts. But even in English you can come up with lots of simple, useful cases:

faq = frequently asked questions (just a generic phrase in the middle of sentence)
FAQ = Frequently Asked Questions (title case, though not all languages use that spelling)
Faq = Frequently asked questions (beginning of a sentence).

I have dozens of phrases such as these. PE can import my AHK expansions, but it seems to me that at the moment I would have to manually duplicate my expansions to create two or three case-specific versions of each. I would rather avoid that, because it's going to nearly triple the number of expansions, making them much harder to maintain.

Basically, instead of the "case-sensitive" checkbox, I would suggest a drop-down box with three options:

- case insensitive
- case sensitive
- adjust case to abbreviation.

Do you think this is feasible near term? Thanks a lot for listening!

(Reposted on PhraseExpress support forum)

328

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: PhraseExpress v8, Pro Edition, on BdJ, Tuesday 12 April, 2011

« Last post by tranglos on September 15, 2011, 10:04 AM »

Last week I came across the first situation where PE couldn't deliver -- I was trying to create a shortcut to restore a program hidden in the system tray. PE can't do this, AHK can.

-johnk (September 15, 2011, 09:33 AM)

Aaargh! That's exactly where I am stuck right now, too. Using AHK, bought a PE license on BdJ way back when. Would love to switch from AHK to a more GUI-fied environment to easier create and manage my expansions, which are — well — expanding.

But I don't want to run two apps that both use low-level keyboard hooks, because it's asking for trouble, it's confusing in the long run, and a waste of resources.

In AHK I have a lot of little macros that go like this:

[Select]

ASSIGN the following to WIN+W:

IF (a window named "Word" already exists) THEN
    ACTIVATE (the existing window named "Word")
ELSE
    LAUNCH "c:\whatever\winword.exe"

Straight text expansion-type apps cannot do this, because it requires logic processing, hence a built-in macro language. So I've tried and rejected these so far:

Macro Toolsworks: awfully expensive and way too complex for my needs. I find that I don't ever need to actually record any macros in the first place. Plus, weird, overcomplicated syntax such as <command>(parameters) And, to define a simple text expansion item, you have to use 4 (four!) tabs. Sometimes I wonder, you know? Four tabs, only a small handful of settings on each, and there is no way to see all the settings at once. If you are looking at the abbreviation, you cannot see the activation key (or prefix, whatever). Sometimes I really wonder.

Macro Express Pro: also expensive, a really inconvenient UI for my taste, but the worst thing about it is their implementation of the actual text expansion feature. You can choose whether to use a prefix key or a suffix key in preferences, and it is applied to all expansions. At least this is how it works in ShortKeys, their smaller edition of MEPro. Unusable. (Unfortunately I managed to forget all about it after I installed the trial, which has now expired, so I cannot swear that the full Macro Express Pro edition has the same limitation. But I don't like the Outlook-like their "Save and Close" UI idiom anyway, too much hassle to define something as simple as a text expansion item. No go.)

Quick Macros: had a lot of hope for this one, but the macro language syntax is from hell, and their implementation of text expansion also seems badly designed. You create special "menus" (except they are not real menus) and then... see for yourself. It certainly didn't seem easier, faster or more GUI-fied than AHK.

For basic text expansion, I would choose Breevy. Its one annoyance is the jumpy bottom panel (why not just leave it in place?), but it's fast, lightweight, very clear on what it does and its expansion options cover all bases. It can also adapt character case to the case of the abbreviation you typed, so that "gm" becomes "good morning", but "Gm" is "Good morning". A critical feature, which AHK supports, but not all expanders do.

But, Breevy doesn't do hotkeys and certainly won't support conditional statements.

Meanwhile, AHK does it all flawlessly, using a tiny amount of resources, *but* it's getting harder and harder to navigate the growing script, ensure there are no duplicate abbreviations, etc. I'd really welcome a nice, lightweight GUI with all the scripting power of AHK and a human-friendly syntax I could actually memorize!

