This has been in KDE ... since ... well maybe it doesn't qualify in your "none of the major operating systems have bothered improving the clipboard" statement.

Emacs has a clipboard history, as well as named clipboards (called registers). If that isn't enough you can define and name keyboard macros to enter the text you wish to insert.

Does Emacs count as a major operating system?

Yeah, I'll second the above statement for KDE and it's also been in Gnome for years (another Linux desktop).

Personally, I'd consider the major operating systems to include Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. However, I'm aware the last one isn't top of everyone's list.

KDE's Klipper has been part of KDE since at least 1998 (http://www.kde.org/history/news/news_1998_11.php) - check out http://www.raiden.net/?cat=2&aid=301 for some screenshots. There is a similar utility in GNOME: Glipper http://glipper.sourceforge.net

Interestingly I've been using the well-known Autohotkey script langauge to utilize the same short-cuts you mentioned in your blog post. Example: WinKey+G searches Google with the contents of the clipboard, WinKey+I searches Google images. WinKey+W opens a webstie in IE, +F opens it in Firefox, +O starts Outlook, WinKey+M mutes the sound. It goes on and on. I'm also using B,N,F,P,K,L,A,S,X,C,V for shortcuts and I am running out of letters.
Honestly, I don't know how in the world I can remember all these shortcuts, but they have become so vital for my productivity that they are keeping me from moving to Vista, because the script doesn't work in Vista...

What I dislike the most, about the clipboard, is the really bad behaviour in VS. Say you cut something, then you try to past it elswehere but you hit the C instead of the V (without any text selected) and bravo, you've lost your clipboard content! You now have to undo 3 or 4 times to re-start the manipulation. This is anti-productive at the most.

Fabian: That one gets me too, but the good news is that you can turn off that behaviour in Visual Studio.

Go to Tools->Options...->Text Editor->All Languages->General and untick "Apply Cut Copy commands to blank lines when there is no selection"

(I guess this goes towards what Jeff was saying about software having reasonable defaults).

On my windows phone you just hold the stylus down over highlighted text, get a little circle thingy and then it lets you cut, copy n paste. Shame there isn't a button for it but it does let you move address and phone numbers round.

I've been hooked on CTRL+SHIFT+V because of IntelliJ IDEA and I was looking for something system-wide.Thanks!

Fabian, don't you think it's due to the very thing Jeff enlights here : the fact the the clipboard has not changed since (at least) Win95 ?
I fully agree with you, Jeff, on clipboard limits (altough I use another replacement - CLCL - since it's the only one that support copy-paste with Java application - namely Eclipse). The main question is : why has it never be included in major desktop OSes (sorry for linux ealots, ut in terms of UI, the open-source OS has never been a champion) ?
To my mind, the reply is to look up somewhere in the divide between educated computers users (and productivity fans) and "casual" users, for which copy/paste is a somewhat weird operation.

GrahamStw, thanks for the tips. But I can't understand why this option exists at all...

I use an autohotkey script that keeps adding to the clipboard via the normal Ctrl+C, the pasting is done via Winkey+1, 2, 3, etc. Yes you'd have to remember what you copied and in what order, but I do, so it works well for me.

The thing that annoys me is that Excel, in versions up to 2003 at least, loses what's on the clipboard if you do anything apart from moving around the spreadsheet. How arcane is that?

@Fabian & GrahamStw:
I would say that when you can't hit the keys you want then don't blame the software ;)
I do like this feature, it's a logical quick shortcut to copy the actual row without the burden to select it first.
You could say the same if you selected something and want to replace it with your clipboard content - and accidentally hit copy instead of paste. Stupid program, eh? :P

I think starting with Office XP there was a multi item clipboard in office, but I didn't like the implementation, especially that when closing office you were asked if you want to keep the clipboard content. ARGH!
Maybe this was a case study and (due to its stupid implementation) wasn't much accepted, so MS decided to not change anything about the clipboard?

Also I think that VS supports multiple clipboard items, too...

I like Ditto (http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/) :) Has a better history browser.

But true. This problem should be solved by the OS, not third party applications :P

Perhaps a stack model could be added on top on clipboard's default behavior.

