[Nomination]: Clippy

  • Thread starter Thread starter Golliwocky
  • Start date Start date
Golliwocky said the following on 11/18/2004 1:49 PM:
I'm surprised noone has nominated or even mentioned Clippy this year.
As it is, I use this wonderful tool everyday and consider it
indispensible. Clippy is a clipboard processor/converter. It can be
found here:

http://wots.<MUNGE>coolfreepage<MUNGE>.com/link.php?id=SW3
Click to expand...

Aha, almost got me there! I went to the web page, and because the
description sounded promising, thought I'd download the tool. But all
download attempts were blocked by the browser. First time this has
happened to me, so I was a bit foxed initially. However, upon
investigation I discovered that coolfreepage.com is on IE's list of
"Restricted" sites, along with a whole bunch of real unsavory domains.

This is just a heads up for others.
 
Golliwocky said:
I'm surprised noone has nominated or even mentioned Clippy this year.
As it is, I use this wonderful tool everyday and consider it
indispensible. Clippy is a clipboard processor/converter. It can be
found here:

http://wots.coolfreepage.com/link.php?id=SW3
Click to expand...

This is nice. 70kb download. Standalone exe file saving settings to a
..ini file. Follows is a list of things it can do to text sent to the
clipboard:

_________________________________________________________
Clippy 1.2.0 Build 20616
Copyright (c) 2002 Way Out There Software
Email: (e-mail address removed)
URL: http://wots.coolfreepage.com/
_________________________________________________________

This file lists and describes the available operations in Clippy.

1. OPERATIONS

Name: Align center
Description: Centers the lines of all paragraphs. The left and right
margins specify where a line begins and ends.
Number in ini file: 0
Parameters: left margin, right margin

Name: Align fill
Description: The lines of all paragraphs are left and right flushed.
The left and right margins specify where a line begins and ends.
Number in ini file: 1
Parameters: left margin, right margin

Name: Align left
Description: The lines of all paragraphs are left-flushed. The left and
right margins specify where a line begins and ends.
Number in ini file: 2
Parameters: left margin, right margin

Name: Align quote
Description: Vertically aligns email quote symbols.
Number in ini file: 3
Parameters: left margin, right margin, quote

Name: Align right
Description: The lines of all paragraphs are right-flushed. The left
and right margins specify where a line begins and ends.
Number in ini file: 4
Parameters: left margin, right margin

Name: Case capitalise
Description: Capitalises the first character of every word.
Number in ini file: 5
Parameters:

Name: Case invert
Description: Inverts the case of every alphabetical character.
Number in ini file: 6
Parameters:

Name: Case lower
Description: Changes every alphabetical character to lower case.
Number in ini file: 7
Parameters:

Name: Case upper
Description: Changes every alphabetical character to upper case.
Number in ini file: 8
Parameters:

Name: Count of characters
Description: Displays the number of non-space and -tab characters.
Number in ini file: 9
Parameters:

Name: Count of lines
Description: Displays the number of lines, including blank lines
Number in ini file: 10
Parameters:

Name: Count of words
Description: Displays the number of words.
Number in ini file: 11
Parameters:

Name: Convert all spaces to tabs
Description: Converts a sequence of spaces to tabs The number of
contiguous spaces is specified in the tab width setting.
Number in ini file: 12
Parameters: tab width

Name: Convert leading spaces to tabs
Description: Converts a sequence of leading spaces to tabs The number
of contiguous spaces is specified in the tab width setting.
Number in ini file: 13
Parameters: tab width

Name: Convert tabs to spaces
Description: Converts tabs to spaces The number of spaces is specified
in the tab width setting.
Number in ini file: 14
Parameters: tab width

Name: Remove blank lines
Description: Removes lines that don't have any characters Spaces and
tabs are counted as characters.
Number in ini file: 15
Parameters:

Name: Remove duplicate lines
Description: Removes adjacent lines that are exactly identical Spaces
and tabs are included in the comparisons.
Number in ini file: 16
Parameters:

Name: Remove line breaks
Description: Joins the lines in a paragraph to form a single, long line.
Number in ini file: 17
Parameters:

Name: Strip HTML
Description: Removes all HTML markup tags Only the following character
entities are converted: &&nbsp; &&amp; &&quot; &&apos; &&gt; &&lt;
Number in ini file: 18
Parameters:

Name: Trim leading spaces
Description: Removes all space and tab characters at the beginning of
every line.
Number in ini file: 19
Parameters:

Name: Trim trailing spaces
Description: Removes all space and tab characters at the end of every
line.
Number in ini file: 20
Parameters:

Name: Unquote
Description: Removes all email quote symbols from the beginning of every
line.
Number in ini file: 21
Parameters: quote

Name: Remove duplicate blank lines
Description: Removes adjacent lines that don't have any characters
Spaces and tabs are counted as characters.
Number in ini file: 22
Parameters:

Name: Convert DOS to Unix
Description: Converts CRLF linebreaks to LF.
Number in ini file: 23
Parameters:

Name: Convert Unix to DOS
Description: Converts LF linebreaks to CRLF.
Number in ini file: 24
Parameters:

Name: Delete to end-of-line from column
Description: Removes all characters to the end of the line from the
specified column.
Number in ini file: 25
Parameters: column position

Name: Delete to end-of-line from string
Description: Removes all characters to the end of the line from the
specified string. The string is also removed
Number in ini file: 26
Parameters: search string