329

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo

« Last post by tranglos on September 12, 2011, 09:01 AM »

@tranglos, first congratulation on "Ethervane Echo" pledge.

Second I pledged "Paste Text Like", which works with clipboard too, so we are both in same boat now :)

-anandcoral (September 12, 2011, 06:26 AM)

I've noticed! The more, the merrier. The clipboard seems to be a fairly simple concept on the surface, but when you start extending its capabilities, different people go in so many different directions. It's quite cool that way.

Without making "Ethervane Echo" any lesser than "ArsClip", I will like to say that you can open the ArsClip menu at cursor position (set hotkey in Configure) and can increase the number of item (Configure / Show Options). It does has search feature (N - Search, in menu). Permanent clip with script, edit clipboard, exclude program, paste method, form mode etc. are few others which I use occasionally.

Yeah, I only remember testing a version of ArsClip a long time ago. I haven't looked recently. Excluding applications is already available in Echo, too - that's one of the things I was missing in Ditto.  Still, a menu cannot have multi-line items, for example, and if there is a special menu command to initiate search, it's probably not the kind of "instant search" that I am after. (OK, so I'm talking without seeing it again, never mind :-)

330

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo

« Last post by tranglos on September 11, 2011, 05:31 PM »

I strongly feel that the navigation commands should be buttons on the toolbar.

-superboyac (September 07, 2011, 06:02 PM)

I agree as a general principle. At the same time, I am not yet convinced Echo actually needs a toolbar. It's meant to be keyboard-centric, and I kind-of like the sparse UI it has right now. Then again, a toolbar can always be hidden, so I'm adding a to-do!

A very cool feature to add to the editor is the ability to highlight search terms.  It's already awesome how the non-matches disappear (like evernote), but to make it perfect, the search terms would be highlighted individually.

I'll be looking into this, but right now, the control I'm using does not support that. Also, it might impact performance rather badly. But I agree that it would be sweet.

I can see of one use: trying to copy a portion of a clip already in the program.

Quite right. I'll probably redesign that part to have an option whether or not to capture clips from "inside" Echo.

This does involve a small usability problem though. You select a clip, press Shift+F2 to open it in the editor. When you finish editing, the clip is still selected - which is what you would typically expect. However, if new clips are added while you are editing the clip, then those new clips will get selection focus. At that point it is no longer obvious whether the original clip should be re-selected when you finish editing... which is why I decided to suspend capture during editing in the first place.

In the regular view, you can't highlight a portion of the note without opening the external editor.  In fact, if you made the stuff in the regular view selectable, you wouldn't even need an external editor.

It is selectable when editing (F2). But there is only so much I can do with "in-place" editor. I could make it permanent, but consider the price: you would not be able to navigate between clips using arrow keys any more. Imagine: you press down arrow, enter the clip, and the editor is active, so that you can navigate within it, select a part of it, etc.  If the clip has more than one line, you would have to press down arrow repeatedly to go past all the lines before you would reach the next (lower) clip. Navigation would become rather annoying. And since this is a clipboard manager, not an editor or a note-taker, I feel that the usability of clip navigation has priority over editing.

But I'd really like to be able to select and copy a portion of a clip without having to double-click on it first, or open up an editor, or any extra steps.

I don't think you can avoid at least one extra step[, otherwise you'd have the navigation nightmare. One thing I could use is the "long click" idiom, or a second click on the same item. Click an icon on the desktop, it selects the icon. Click it again after a short delay, the caption opens for editing. I can do that.

And when I copy that subclip, I'd like the option in the preferences to record or ignore copied subclips.  i would set it to record everything including subclips.

The preference, yes. But in the in-place editor the selection issue is even more problematic. A new clip automatically gets selected (and usually placed on top, if you're sorting by date). Consider what that would do if you were editing a clip: select some text, copy it, and in the blink of an eye you are now at the top of the list, with the new clip selected. And it's not just a question of "so don't select the new clip" - you cannot add a new clip to the list without first shutting down the active editor. (At least I don't think it's possible, but I'll check.) When you press F2, a memo-like editor is "invisibly" placed over the clip, so it looks like you're editing the item directly in the list. But you're not: you're working in a little invisible memo. As long as that memo exists, you cannot modify the list in any way (again, I think you can't).