Ctrl + C : copy - default behavior
Ctrl + V : paste - default behavior
Ctrl + Shift + C : copy - put on the clipboard stack
Ctrl + Shift + V : paste - pop from the clipboard stack

The only problem is that people aren't generally familiar with the abstraction of stacking. This could be solved by adding a visual hint at the cost of cut/paste speed.

Other Fabian and GrahamStw - like Qma, I find that full-line copy/cut feature _extremely_ helpful. And due to the clipboard ring feature of Visual Studio, if you ever hit Ctrl-C inadvertently, just press Ctrl-Shift-V to get back the item you copied before.

(I wonder why Microsoft removed the clipboard ring display in VS 2005.)

Most disturbing to me is that "Save" is the #2 most-used command. In 2003, it shouldn't be necessary to manually save your work, because what you write should be saved as you enter it, so your work can never be lost. Typing at 30WPM generates only *3 bytes* per second; any 21st-century computer (including phones and watches) can handle recording that.

Perhaps there's more to be learned from the command line history function.

I'm not saying that as some UNIX neckbeard or a Linux zealot - _really_ - look at how command shell history functions have solved one part of this problem - repeating stuff you've done before vs capturing interesting stuff you've found in output.

I remember using CygnusEd (CED) for development back in the Amiga days - it had multiple clipboards (yeah, I know I'm talking text here and it's not at the OS level), multiple open documents, macros & launced external programs (compilers)

This was 15 years ago?? (20 according to Wikipedia!)

I was mightily disappointed...When I started using text editors in DOS/Windows 3.1

I would love it if I could use all those function keys I hardly ever use for clipboards. e.g. Left Windows+F1 to cut, Right Windows+F1 to paste

I like Clipx I also like ArsClip, however when I want to cut some text in word I press ctrl-X and word exits!... anyway I use clipx continually.. In arsclip you can save some permanent items which is also good...

regards

Vincent, I'm rather surprised it's not #1!
I've got a long time habit of pressing ctrl-s after every second or third line born out of some very painful moments where an application crashed and the last save was half an hour ago.

Once I've worked on a small fun project with a friend together and we both had the same project on a network share opened in VS. After about 10 minutes we were both sick of VS reloading some files every 30 seconds or so (he has the same habit) that we quickly decided to set up a sourcesafe DB, even if its only for some hours...

The real problem is the lack of a standard for UI. If there were a standard someone would just say: "Hey, let's improve it" and it would get done.
One of the reasons I do not like linux for desktop is all the problem with KDE vs GTK, it's like redundancy (not the good database redundancy). I got 2 librarys that to the exact same thing but slight different, so I pay 30 mb of memmory for each one and slow my boot process to load both (or even wrost, load one at boot and the other when some app starts and it hangs there until the library loads). At least in windows we have a single and consistent UI that do not change ever couple months (but still do in the long run).

KDE 4 is out and about.

Dear Jeff,

I read your posts with much interest. I rarely have a comment because you've covered a subject well, and I can often only agree with your reasoning and observations, or you're writing about a subject I don't know much about. I have commented though and as far as I can remember all my comments revolve around 1 thing. I promise that this is the last time.

You've written about browsers and I've pointed you to Konqueror. Now you write about copy / paste behaviour and others have mentioned KDE's Klipper already. I know you're well locked-in to Windows and that's fine but it seems to me you've got a few reasons to have a look at KDE. Not as a competition between window managers or browsers, that's a bit pointless but as a reference for improvement: you only have to look for things that are done different and better. So if you have an old machine lying around you're not currently using, install a Linux distro somewhere in a corner of the harddisk and try KDE out for a while, it won't hurt.

Jeff, I agree completely. Moreover, the thing that has really gotten me over the past few years is apparently caused by an MS security patch around the clipboard (I am guessing). The following behavior does not always work reliably any more, and it used to:

1) Highlight and copy some text in running App 1.

2) Start App 2.

3) Once App2 has started, paste text into App 2.

Often times now #3 either brings in some PRIOR clipboard contents before the last cut/copy (the most likely scenario) or nothing at all. Odd and frustrating and happens across multiple machines and versions of Windows (at least XP and 2003). This still bites me almost every day, and the behavior's been broken (or randomized as to success) for at least a year or more now.

Steve, your comment on emacs reminded me of one of my favorite jokes - "emacs - a nice operating system, but it could use an editor." :-)

Nice graphic on the clipboard stack!

