Announce: GNOME Clipboard Manager 2.0.4

[Philip Van Hoof <spamfrommailing freax org>]

About
-----

GNOME Clipboard Manager (a.k.a. GCM) makes copy&pasting easier and more
productive. GCM will automatically synchronize the mouse selection (the
PRIMARY selection) with the clipboard (the CLIPBOARD selection) and
store clipboards on a shelf. This means that it is possible to go back
to a previous clipboard. GCM also gives you the ability to save and
load clipboards. You can also edit them and convert them to another
format.

GCM supports any possible clipboard format. Clipboards can have multiple
formats. Examples are the "text/html" and "text"-format. GCM will gather
all the formats of a clipboard to make sure that you will have an exact
copy of it. GCM can edit the "text/html", "text/unicode" and
"text"-format of the clipboard. GCM compresses the non-active clipboards
in the memory to reduce memory usage.

This means that, when using GCM, copy&pasting between popular Office
Suites (including OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, Gnummeric, Evolution and
AbiWord) is possible. Often without losing the formatting of the data
that is being copy&pasted (this depends on the application that delivers
the Clipboard. Important is that this does not depend on GNOME Clipboard
Manager).


Changes since 2.0.3
-------------------

- Added features :
  + GNOME Clipboard Manager can now manage multiple clipboards at the
    same time : 
     - Managing the CLIPBOARD clipboard
     - Managing the PRIMARY clipboard
     - Managing the SECONDARY clipboard

    You can choose which clipboard(s) you want to manage. In the
    preferences window these names have been simplified to "The GNOME
    Clipboard" and "The mouse selection".

    GNOME Clipboard Manager will auto-synchronize the clipboards that
    are managed.

- The target manipulation stuff has been removed as this is now the
  responsibility of the programmer of a plugin. The user should no
  longer make any settings to enable converting of targets (except, of
  course, enable a specific plugin)
 
- Managing the PRIMARY clipboard has been fixed.
  When managing the PRIMARY clipboard, applications will no longer lose
  their selection right after you select something. 

- Fixed some major bugs in the build-scripts.
  Some nice folks have send me bug fixes for the build-scripts so I
  added their patches to the 2.0.4 release.

- Fixed some major memorybugs and memoryleaks.

- Fixed the Rtf2Html plugin to return ICS-2 text/html data (like
  Mozilla and Composer) in stead of UTF-8.

- Compiler fix (gcc 3.0) in librtftohtml (ctype.h is now included).
  This problem was reported by the Debian people.

- Some 18n fixes (for more info: check bugzilla) by the translators.

- Multiple fixes in the po/ directory by the translators.

- Build-script bugs in GcmApplet.

- Debian packages by Andrew Lau. < netsnipe at debianplanet dot org >

- RedHat packages by Dag Wieers. < dag at wieers dot com >

- zlib compression of the memory used by the non-active clipboards

- GConf fixes. GCM now uses the correct way of working with GConf. (GCM
  used to save and load its preferences like an old Gtk+-1.2 application
  because this part was quick-ported to Gnome 2.0. This has now been
  fixed)

- GCM is now a 100% Gnome 2.x compatible application; Except for some
  Xlib functions (like XGetSelectionOwner). So porting to platforms
  supported by GNOME 2.x should be easy.

- The preferences window has been simplified a lot. Note that all old
  settings are still available for advanced users by using
  gconf-editor.

- You can now enable and disable plugins at the preferences window

- The plugin API and ABI has been changed. All plugins have been fixed
  for this change. Plugins now use GConf the correct way (event based)
 


Future Ideas
------------
- Sending and receiving clipboards using TCP/IP
- Using libnautilus to create preview-icons of the Clipboards
- Converting plugins for OpenOffice.org-formats to other formats
- A GIMP plugin to export its clipboard and a GCM plugin to convert that
  data to for example a OpenOffice.org-format


Little FAQ
----------
Q: Storing clipboards, huh, doesn't that mean that GNOME Clipboard
Manager will store VERY much memory??
A: No, by default, GCM will only store the last 20 clipboards and GCM
uses zlib (gz) to compress all non-active clipboards. This does not mean
that GCM will slow your copy&pasting down. GCM keeps an uncompressed
version of the active clipboard and will compress the non-active ones.
Note that this compression feature is only available in the last version
announced here.

Q: Excuse me?, "a" Clipboard Manager? but ... why ?
A: Ever tried copy&pasting 5 different texts over and over again on some
website-forms loaded in 4 tabs, a GUI-application or ever written large
text-documents? Ever coded COBOL -hehe- ? For all the people who do need
such management for their clipboards, I wrote GCM. For the
memory-freaks: yes, GCM uses your memory, it does that because it knows
that you bought it -> GCM is evil; it knows that you have memory!

Q: Can GCM synchronize the PRIMARY and the CLIPBOARD selection?
A: Yes, if you don't know what those are: PRIMARY is middle mouse and
CLIPBOARD is CTRL+C/CTRL+V.

Q: So GCM can Manage the PRIMARY selection?
A: Yes. And GCM will not steal the ownership on the PRIMARY selection.
So when you select something, it will not/no longer get unselected
immediately.

Q: I am a professional thus I know that a X Clipboard contains more then
one target (format). Will GNOME Clipboard Manager leave these formats
untouched? I mean, does GCM support multiple formats per Clipboard?
A: Yes, you can copy&paste from a Mozilla or Galeon window to for
example Evolution Composer and OpenOffice.org without losing formatting
(also) when using GCM.



More technically
----------------
The three core components of GNOME Clipboard Manager :

* GNOME Clipboard Manager itself is a daemon that will auto-collect 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 available on the website of
  GNOME Clipboard manager. They include saving, creating, editing,
  merging of items. GNOME Clipboard Manager is pluggable 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. Libgcm can be used by Integrated
  Development Environments, Office tools, Word processors, Editors and
  PanelApplets (like GcmApplet). It is not necessary for normal
  applications to change something to their clipboard-related code.

* GcmApplet is a sample GNOME 2.0 PanelApplet that uses libgcm for
  controlling the GNOME Clipboard Manager daemon. You can compare
  the functionality of GcmApplet with Klipper which is such a Applet for
  KDE.



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

You can download the latest release here

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gcm/gcm-2.0.4.tar.gz?download


Packages 
--------
RedHat 8.0 packages by Dag Wieers
rpm packages: ftp://dag.wieers.com/home-made/gcm/
apt-rpm info: http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/


Debian packages by Andrew Lau
Info        : http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/g/gcm/
apt-get info: apt-get -t unstable install gcm


Development
-----------
If you would like to contribute or if you have a good idea : please
contact me and/or send mail to our mailinglist here :

http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gcm-devel

Note that I am very interested in any help and idea for the project.
Note that I am also looking for somebody who wants to maintain the
stable branch once I started a unstable branch.


CVS


export CVSROOT=':pserver:anonymous anoncvs gnome org:/cvs/gnome'

cvs login
cvs -z3 co -P gcm


-- 
Philip Van Hoof  a.k.a.  freax
Don't use this E-mail address, use me at freax dot org
http://www.freax.be, http://www.freax.eu.org