Another feature I'd love to have (as in CHS and Arsclip) is a quickpaste menu for pasting stuff.  So with CHS and ARSclip, with a hotkey, you can have a quickpaste menu appear right under your mouse pointer which is awesome.

I thought the menu in Arsclip was awful! :-) I mean, the menu can show only a small number of items, it cannot be searched or filtered, plus IIRC Arsclip puts it in the tray, which is usually far from where the caret is. So why or how would you use that instead of the main list in Echo? (For example, should the menu contain only certain clips that you mark for inclusion?)

As for the positioning, Echo already tries to show up right next to the caret - or the mouse pointer, if the caret is not available. This doesn't always work; in some cases Echo doesn't seem to detect the caret position, I'll have to look into that at some point.

Also, how about an option to show the entire note in the normal view, regardless of the length.  I know we can set it to a big value, but how about just a "always show entire note" setting?

...and then you open "Moby Dick" in a PDF, do Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C... No, I think there has to be a limit. Because if you did that, it would totally kill the search feature - it would take a full minute or so to update the list instead of a split second. Just set it to a really large value if you wish, please :-) .

331

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo

« Last post by tranglos on September 11, 2011, 04:54 PM »

• have you thought about drag-and-drop or Move to ... ? The possibility of moving a clip from one Quick view to another (and in particular to a custom view, e.g. Archives) either by drag-and-drop or an option in the context menu to Move to ... As things are the Quick views can only contain filtered clips.

-joiwind (September 08, 2011, 12:38 PM)

I'm not sure if I understand your request here. Views are by design defined by a set of conditions. So it wouldn't make sense to drag a non-sticky clip to the "Sticky" view, for example. Just make the clip sticky, and it will appear in that view. Or, if you have a view that sows only clips shorter than 10 characters, it would be illogical to allow dragging longer clips into that view.

If you mean more like manually maintained categories to organize clips - then I'm afraid Echo is designed specifically to avoid that. There are several advanced clipboard managers with that feature, from Mouser's CH&S to ClipMate, and of course it is very useful to a lot of people. However, I feel this design has a trade-off: reduced overall efficiency of searching and pasting clips. Since I spend many (too many!) hours typing text every day, I needed an app that would let me work as fast as possible. So Echo will never have categories to which you can drag or copy clips, that's exactly the feature that would make it unusable to me.

• and what about clickable urls ?

-joiwind (September 08, 2011, 12:38 PM)

Inside the editor, possibly (I will probably be replacing the editor with a different component altogether). But I don't think this can be done in the main list of clips, sorry! Basically, a clip is a single entity, a single item. You navigate between these items (clips), not inside the text of each clip. So it is physically impossible to click just a URL inside a clip - you can only click the whole clip.

I am wondering though if Echo could detect URLs inside a clip and list them in the right-click menu. Or have a special command / key press to find URLs and show them in a popup list.

(Of course, if a clip contains only a URL, it would be easy to launch it with a single click or key press. But very often URLs will be buried inside surrounding text, or you may have more than one URL in a clip, etc. Any feature to handle URLs must account for all these possibilities.)

BTW the way, unless I missed it somewhere, could you comment on the name : is it Ethervane like weathervane ?

-joiwind (September 08, 2011, 12:38 PM)

Exactly! It's just a word I came up with when looking for a free domain name.

332

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo

« Last post by tranglos on September 08, 2011, 12:06 PM »

if it's not too much hassle that would be great

-tomos link=topic=27849.msg261177#msg261177

One other thing: by default Echo minimizes when it loses focus. So instead of clicking the small button - whether minimize or close - you can just click anywhere on screen to get the same end result.

