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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

[djMot]

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

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

Ah.  Yeah.  Never thought of thumbdrives.

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

[mouser]

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.

I'm convinced that a substantial reason for this is my horrible choice of naming the program.. The "Spell" part of the name is enough to turn people off, thinking it's not a general purpose tool.

I will try to get alternate format clip data added soon. It's time.  It will be an option of course.

Appreciate the encouragement and general positive comments about the program 

[tomos]

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.

I'm convinced that a substantial reason for this is my horrible choice of naming the program.. The "Spell" part of the name is enough to turn people off, thinking it's not a general purpose tool.

I will try to get alternate format clip data added soon. It's time.  It will be an option of course.

maybe you should have an official relaunch at that stage with only one name allowed ;-)
( I'd keep it simple, maybe just CHS )

[mouser]

Clipboard Captor would be the name I would choose now.. Perhaps with support for multiple formats it can evolve into Clipboard Captor..

Here's a question about clipboard formats.. Do people really care about supporting formats other than richtext format, like internal application formats?  Not sure it matters much -- if I go to the trouble of supporting additional formats I'd probably support them all, with an option to ignore all but plaintext or plaintext+richtext..

[oblivion]

Clipboard Captor would be the name I would choose now.. Perhaps with support for multiple formats it can evolve into Clipboard Captor..

...Mm. I can envisage an automagic link to the ScreenshotCaptor image repository, which would help to justify the name change, even if the use is relatively trivial...

Do people really care about supporting formats other than richtext format, like internal application formats?

Not really. I don't think.

(Maybe...)

Mm. It's an edge case. I might think about using it if it was there, perhaps if it was something that could be switched on and off for captures relatively easily, or via a dedicated keyboard shortcut...

[djMot]

Clipboard Captor would be the name I would choose now.. Perhaps with support for multiple formats it can evolve into Clipboard Captor..

Here's a question about clipboard formats.. Do people really care about supporting formats other than richtext format, like internal application formats?  Not sure it matters much -- if I go to the trouble of supporting additional formats I'd probably support them all, with an option to ignore all but plaintext or plaintext+richtext..

I think (some) people do care, and I think you're right about going the extra mile and including all formats the native Windows clipboard captures.

As for the name, "Captor" for some reason has a rather draconian ring to it.  (e.g. noun:  a person or animal that catches or confines another. [Oxford])

ClipMaster maybe?  (fyi - ClipboardMaster is already a product.)

ClipSave?

ClipGuard?

ClipMinder?

ClipKeeper?  (haha - makes me think "CryptKeeper") 

ClipSentinel?

What else can you folks come up with?

[tomos]

I would have cared about vector format in the past -- as in if you copied e.g. drawn vectors/fill/etc in inkscape/illustrator/etc.
I'm actually not doing any work in that direction atm, but will be again (so happy to test if you do include it).

Currently what happens here with vectors is:
Last clip pastes correctly (in my experience) as vector
previous vector clips get pasted as a bitmap
(whether text or image is favoured in preferences makes no difference)

Maybe of interest: Related discussion here (from 2011)
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=26009.msg247922#msg247922

PS there may be other solutions for vector clipboard (?), I'm out of touch and havent done a search outside of dc on the topic.

[mouser]

Working on storing all formats in clips..

[mouser]

So far so good, I've got CHS successfully retrieving all data formats from clipboard..
Storing and reapplying them won't be so hard.

I think the real bulk of the work will be adding good user options to control how much of this stuff is actually stored..