Jeff, that's one great tool you recommend there. Installed it and already lovin' it.

You are all spoiled brats:)

I consider myself a (absolute!) power user and I never needed multiple clipboard items. Your beloved Word approach always annoyed me...

And why sacrifice the speed and non-graphical modus operandi of the current clipboard for multiple items support?

I thought you might find it interesting to know that on any given Windows error message, you can hit Ctrl + C (Copy, obviously) and it will directly copy the contents of the error message to your clipboard...just a fun fact that may serve everyone as a usefull hint.

I see your point Jeff and as you know MS Office ships with similar feature.

Problem is simple managing data in your head, instead of managing several data and keep them in brain while trying to do something else is just an extra hassle (at least for me, blame my low IQ!). Maybe up to 2 but not 5 or something like that. That'd be crazy.

That's the only reason I don't go for this solution.

Ctrl + Shift + V for previous copied item is not a bad idea though I can remember 2 data in my stack :)

Will check this out, FYI a couple of engines on VirusTotal have identified the setup file on the website as suspicious?

http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/baacc1f516d4460121f66eabbdf45072

I doubt it's anything, but still!

I think the clipboard is simply not good enough in its current state. MS have clearly identified this by creating the Office Clipboard. Why the hell didn't they design it to plug into the OS as an update?! It works fine! (obviously remapping the shortcut keys).

I prefer the clipboard to hold one thing. That's the whole point of the clipboard!

OK, I've just installed to give it a shot and I like the implementation, it's clever and kind of solving remembering stuff problem + very good visual indicator.

The multi-clipboard that comes with Office is one of the things that I turn *off*, I find it amazingly annoying that something that should be invisible and "Just work" suddenly starts clogging up my screen space and using memory keeping things I no longer want ...?

I suspect this is another one of those Marmite thing that either you hate and don't understand the point of, or love and don't know how you did without it ...?

Maybe it's just me but Clipx doesn't seem to actually capture any copies. I highlight something in firefox, hit ctrl-c, then ctrl-shift-v and nothing. I wouldn't think it would be so hard.

Has anyone tried these clipboard history programs with Keepass Password Safe? They look useful but I fear they'll conflict with its useful option to automatically clear the clipboard after the first paste of the password.

I wonder how clipboard monitors work in general when programs put "application rendered" data on the clipboard. That's usually done when generating the data would use a lot of time and/or memory and when pasting the data within the same application can take a shortcut to avoid converting the data into a more generic format and back again. Presumably the clipboard history programs trigger instant rendering of any such data put on the clipboard (else they can't store it it for later reuse), which could be bad. Then again computers are pretty fast and full of memory these days, so maybe that mechanism is an anachronism. (I imagine it's still useful for massive image copy & pastes within graphics packages, though.)

The Nokia S60 v3 Symbian phones do copy-paste, too.

The clipboard behaviour in Microsoft Word is unbelievably frustrating. Little boxes popping up all over the place asking if I want to choose one of the many things I've copied. NO. I want to paste the last thing I copied and don't want to be annoyed with a dialog.

I like the idea of clipx, a similar function to utilise a multi-clipboard. As for default, I want it to do exactly what it's done since I've been using a computer.

Maybe I've been brainwashed, but it's what I'm used to and I don't want it changed. Although upgraded functioins with different key bindings sounds mighty useful.

Dude! Your definition of "major operating systems" could use some tuning. If you mean WINDOWS, just go ahead and write that. Please.

Leo Davidson wrote:

> I wonder how clipboard monitors work in general when programs
> put "application rendered" data on the clipboard.

What? I've never seen a program that fiddles with the clipboard. That coullll.l.lo - sorry, got some COOKIE CRUMBS stuck in my keyboard - could be catastrophic. Imagine if you're executing a copy/paste loop in a terminal window, and ApplicationX suddenly (if only for a moment) changes the clipboard contents.

I'm going to go ahead and assume you're talking about (or out of) something else.

Yep! Been saying the same thing for years. Before XP I was using this little thing called ClipAid but it got quirky after XP came out so I stopped. I'll give ClipX a try though - seems great.

Remember when windows FINALLY started showing thumbnails of stuff? Took years. I was using ThumbsPlus forever before that. Similar situation.