333

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo

« Last post by tranglos on September 08, 2011, 11:48 AM »

This often takes a good while to actually happen. I noticed it not happening, then checked a few times after pasting - once it happened promptly, then it didnt seem to be happening at all

-tomos (September 08, 2011, 08:02 AM)

Great, you've found the first bug!

I have no idea where or why I removed the screen refresh after pasting - will have to fix that.

-tranglos (September 08, 2011, 11:21 AM)

OK, I've found the problem - there is a conflict with an option setting I've added most recently that results in certain behaviors occurring in the wrong order. Until I release an update, you can work around this bug like so:

Tools -> Preferences -> Display -> DefaultViewOnMinimize -> set to False.

When set to True, this option causes Echo to return to the default (leftmost) view when the app is minimized (e.g., when Echo hides after pasting a clip). And yes, it interferes with pushing the pasted clip to the top of the list (in a situation where the current view is already the default one).

If you set this option to False at least temporarily, the problem you found will go away. Meanwhile, I'll be working on a proper fix.

334

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo

« Last post by tranglos on September 08, 2011, 11:23 AM »

I think it would be helpful if the close button minimised it to the tray. Or maybe it's just what I'm used to with apps that stay in the tray?

-tomos (September 08, 2011, 06:10 AM)

I never use that myself (I use the minimize button for that :-) but I can add this as an option, no problem.

335

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo

« Last post by tranglos on September 08, 2011, 11:21 AM »

I've made a couple of clips sticky, but how do I get to the sticky tab? (Without the mouse I mean). Tabkey toggles just list & search.

-tomos (September 08, 2011, 08:02 AM)

Several ways:

Ctrl+Tab and Shift+Ctrl+Tab

Ctrl+PageUp and Ctrl+PageDown

Ctrl+1 .. Ctrl+0 will switch immediately to the view that corresponds to the number. (This only works for the first 10 views). In Preferences you can choose to use Alt+<digit> combinations if you prefer: Keyboard -> QuickViewModifier -> choose qvmAlt.

It says in the help file
"bring up Echo ... notice that the clip you have just pasted is now the first one on top."
This often takes a good while to actually happen. I noticed it not happening, then checked a few times after pasting - once it happened promptly, then it didnt seem to be happening at all, but did happen eventually i.e. it didnt happen within the first 10 to 15 seconds after pasting.

-tomos (September 08, 2011, 08:02 AM)

Great, you've found the first bug!

This used to work fine, but in the current version there is indeed a problem. The reason the clip you just pasted does not move to the top is that the list of clips does not get updated. Try it: if you switch to a different tab and back, the clip will now be on top as it should. I have no idea where or why I removed the screen refresh after pasting - will have to fix that.

Just to be sure I'm on the right track: select a clip but instead of pressing Enter, press Ctrl+C. This will only copy the clip (without pasting) and Echo will stay open. The clip you have copied should move to the top immediately.

336

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo

« Last post by tranglos on September 07, 2011, 04:58 PM »

No bug reports yet - this could be either good or bad, depending :)

This is where I could use some ideas. The basic design of Echo was quite firmly set, but there are a few areas where I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted:

1. The clip list context menu: too small? Too large? Any important commands missing? Or could the order of commands be improved? (For example, I tried to keep the Delete command away from other most commonly used commands such as Sticky and Edit, to avoid situations where you might accidentally delete a clip by a slip of the mouse. Any comments are welcome.)

2. The "Navigate" section in the main menu doesn't seem to be pulling its weight. Perhaps the menu could be done away with entirely, and the commands distributed under other sections of the menu?

3. The editor (Shift+F2): apart from spell-check, which is coming, is there anything else that could be useful? This isn't meant to be a fully-featured editor, but I can do a few things there. Is the context menu enough, or would anyone prefer a toolbar?

4. Do you think it's a good idea to suspend capturing clips while the editor is active? Any scenario under which you would want to capture text copied from the Shift+F2 editor?