Name: Sort lines
Description: Sorts all the lines in lexical order.
Number in ini file: 27
Parameters: ascending

Name: Search and replace
Description: Replaces all occurrences of a string with another string.
Number in ini file: 28
Parameters: search string, replace string

2. PARAMETERS

Name: Quote
Default value: >
Possible values: a single character
Number in ini file: 0

Name: Left margin
Default value: 0
Possible values: 0 to right margin value
Number in ini file: 1

Name: Right margin
Default value: 72
Possible values: left margin value to 16384
Number in ini file: 2

Name: Tab width
Default value: 4
Possible values: 1 to 80
Number in ini file: 3

Name: Ascending
Default value: true
Possible values: true or false
Number in ini file: 4

Name: Search
Default value:
Possible values: 0 to 256 characters
Number in ini file: 5

Name: Replace
Default value:
Possible values: 0 to 256 characters
Number in ini file: 6

Name: Position
Default value: 72
Possible values: 0 to 16384
Number in ini file: 7
 
jo said:
Golliwocky wrote:




This is nice. 70kb download. Standalone exe file saving settings to a
.ini file. Follows is a list of things it can do to text sent to the
clipboard:
_________________________________________________________
Clippy 1.2.0 Build 20616
Copyright (c) 2002 Way Out There Software
Email: (e-mail address removed)
URL: http://wots.coolfreepage.com/
_________________________________________________________

This file lists and describes the available operations in Clippy.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the description. I use the old Cliptrak as a clipboard extender, but
Clippy provides other useful functions.

Mike Sa
 
jo said:
This is nice.
Click to expand...

Agree. It's very nice. I use it constantly.
70kb download. Standalone exe file saving settings to a .ini file.
Click to expand...

Since it puts settings in a local ini, that gives the nice feature of
the option for user to maintain separate configurations.

For instance, my main use, it involves having a lot of operands related
to my registry-related command files. So I have a specific folder containing
a copy of its exe, with accompany in, for this kind of activity.

In dealing with .reg files, for example, I make constant use of Clippy
converting file paths back-forth between the single slash \ and the
double=slash \\

An example on dealing with .bat. The following is one way that I use
Clippy, which is very convenient.

I want to look over a commandline program. So first step, I get its
available commands and their explanations. Usually via the traditional
command: prog.exe /? .

I save that help output with a .bat extension. Then, where Clippy comes
in. I have Clippy take that block of help text, and precede it with a
batch comment character (eg the double colon), and also indent it a bit.

Then, with that file open in a text editor, I can have the available
commands and their explanations in front of me, contained in the very
batch I want to execute. So I next copy or type the command I want to
try, and then hit the execute command in my editor.

Clippy does a lot of things with text, which you can get done, variously,
here and there, from a variety of text editors. Yet when there are certain
things you want to do all the time (certain SR operations, like the examples
mentioned), or indenting text, or removing hard breaks, and so on, it is
useful to have a global tool instead, that operates directly from the tray.
Follows is a list of things it can do to text sent to the clipboard:
Click to expand...
[...]

It took me a bit to understand the interface. There's nothing weird or
overly complicated about it. Just it's not something that most of us
can figure out within the first two minutes. I was glad to have spent
the time, well paid off. Also, it took a while before I absorbed which
kinds of acts it can perform. The help text on that is very useful.
This file lists and describes the available operations in Clippy.
[...]
Name: Sort lines
Description: Sorts all the lines in lexical order.
Click to expand...

This is the one particular operation where I found Clippy unreliable. Its
output can be a truncated rendition of your input. Probably to do with
having a max size for how many lines it can sort. I've found it safest to
simply avoid using Clippy when my need is to sort lines.
Clippy 1.2.0 Build 20616
Click to expand...

I run the later one, the 1.3 Beta. I've used it a great deal, over the
course of 1-2 years, and have noted no problems at all. (The sort lines
prob, not checked, but my guess is that the limitation on that is not a
version-specific issue.)
 
ms said:
Thanks for the description. I use the old Cliptrak as a clipboard extender, but
Clippy provides other useful functions.
Click to expand...

The name Clippy might be misleading. It's not a clipboard extender: it does
not store clipboard text. They've named it that way because it operates on
the text that is in your clipboard, performing changes upon that text.
 
The domain itself may be listed among IE's unsavories but there's no
spyware/malware in Clippy itself, AFAIK, and I've been using it since
2002. From looks alone, coolfreepage.com sounds like a Free Hosting
operation and the Clippy author(s) may just be unfortunate enough to
make use of this provider. By all means, scan it with Spybot/Adaware if
you're unsure.
I can download Clippy just fine with Mozilla and Firefox.
 
Golliwocky said the following on 11/19/2004 3:02 PM:
The domain itself may be listed among IE's unsavories but there's no
spyware/malware in Clippy itself, AFAIK, and I've been using it since
2002. From looks alone, coolfreepage.com sounds like a Free Hosting
operation and the Clippy author(s) may just be unfortunate enough to
make use of this provider. By all means, scan it with Spybot/Adaware if
you're unsure.
I can download Clippy just fine with Mozilla and Firefox.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the response. From all the other comments it does look like
it's a useful tool being used by several people without problems. I
will download it using Firefox (my preferred browser anyway) and give it
a try. As you say, Spybot and/or Ad-Aware will probably tell me if I've
got malware in Clippy.
 
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