Thanks!

Jeff Atwood wrote:

> The clipboard is so important that Walter Mossberg specifically
> mentioned it as a negative in his iPhone review:

Not to belittle Walter Mossberg, whoever he is, assuming he in fact exists, but certainly there are stronger attributions to the importance of the clipboard than an iPhone review?

I find it amusing that you would replace one of the simplest, easiest, and most intuitive features with a more complex version that requires hitting more keys to use effectively. The clipboard works fine. Why do you need to keep more than one thing? It's entire purpose is a transient, temporary storage for shuttling data between places. Why would I want some random clip of text to survive a reboot? I don't care about its life in the clipboard the exact moment I hit Command-V.

I used to use ArsClip before I moved to Linux (Jorge beat to it). Besides saving permanent items, ArsClip doesn't need to be setup, so you don't have to run through the whole "Next, Next, Next, Finish" process, just drop the an exe with an ini file in %windir% or somewhere in your path and you're all set.

My history context menu was bound to (Win+`), which is as accessible, and as uncommon, as Alt+Esc.

It's not true that smartphones don't have clipboards. I'm actually typing this on a Nokia E90, which allows me to copy/paste just fine. which allows me to copy/paste just fine. See?
Too bad there doens't seem to be a way to copy stuff off a web page.

funny, this post comes in together with [http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3221] in my feeds.

Windows Mobile Professional has a clipboard, and 6.1 Standard too. I also use it a lot on my phone, which uses Linux.

My plain old $40 a month Nokia phone doesn't have a camera, keyboard, internet access, maps, a bottle opener, or a slinky built in. But it has copy and paste.

AutoHotKey all the way!

Really, I believe most of the commentors here already know how to program no?

I've been using a small program called ClipDiary - http://softvoile.com/clipdiary/

I always wanted a clipboard log, but since installing it months ago, I've only used it a couple times.

Someone may have said this but... on my Windows Mobile phone, there is an on screen keyboard that has a Ctrl key so I can cut, copy and paste. It would drive me nuts if I could not.

I'm guessing the real reason the clipboard contains one item is that the vast majority of users want it to be simple. As a "power user" you can enhance the clipboard with 3rd party add-ons, but I'm sure most users would be confused with a clipboard history popup dialog box when they select Edit->Paste

Anyone who works in Flash might want to change the default hotkey (or close clipx when in Flash)

As flash already has a CTRL+SHIFT+V set (paste in place, when you copy an object CTRL+SHIFT+V pastes it back at the same x,y)

It would be better if clipx didn't over-ride settings from other applications when that app is in focus. Or at least allowed you to set that kind of behavior.

The problem is -- clipboard seldom really store those data, but only store a reference to those data. In this way, the client can request for alternative formats of the copied data. That is also why some application ask if you want to keep the clipboard data on close.

if you don't know what i means, try to copy something from excel and parse to notepad, excel and word..... all shown in different formats.

Same problem can be see for linux, see mozilla Bug 289897.

Hey Now Jeff,
Great info, I never used this tool before & it sounds really good.
Coding Horror Fan,
Catto

I used to use apps like this all of the time. I was using Clipmate back in 2000, which had the same clipboard history ability. It improved my productivity tenfold, but I seem to have forgotten what that was like and relegated myself to the standard clipboard. Now I have to go find one that costs money to use at work. Yep, that's right, they won't let me use one unless it costs money.

+1 to Visual Studio for the Ctrl+Click feature that selects whole words, I love that.

I can't really see adding the ability to store multiple clipboard items to the OS as an improvement of the situation.

Besides having to re-write apps to take advantage of any new OS clipboard features, backwards-compatibility would be a nightmare. The current clipboard functionality is well-worn and works flawlessly. If they tried to change it and did something wrong, all kinds of Windows apps would suddenly have problems. There are too many programs out there that depend on how it currently works, and not all of those are passing text back and forth. It might have been necessary to keep the base implementation simple in order to be able to pass any kind of data from one program to another.

I have to agree with Jon, the clipboard was meant to be transient. Plus those of us who have been using Windows for a really long time have gotten quite used to how it currently works.