Also, please let me know if you find that Echo (a) isn't capturing something it should, or (b) has trouble pasting into a certain application. I have tested with plenty of apps, but now that it's out in the open, new issues may appear.

Any suggestions and ideas are very welcome. Now is a good time! :)

337

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo

« Last post by tranglos on September 06, 2011, 08:24 AM »

Great work, tranglos.  Those screenshots are awesome!

-kyrathaba (September 06, 2011, 07:59 AM)

Thanks! I was also going to create a how-to video, but it's tricky to show the workings of a program that sits in the tray and does nothing visible most of the time I'll probably add a video on configuring views and choosing clipboard formats, because these aspects may deserve some explanation.

What flavor of database does your program use, just out of curiosity?

-kyrathaba (September 06, 2011, 07:59 AM)

The database is SQLite - very fast and does not require a server. (Ditto and Firefox use it as well.) The specific implementation is DISQLite3, a commercial Delphi component. The benefit is that the database is built right into the application, so no DLLs and much faster execution.

338

General Software Discussion / Re: Flexible List (data) Management - ListPro and the Alternatives

« Last post by tranglos on September 06, 2011, 07:05 AM »

Hi, unfortunately the image doesn't load for me. (Domain unregistered. The one with the frog.)

-Paul Keith (September 06, 2011, 06:50 AM)

How about now?

339

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: Batch m3u8 creator - similar to createm3u

« Last post by tranglos on September 05, 2011, 12:18 PM »

m3u8 files are basically unicode-friendly versions of .m3u playlist files.
The different (AFAIK) between m3u and m3u8 files is: m3u is ANSI  m3u8 is UTF-8 files compatible with foreign languages.

-stisev (September 05, 2011, 12:35 AM)

In my experience you can save m3u files as UTF-8 and they still work with the likes of Winamp or AIMP2.

I have written a tiny command-line utility to create a file called playlist.m3u from an alphabetically sorted list of all mp3 / ogg / wav files in a folder. The resulting file extension is m3u, but the file is encoded as UTF-8 if any of the filenames contains trans-ASCII characters. I use it with Total Commander, because it lets me easily execute a command-line program in a specific folder. Let me know if it is something you could find useful!

340

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo

« Last post by tranglos on September 04, 2011, 07:06 AM »

Thanks for the love everyone

One more tip that may be useful at the beginning: Echo can import clips from plain text files and from a Ditto database. (If importing from a plain text file, each line of text will become a separate clip.) Importing doesn't seem to have a lot of practical value in the long run, but it does let you populate the database, providing some initial data to play with.

Tools -> Import Clips -> From Ditto
Tools -> Import Clips -> From Text File

341

General Software Discussion / Re: Realtime backups

« Last post by tranglos on September 04, 2011, 06:02 AM »

"one version every hour during one day's time, one version every day for the last month, and finally one version per month for the last year"

I really like that approach, not seen it implemented elsewhere

-iphigenie (September 04, 2011, 05:19 AM)

Apple's Time Machine uses that regime and yes, it seems very neat.

342

General Software Discussion / Re: Any better Clipboard program.

« Last post by tranglos on September 03, 2011, 04:44 PM »

I humbly submit one more

(Text only, no frills, my personal variation on Ditto)

343

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo

« Last post by tranglos on September 03, 2011, 04:18 PM »

A few tips:

- Right-click everything to show context menus. The list of clips and the tabs at the bottom have their own, useful context menus.

- To search for clips, do not tab into the search box or click it with the mouse (you can, but there is no need). Just start typing any part of the text you are looking for.

- Press Ctrl+S to mark a clip (or multiple clips) as "sticky". Sticky clips cannot be deleted until you un-sticky them, and they are never removed when Echo purges the database.

- Press F4 to cycle between search modes. In Basic mode, Echo will search for the text you enter, exactly as typed. In Wildcards mode, you can use wildcards * and ?, for example *foo?bar*. In Advanced mode, you can use complex logical expressions: (foo OR bar) AND NOT baz. (Enclose phrases in double quotes: "foo bar" AND baz)

- Click Tools -> Available Clipboard Formats to specify which additional data formats you want Echo to store. Some applications register their own, custom data formats, which you may want to preserve.

