Re: Clipboard

[Alexandre Owen Muniz <munizao cyberhighway net>]

Svanberg Liss wrote:
> 
> Hello everybody.
> I would like some feedback...
> 
> Some time ago ( a long time ago ) I begun writing on a gnome - clipboard (
> which I called Fairytale ). Due some problems I had ( bad internet
> connection ) this clipboard was developed independently of gnome.
> 
> I have been poundering if I should release it to the public, for about 2
> months now...
> 

Release Early and Often. :)

I don't know enough about backend considerations to comment, but I
recently committed (module: gnome-applets) a text clipbord panel applet
with a decent (if simple) ui, and a rather rudimentary backend using
gtk+ selection mechanisms which I had hoped to replace with something
functional, and if someone else has done the work, I'll just use that. 
In any case, I've given some thought to the attributes I'd like to be
able to get from a clipping, in order to provide a ui with as much
functionality as possible:

Mime type: Pretty straightfoward.

Description: This will be what the user sees when e picks a clip from a
menu. It should provide enough information for the user to be able to
distinguish between different clippings, while being short enough to
keep the size of the menu, (or whatever ui element is used to display
the description,) under control. For example, a text clipping could have
its first ~25 characters as a description, or a clipping from an image
might have, "80 x 40 clip from burning.gif"

Original file/URL (if applicable): This would have to be provided by the
app that copies to the clipboard. If this information is present, it
gives us the ability to reopen the original file, using the default
editor for its mime type.

Position within original (if applicable): applications that support some
standard interface for opening to a certain position could be opened
directly to the position of the clipping in the original, which would be
very useful for large text or multimedia files. Of course, "position"
can mean very different things depending on file type. Note that these
attributes could allow one to synch a clipping to the original file.

Other attributes?: Perhaps a checksum or timestamp from the original
file, so it is possible to determine if the original has been changed. A
flag to show if the user wants the clip to be saved to disk, or if it
should be allowed to be removed if memory usage or number of clips
exceeds a certain point, (although this should be passed to the clipbook
directly, rather than using an attribute, because the clipbook needs to
know this info.) Can anyone think of others?

Looking forward to the advent of the superclipboard,

**Alexandre Muņiz