A long time ago I bought Clipmate (http://www.thornsoft.com/) and was happy with it for a couple of years. But then, after some Windows service packs it developed stability issues, and I gave up on it.

the one thing that kills me is trying to cutting and paste from multiple virtual machines.

complete pain in the ass sometimes.

Deadprogrammer - I'm still using that app, they've updated it frequently and it works great with XP SP2. Not sure about Vista, though. Quite indispensable.

You point out the value of copy/paste in our culture, and how it's almost impossible to live without it. I completely agree.

However, copy/paste is exactly what the MPAA/RIAA is trying to get rid of. Under US copyright law, we have permission to copy/paste materials under the banner of fair use. These companies (and others like Adobe and Microsoft) are pushing the use of DRM, which completely removes this right.

Fight against DRM for your right to copy/paste, http://www.eff.org/

I have been a ClipX fan for a few years, but never liked the default three-key shortcuts (it's a bit awkward to press three keys with one hand). My favorite shortcut for Paste is ALT+C (a carry-over from CLCL, another clipboard manager). It's impossible to set this shortcut directly in the the ClipX settings, but I found a workaround. If interested, please see a short post here: http://alekdavis.blogspot.com/2007/05/clipx-fix.html

One more for Klipper and KDE...

Just because Windows is stuck in 1997, doesn't mean the rest of us are medieval too... ;-)

I thought MS Office supported multi-clip? I haven't used it in awhile (not since my previous job), but I remember it being an option there, and I didn't install any add-ons. I remember it was quite annoying because I'd get popups bugging me about which thing I wanted to copy/paste, when I always wanted to do the last one...

Yankee Clipper (http://www.intelexual.com/products/) has been my choice for years. I agree, I can't work on a machine without it being installed.

Aditya said:

> I like Ditto (http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/) :) Has a better history browser.

I second Ditto. I use it as well (on Win XP Pro), and it's been very solid and convenient for me. Uses SQLite as its back-end.

The one time I emailed the developer for help, he was very responsive. And yes, I subsequently sent him a contribution.

Development appears to have dropped off (it's been at v 3.9 for some time), but the product is still very solid, configurable, and easy to use. Maybe if there's an uptick in use, the development will accelerate again.

Someone else said:

> Has anyone tried these clipboard history programs with Keepass Password Safe? They look useful but I fear they'll conflict with its useful option to automatically clear the clipboard after the first paste of the password.

That's been a concern of mine, as well. I don't use the Keepass copy to clipboard feature (with automatic wipe of clipboard after x seconds or paste or whatever), partly as a result. Recent versions of Keepass (if I recall correctly) mention using some sort of protocol to let clipboard management programs know not to record/save the password that Keepass is writing to the clipboard. But I don't know what clipboard management programs acknowledge/respect that protocol. Maybe Clipmate and/or some other bigger name commercial products. If/When Ditto development continues, such support would be a nice feature.

The other mysteriously missing should-be-standard clipboard feature is "Paste as unformatted text" (which some apps support through "paste special", but not all). I've come to rely on PureText to provide this feature, and I use it often.

Just had a look at the Ditto site -- hadn't done that in a while. There've been updates! Most recent:

Version 3.15.4.0
On 01-16-08

Yay!

Great post, good point... Never thought about the clipboard in that way before... very insightful.

thanks

> The other mysteriously missing should-be-standard clipboard feature is "Paste as unformatted text"

Ditto does this. Pop its list (default key combo is Control ` -- becomes very natural to use) and when the desired item is highlighted (most recent by default, and older can be reached quicly by keyboard -- no mouse necessary), press Shift-Enter to get a plain text version.

Note, too, that Ditto has a very convenient search feature. Just start typing, and the list is immediately reduced to items containing what you've typed. This includes basic wildcarding.

At this point, I guess I should say that I have NO affiliation with Ditto. But I use it day in and day out, and I'd hate to be without it.

I've been using ClipX for ages. It also lets you install a Stickies plug-in, which lets you create clipboard text that will "stick" forever. When you press your ClipX paste shortcut (which can be changed from CTRL+SHIFT+V), it shows the sticky items at the bottom of the list with alphabetic shortcuts (A, B, ...). (Unfortunately, there's a bug where often the alphabetic shortcuts don't work and you have to manually select the item. But it's still a time-saver.)

i see your points, I haven't used ClipX, but from your article the only thing I would change would be to still utilze some form of key combo that pastes the lastest thing on the clipboard "stack" instead of having to select from a menu, because I am more often than not just moving something from one place to another quickly and dont need to choose from my last 10 copies

I'm sure Microsoft considered including this extra feature with Windows, but didn't want to get sued over it like they did with Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, etc... If notepad, paint, and calculator weren't also so primitive they would get sued over those as well.

