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NANY 2012 Release: Ethervane Echo

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tranglos:
NANY 2012 Entry Information
Application Name Ethervane Echo Version 1.1.3 (new version May 9) Short DescriptionLightweight clipboard extender for textSupported OSes Windows XP, Vista, 7 and laterHome pagetranglos.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 RequirementsNo special requirements. Win XP and later only!DescriptionClipboard 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).
FeaturesClean, 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!

ScreenshotsNANY 2012 Release: Ethervane Echo

NANY 2012 Release: Ethervane Echo

NANY 2012 Release: Ethervane Echo

NANY 2012 Release: Ethervane Echo

NANY 2012 Release: Ethervane Echo

NANY 2012 Release: Ethervane Echo

NANY 2012 Release: Ethervane Echo

NANY 2012 Release: Ethervane Echo
InstallationStandard 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 applicationStart 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.

UninstallingDesktop 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 IssuesSee 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.

tranglos:
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.

rgdot:
First impressions, excellent stuff tranglos thank you  :up:

joiwind:
Testing now - looking very good indeed - thanks tranglos  :beerchug:

superboyac:
Wow, I am very much looking forward to this.  Tranglos is easily one of my favorite programmers; great ideas, great implementation, and my favorite adjective "elegant".  I'm going to compare this to two offerings from my other favorite programmers: CHS and AceText.

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