- You can configure five metric tons of settings, including max number of clips in the database, min and max length of clips that will be captured, max length of the display text, or where Echo's main window should be positioned when you bring it up with the activation hotkey (Win+Insert by default). Press F5 to open the Preferences dialog box, and ask here if you need help.

- You can select and paste multiple clips in Echo.

- Privacy feature  #1: you can specify applications (exe names) from which Echo should never capture clips. Tools -> Preferences -> Application filter -> Items

- Privacy feature  #2: you can tell Echo to store its database in memory only. That way, clips are remembered only during the current session, and are lost forever when you exit Echo. Particularly useful for public computers and if you're running Echo off a USB drive, because frequent database writes would affect the lifetime of flash memory. Tools -> Preferences -> Database -> InMemoryDatabase -> close and restart Echo.

- Privacy feature  #3: if you do use the "in-memory database feature", you can still preserve certain clips you know you will need. Start off with the normal,. on-disk database, and add the clips you want to always have available. Then enable the in-memory database feature as described above, and also enable "CopyDiskImageToMemory". Echo will add new clips to the memory database, but first it will copy all clips from the disk db to the memory db.

- Use the views! Click the tabs at bottom to browse through the predefined views. You can delete them, modify them and create your own. Views are used to limit the clips displayed in the list - for example, to show only clips captured today, or only clips that are URLs, etc. These filters can be combined ("show only clips captured from Firefox, Chrome, opera or IE"). Views also define the way clips are sorted. All the details on views are in the help file.

344

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / NANY 2012 Release: Ethervane Echo

« Last post by tranglos on September 03, 2011, 03:37 PM »

NANY 2012 Entry Information

Application Name	Ethervane Echo
Version	1.1.3 (new version May 9)
Short Description	Lightweight clipboard extender for text
Supported OSes	Windows XP, Vista, 7 and later
Home page	tranglos.com
Download	standard version (installer) portable version (zip file)
Download spelling dictionaries	standard version (installer) portable version (zip file) See here for info on downloading and installing the spelling dictionaries.
System Requirements	No special requirements. Win XP and later only!
Description	Clipboard extender (manager) designed to speed up typing repetitive text. For writers, translators and coders. Fast and lightweight, with instant search. Captures text in all formats, but does not capture clips that do not contain text (e.g,. bitmaps).
Features	Clean, streamlined interface Super-fast instant search with filtering Search using wildcards and advanced logical expressions Can be used in portable mode (download separate package or modify the master.config file as described in Help) Virtual views with user-defined sort order and filters (e.g. show only clips captured within the last hour, show only sticky clips, show only clips that were copied from Firefox, etc.) Automatic positioning of the program window next to text caret or mouse cursor Clear, configurable display with text wrapping and variable item height Fully Unicode-enabled Privacy features, including ability to store clips in memory only Ability to ignore clips from certain applications Automatic database maintenance Importing and exporting clips Editing clips directly ("in-place") or in separate editor window (now includes spell checker for over 20 languages) Written in Delphi XE, the best edition of Delphi ever!
Screenshots
Installation	Standard version: Download and run the installer package. Portable version: Download the portable package and extract all files from the zip archive into any directory to which you have write permission. (That means NOT under "Program Files!) Run "ethervaneecho.exe" to start the app. Tip: Database performance depends on the speed of your hard disk. If using the portable version, install it on the fastest disk you have.
Using the application	Start Echo and it will begin capturing clips. Press Win+Insert (configurable) to bring up the main window. Scroll or find a clip, then press Enter to paste it into the active application window. See the Help file for details.
Uninstalling	Desktop version: Use the Control Panel to uninstall. (Uninstaller will not delete the data and configuration files, because it does not create them when installing. At the moment they must be deleted manually. Find them in application data folder for the logged-in user, under "Ethervane\EthervaneEcho") Portable version: Delete the application folder. Configuration and database files are stored under this folder as well.
Known Issues	See topics "Bugs and Known Issues" and "Limitations" in the Help file.
New in this release (1.1.3)	Fixed a bug that would cause use count to be unnecessarily incremented in some situations,. e.g. when capturing duplicate clips.

