BUG? Second Past Always As Plain Text

[djMot]

It didn't work like this before the last update, so perhaps a bug introduced in the recent update?

Scenario:
I need to make several emails in Microsoft Outlook (Office 365 ProPlus) to different people.  The body of the email contains links and other formatting.  I copy from one email and post into another, new email.  The links and formatting all come along for the ride as expected.  I then copy the Subject from the first email and paste into the second.  That's a plain text field and the paste is successful as expected.  Now I go on to create yet another new email, but since I already have the body stuff in CHS, I paste from there.  This time it comes through as plain text; all links and formatting are stripped out.

It would seem that I can past something with links/formatting endlessly and it will all come through just fine until I copy something else, at which point the previous copy reverts to plain text.

Is there anything I (or you) can do about this?

At the start of this post I said it may be a problem with the new release, but honestly, I'm not 100% sure on that.  I've detected some inconsistencies with pasting formatted stuff into Outlook before, but I'm not sure what the problem or the pattern is that makes it not work.

[tomos]

This is the way CHS works. Only the last copied text pastes with formatting. After that, it's plain text. Whether it can be changed, I don't know.

[mouser]

Yep, what tomos said -- CHS stores plaintext only clips..  Having said that, perhaps it's finally time for me to add support for other formats..

[djMot]

@mouser - I sure wish you would!  I guess I was always a little confused why sometimes the copied item would go to plain text.  In a lot of cases, since the first paste is formatted as copied, I don't give it a second thought.  But then later, I end up wondering why I have to reformat, or recopy the source material. Now I know why.  It sure would be great if you maintained the source format, though.

[oblivion]

It sure would be great if you maintained the source format, though.

-djMot (January 15, 2020, 07:26 AM)

I actually make specific use of the talent of CHS to strip formatting out of heavily formatted pasted text, it's a useful feature to me, so if this is changed, I hope the current behaviour might be left accessible in some way!

[djMot]

In CHS Options | Hotkeys, I have "Paste last clip as plain text" set to Alt-V, and I use that a surprising amount of the time.

I should think this setting would survive even with the addition of keeping the source formatting as a default.

[tomos]

In CHS Options | Hotkeys, I have "Paste last clip as plain text" set to Alt-V, and I use that a surprising amount of the time.

I should think this setting would survive even with the addition of keeping the source formatting as a default.

-djMot (January 16, 2020, 11:59 AM)

yes, I end up having to use that quite often -- and think it would survive, but if older clips kept formatting it wouldnt work for them. Unless...
(1) there were two clipboards one could call up, one with & one without formatting;
or (2) there was one clipboard displayed and, say, Alt+[Number] pasted the relevant clip *with* formatting, while just the number would paste as plain text.

[mouser]

Right now when you use the quick paste menu you can right-click on a clip to get additional options for pasting and other actions, so you could always use that.. And of course there would be an option to only ever store plaintext clips.

[djMot]

In a perfect world:

• source formatting would be retained always.
• pasting with source formatting would be the default always (because that was what was actually copied).
• alternative paste formats would be available via hot key and/or right-click options.

imho.

[wraith808]

In a perfect world:

• source formatting would be retained always.
• pasting with source formatting would be the default always (because that was what was actually copied).
• alternative paste formats would be available via hot key and/or right-click options.

imho.

-djMot (January 17, 2020, 07:41 AM)

You could also have it as an option to scrub pastes or not.  Many might like the default to be plain text.  That's the way a few other clipboard managers handle it.

[mouser]

Yep.

[djMot]

Just curious, is this something we might see sometime soon?

[mouser]

I have been thinking about it more..
One concern I have is if CHS is storing all the clipboard data formats with each clip, the database size is going to get very huge very quickly.
I'd like to find a way to not have the clip database get too huge.. Maybe some kind of option to periodically (and on command) remove all but plaintext+image data from (older) clips..

[djMot]

Why the concern?

Disk space?
Hard drives are cheap these days.  Storage is plentiful.  Aside from the 1TB SSD I'm running the OS on, I've got 11TB online.  If you want to keep the primary storage device running lean, you could add a setting for locating your Recycle Bin (which I assume is different than the Windows Recycle Bin?) somewhere else, like on another drive. 

Scanning the CH+S data folders, I note that it's keeping a copy of all copied images in the Files\[year] folders, so there's a lot of space in use that I had never realized before.  Just an observation; I don't care that it's doing that.  It could be a space consideration for some, though.

Performance?
Don't know what db you're using, but a good indexing scheme should keep performance up.

You already have a setting to "Move from Clipboard Old to Recycle Bin after every X number of days" with a default of 90.  That should keep the main clips running snappy whether you retain source formatting for all clips or not.  Plus it puts the responsibility for keeping the data load on CH+S squarely in the users' laps (where it should be, btw).


I've been looking at some other clipboard managers, and for any of them that I'd actually consider using (mostly from an aesthetic point of view) they pretty universally keep the source formatting, with some of them maintaining multiple formats for each clip.  There seems to be only one other that has gotten pasting plain text by keyboard shortcut right.  You have an opportunity to rule for field here with this one.  That said, I do want to point out one glaring problem I see for CH+S, and that is that it seems to be an utterly unknown quantity in the clipboard management field.  Not a single google search result for "clipboard managers" I ran (typically filtered to a year or less) mentioned CH+S.  Clearly a lot of reviewers are missing one of the biggest diamonds out there.  None of the comments in these reviews ever mention CH+S either.  Suggestion: run a similar google search and reach out to the reviewers letting them know that they have missed something really good on their lists.

IMHO, the addition of a hotkey paste-as-plain-text, and retention of source formatting would make CH+S better than all the rest.  One possible exception, but a little competition is good.

[wraith808]

Disk space?
Hard drives are cheap these days.  Storage is plentiful.  Aside from the 1TB SSD I'm running the OS on, I've got 11TB online.  If you want to keep the primary storage device running lean, you could add a setting for locating your Recycle Bin (which I assume is different than the Windows Recycle Bin?) somewhere else, like on another drive. 

Scanning the CH+S data folders, I note that it's keeping a copy of all copied images in the Files\[year] folders, so there's a lot of space in use that I had never realized before.  Just an observation; I don't care that it's doing that.  It could be a space consideration for some, though.

-djMot (January 28, 2020, 08:30 AM)

For some that wouldn't be a consideration- but some use it in environments where space is at a premium.  I think that (like the other suggestion of making this the default) it should be an option.  I know that I use it on machines where I can't use that much space for various reasons.

[oblivion]

some use it in environments where space is at a premium.

-wraith808 (January 28, 2020, 09:25 AM)

For instance, on the encrypted thumbdrive I cart around with me...

[djMot]

some use it in environments where space is at a premium.

-wraith808 (January 28, 2020, 09:25 AM)

For instance, on the encrypted thumbdrive I cart around with me...

-oblivion (January 28, 2020, 09:48 AM)

Ah.  Yeah.  Never thought of thumbdrives.

There again, with a richer set of options, all things should be possible.