[no subject]

> The Mac doesn't come with any kind of program for viewing the
> clipboard contents, and no one seems to particularly want one. . . .

I thought I'd seen one on a Mac. Maybe it was something the owner added.


>                                                          . . . The
> main things that make cut and paste work better on the Mac are:
> 
> 1) If you copy something and quit the app you copied from, the data
> does not get lost.
> 
> 2) Cut and paste of data types besides plain text (rich text, images,
> etc) actually works and is usable between multiple apps.
>  
> These are the important problems to solve. . . .

These are solved. The implementation of the solution is the sore spot.

 1) A program, such as xclipboard or gcm, harvests data when another app
    claims ownership of the CLIPBOARD selection.

 2) The harvesting program collects all of the interesting data and makes
    all of them available when another app requests them.

A display of the clipboard is not necessary to achieve this. Indeed, trying
to display the data is the hardest part. To do so the clipboard needs to be
able to select the most important form of the data and to display it
usefully (e.g., not as binary).

So, foregoing a display of the data, the clipboard program is trivial.
It is obviously not trivial to get people to accept that the problem is
solved and encode any part, apps or harvester, of the solution.


>                                      . . . On the other hand, having a
> program to view and mess with the clipboard contents is probably more
> confusing than helpful. To me it seems about as helpful as a "Drag and
> Drop Manager" GUI program would be.

The main thing that a viewing program provides is a history of clippings.
I won't argue whether that is worthwhile.


Cheers,
Greg Merchan