Okaaaay, so... another clipboard manager? Really? I guess :)

When I first discovered clipboard managers ages ago (early versions of Yankee Clipper and ClipMate back then) I loved the idea but couldn't imagine how I could fit such a utility into my workflow. Many years later I was enlightened when I discovered Ditto. For the first time I had all clips at my fingertips, in a single-pane UI, and a super-fast search to find them. I was happy, and my translation work became decidedly more efficient.

A few years went by and some of (what I think are) Ditto's shortcomings were irking me more and more. Excruciatingly slow delete and purge operations. Minuscule, non-configurable font in the search box, which at #over40 I can hardly read. Lack of privacy features. When I wrote down all that was giving me pain in Ditto, I listed about a dozen items. It was time to improve on it.

So, yes, Ethervane Echo rips off Ditto's UI without shame, because it's the best UI for me. In fact, it is so different from Mouser's Clipboard Help and Spell that the two hardly compete with each other. Echo is purely a clipboard extender - nothing more. No categories, no folders, no note-taking or web clipping facilities are available or planned. Also, it will only capture text - not images or any other binary data. This is the intended design of the app. I started by modeling the UI after Ditto, ignoring features I did not need and adding a good number of features I'd always wanted to have. The result is superficially similar to Ditto, so much so any Ditto user should feel comfortable with Echo, but tailored to the requirements of a translator drone who types volumes of repetitive text over and over. Technical writers and coders should have a field fay with it, too - or so I hope.

My last year's NANY submission was released well before its time (and yes, there will be an update of Radio rather soon). This year I wanted to release a package that was reasonably ready for human consumption, so Echo comes with a spell-checker, a complete help file and an installer. See download links above.

Right now Echo is a beta release, because I've only used it on my development machine so far, even though I haven't encountered any crashes or other kill-joy errors since it captured its first clip in March. It's never been run on 64-bit Windows though, so that may bring some surprises. Please post here if Echo misbehaves for you.

345

General Software Discussion / Re: alternative to filehamster?

« Last post by tranglos on July 24, 2011, 03:29 PM »

^ "[FileHamster] is set to make revisions not more often than every 5 minutes"
I didnt know you could regulate that in FH, must check it out.

-tomos (July 24, 2011, 02:51 PM)

The option is called TimeDelayBetweenRevisions, in the "Document" section of the Options dialog. FH will wait at least this long before making a new revision. Useful if you hit Ctrl+S compulsively but don't want to have revisions made every 20 seconds or so

There is of course a potential problem scenario:

1. Save your file (revision is made)
2. Make some more changes in the next minute or so
3. Save the file (revision is not made - file saved too soon after last revision)
4. Close your document.
Result: the last revision FH made is NOT the final version of your file.

As I understand it, FH handles such situations well: after TimeDelayBetweenRevisions has elapsed, it checks the file and creates a revision if it has changed. At least I think it does - a simple experiment will verify.

346

General Software Discussion / Re: alternative to filehamster?

« Last post by tranglos on July 24, 2011, 01:42 PM »

I can understand using version control in team scenarios, but at best it would be a necessary pain. No way would I ever voluntarily use such a cramp-inducing environment for anything else.

-tranglos (July 24, 2011, 12:27 PM)

Unless you're doing some very wacky stuff to your source code folders, the annoyance of having to go through svn (or git or hg or bzr or ...) commandline utils or whatever GUI tools is minimal compared to the benefits you reap. Like mouser, I wouldn't recommend using it for non-development stuff, but for development stuff? It's a no-brainer, really, even when you're not working in a team.

