Introducing the GNOME Clipboard Manager application and environment

[Philip Van Hoof <me freax org>]

Introducing the GNOME Clipboard Manager application and environment

About:
------

GNOME Clipboard Manager for GNOME 2.0 desktops is an application and an
environment for managing clipboards -a.k.a. selections- and their
available formats -a.k.a. their available targets-.


The three core components of GNOME Clipboard Manager :

* GNOME Clipboard Manager itself is a daemon that will autocollect new
  clipboards and has the option to choose which clipboard is to be
  pasted when an application asks for the clipboard in a specific
  format. A longer list of features is listed below. They include
  saving, creating, editing, merging of items. GNOME Clipboard Manager
  is plugable and writing new plugins for GNOME Clipboard Manager is
  not a difficult task.

* Libgcm is a library for controlling the GNOME Clipboard Manager daemon
  from your own applications.

* GcmApplet is a sample GNOME 2.0 PanelApplet that uses libgcm for
  controlling the GNOME Clipboard Manager daemon. It is still a little
  bit buggy because I am not very good at writing PanelApplets and
  because there is not very much documentation about them available
  already. That is why I prefer calling it a sample.


Please check out http://gcm.sf.net/about_gcm.html if you want to know
more.

Changes since 2.0.1
-------------------
Major changes in the following areas :
	Added : libgcm + a libgcmtest application
	Added : Plugin subsystem  + sampleplugin
	Added : GcmApplet
	Fixed : Documentation

Features list :
---------------

Note:
I know that it might be confusing but I am not the person who gave these
animals names, "a target is a format" and "a clipboard is a selection"
in the following text :


    * Storing your clipboards and all their available formats. A.k.a the
      collecting of clipboards.

          o A clipboard (a.k.a. a selection) can have multiple formats
          (a.k.a targets) o GNOME Clipboard Manager will store all your
          previous clipboards and formats so that you can go back to a
          previously saved clipboard o A format can be

                + Html : which are the HTML-tags of a HTML selection
                when you copypaste some stuff in your browser + Image
                data : If you select a portion of an image and use the
                "Copy"- or "Cut"-feature in for example OpenOffice.org

                + Normal text :
                a.k.a. COMPOUND_TEXT which is the most common format of
                clipboards

		+ Some other format used by a specific
                application that contains information about the data.
                For example the clipboards of OpenOffice.org contain
                gzipped formats which host XML-files that define the
                layout and information that is to be copypasted to for
                example another OpenOffice.org screen.

          o Once collected, a clipboard becomes an Item for GNOME
          Clipboard Manager o Making a clipboardring by setting the
          max. amount of collected items. Older items will then
          automatically be deleted from the list of collected items.

          o The autocollecting of new items

    * Saving and loading collected clipboards (Items) to
      XML-formatted files.

          o The data of the items will be written to the files in
          UUEncoded data to make sure that we don't write binary data in
          an UTF-8 orientated fileformat like XML is o Saving multiple
          items in one file is, of course, possible

    * Editing and viewing some supported formats in a clipboard

          o The editing of the COMPOUND_TEXT or normal text target is
          possible o The editing (and previewing in a GtkHtml widget) of
          the text/html target is possible

    * Manipulating of formats

          o Blocking specific formats that are too large to store into
          memory. E.g. Blocking large binary format-types

          o Copying a specified format-type to another format-type o The
          possibility to write a plugin for GNOME Clipboard Manager that
          does the converting of the format-data while copying it to
          another format-type

    * Some advanced UserInterface options

          o The UserInterface is, by default, hidden. So GNOME Clipboard
          Manager is, by default, a clipboard collecting daemon. You can
          make it show its UserInterface by using a small external tool
          or by using the GNOME Clipboard Manager Applet. o Hiding all
          UserInterface objects

          o Making the scrollbar follow while adding new items o
          Autoselect most new collected item

          o Unselect-all after collecting a new item

    * Support for the following selectiontypes

          o The CLIPBOARD-selection : Used when using CTRL+C and CTRL+V
          and the "Copy"- and "Paste"-features in the menus of most
          applications o The PRIMARY selection : The text that is
          selected in your session o The SECONDARY selection : The text
          that was selected the last time in your session o A CUSTOM
          atom : For those who know what they are doing

    * A PanelApplet

          o A PanelApplet for GNOME Clipboard Manager that can make
          GNOME Clipboard Manager perform some specific tasks.

    * A library for your own applications to control GNOME Clipboard
      Manager

          o GNOME Clipboard Manager comes with libgcm which is a library
          that enables your application(s) to control and make use of
          GNOME Clipboard Managers features.

    * The hosting of plugins
          o You can write plugins for GNOME Clipboard Manager in a same
          fashion as you can with applications like mediaplayers (like
          xmms).



Availability
------------

You can download the latest release (which has all the listed features)
here :
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gcm/gcm-2.0.2.tar.gz?download
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gcm/gcmapplet-2.0.2.tar.gz?download
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gcm/libgcmtest-2.0.2.tar.gz?download


You can get a more up-to-date version from CVS. Please note that a
version from CVS is a development version and can contain more or less
bugs than a release. It will definitely not contain less features unless
a specific feature caused very strange problems that cannot be solved.

export CVSROOT=':pserver:anonymous cvs gcm sf net:/cvsroot/gcm'
cvs login
cvs -z3 co -P gcm-2 libgcmtest gcmapplet


More information
----------------

You can get more information about GNOME Clipboard Manager from its
website which is available here :

http://gcm.sf.net
http://gcm.sf.net/about_gcm.html

You can get screenshots from GNOME Clipboard Manager here :

http://gcm.sf.net/gcm_screens/


-- 
Philip van Hoof aka freax (http://www.freax.eu.org)
irc: irc.openprojects.net mailto:me at freax dot org
Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.