-f0dder (July 24, 2011, 01:08 PM)

I guess where we disagree is whether the inconvenience is really minimal viz. the benefits. As a single, hobby developer, I feel I'm getting very little from source control, while renaming files is something I do several times a day, esp. as I progressively get a better understanding of how my classes need to be designed and laid out.

The main area where I would like to see **some** benefits is a common situation where you have several projects all of which use the same core library - all the utility code you develop as you go and expect to use in pretty much everything you write. This is the only scenario where I have been bitten hard: working on a new project B I make changes to the library which break an older project A. And I only find out about that when I try to build project A, months or years later. It's nearly impossible in practice to match a stored state of the library with a stored state of a project. When I realized SVN wasn't helping with that at all, that was when I gave up on it entirely.

(But I've veered quite off the thread here. Obligatory OT: I'm still using FileHamster, haven't noticed it missing any files, but then I have never needed to revert, so far It's set to make revisions not more often than every 5 minutes. I think I'm tolerating it only because I almost never need to interact with it...)

347

General Software Discussion / Re: alternative to filehamster?

« Last post by tranglos on July 24, 2011, 12:27 PM »

I don't think version control software is well set up for this use.  Not that you couldn't use a version control system to try to simulate it, but think about what that would mean -- having version control scan a multi gigabyte drive/documentfolder for all changes, every 2 minutes and creating a new commit every 2 minutes, etc.  That's just not practical with any version control system I know of, and this kind of automatic rapid backup is key to being able to recover from unexpected problems -- you do not simply want to be able to rollback to the last manual commit you remembered to run.

-mouser (July 24, 2011, 11:37 AM)

That's one good reason, here's another: I admit I've only tried SVN, but once you commit to it (pun intended), you lock yourself out of your preferred file manager. File renames, file deletes or moves must be done through SVN only. This riles me to no end, particularly at early stages of a code project, where frequent renaming and rearranging files is part of the process.

I found that I cannot live with this, especially as SVN's right-click menu is so much inferior to the ease of use I have in Total Commander... but even Windows Explorer is preferable to **that**.  

So my version control consists in manually zipping up a source code folder and naming the zip file with the date and build number. I have a personal rule that says only zip up the folder if the code compiles (known bugs are OK). Using SVN's file management is just too much of a pain.

TC can search and run a comparison on files inside zip archives, so if I do need to compare or merge, which is quite rare, I can still do it with zip files.

I can understand using version control in team scenarios, but at best it would be a necessary pain. No way would I ever voluntarily use such a cramp-inducing environment for anything else.

348

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: TrueCrypt Alternate GUI for Windows

« Last post by tranglos on May 27, 2011, 01:06 PM »

I am pushing for using TrueCrypt in a specific way on company laptops, which involves prompting users to mount a volume directly after Windows logon.  The stock TrueCrypt UI is perfectly functional, but not as fast and friendly as you might expect an app that you use each day.

What I am looking for is a replacement app that allows users to use keyboard and mouse to enter the required password and keyfile as fast as possible.

-AaronCompNetSys (February 24, 2010, 03:29 PM)

I don't use a keyfile with TC volumes, but it seems to me that the fastest way is

(1) hit Enter on a *.tc file in a file manager;
(2) hit Enter again (in TC now) to mount the volume;
(3) type the password and hit Enter once more.

A shortcut to the TC file could be added to the Startup menu so that it pops up automatically, thus eliminating step (1).

On the other hand, once you have to use the mouse, it won't be the fastest possible method anymore

349

General Software Discussion / Re: MS Word Spell Checker - Selective Failure

« Last post by tranglos on May 24, 2011, 02:33 PM »

Is the language set correctly for the text? Have you tried Ctrl+A then set language (on the Review tab)?

350

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR window shrinks over time

« Last post by tranglos on May 08, 2011, 07:19 AM »

I could wear my wedding suit pants again!

-tranglos (May 07, 2011, 07:12 PM)

And your wife her morning dress?

-cranioscopical (May 07, 2011, 08:29 PM)

Mmm, it's just me, actually