What's scary about Microsoft is that they've known for YEARS that paste is the most used function yet it handles horribly in all of the Microsoft products I've used.

"Want me to paste this text in, even though it clearly doesn't have ANY resemblance to the rest of the file in terms of its style? Noooo problem!"

"So you want me to paste this image in, eh? Howabout I just put it, umm, wherever I want! Sounds good to me!"

Windows Mobile supports copy/paste, of course. This is why many reviewers are missing it from the iPhone

If it's Mobile Pro (which has a touch-screen), hold the stylus down for a second to get the context menu for copy/paste..

p.s.: why would IE allow selecting text if you couldn't copy/paste..

btw, multiple clipboard is the first thing I disable in Office. No one needs this except engineer used to programmer editors. People prefer using a small set of simple tools, or repeating simple tasks, to do what they need.

A friend of mine made a stack clipboard called stackboard.
I cannot live without it now!

double CTRL+C will open the url to the browser if it's an url (sooo useful)
ALT-Z open the stack clipboard window to switch to an old clipboard

If you want to see it, it's free, no install:

http://www.ploki.info/dl/stackboard.exe

On OS X I use PTHPasteboard. I have Command-Alt-Shift-V mapped to bring up the clipboard window, which then allows 0-9 keys to paste any of the past 10 items in. Holding "Command" down when hitting the number (ex, Cmd-Alt-Shift-V, Cmd-2) will paste the given item in plain text instead of formatted, which is an absolute KILLER feature (pasting formatted text didn't seem to bother me as much on Windows; I'm not sure why).

I paid for the Pro version, which adds in keyboard syncing across the network. This is a real workflow-changer.

IMHO, well worth the money (free if you don't want network syncing and user-defined on-the-fly text filter).

Doesn't persist clippings across reboots, but honestly I can't see a reason for such a thing. If I want my clipboard persisted across reboots, I'll past the clipping into a Stickie or TextEdit document before rebooting! I certainly wouldn't want this as a matter of course.

For those on OS X, iSnip (http://www.davedelong.com/isnip2/) provides functionality similar to ClipX, though I believe it only handles text.

PowerPro has been having clipboard history (and many other clipboard functions) for ages.

Regarding PDA, Palm always had copy-paste. It's so basic and so primitive, can't imagine there exist devices without it.

This has been part of the X Windows System for decades. There's a horrible discoverability issue around it but recent developments (like Klipper, already mentioned) have improved that situation.

Good functions of this small app.

I would apply your 'Don't make me think!' argument. You are taking a simple concept and making it complicated. Now I need to choose which item I want pasted (ok, not really, since the Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V still work as expected; you have another key combo to use to select). Does it allow you to select what to paste if you use the Paste menu option? Can I set it up to be a round-robin (FIFO) instead of a stack (FILO)? Can it maintain formats for Notepad or Paint?

As mentioned, Microsoft put into Word. I thought it was a good idea, but as I think about it now I fell very quickly back into the habit of thinking that the clipboard only held one item, and almost never used it. It's not something that would be used.

Off topic, Excel's copy/paste drives me nuts.

"What? I've never seen a program that fiddles with the clipboard. That could be catastrophic. Imagine if you're executing a copy/paste loop in a terminal window, and ApplicationX suddenly (if only for a moment) changes the clipboard contents."

I wrote a program that did that. It would insert " is awesome!" into the clipboard every time the clipboard changed. So the clipboard would always contain that string. Then I installed it on my bosses computer. Hilarity ensued.

Dang, I didn't use HTML, anyway, the string was "*MY NAME* is awesome!" That way anytime my boss pasted anything he would be reminded of my awesomeness.

Paste as Pure Text [http://www.stevemiller.net/puretext/]

The RIM Blackberry devices, for all their other failings, do ovver copy / paste functionality.

ovver -> offer.

Strange that people suggest "install linux and a desktop suite to get an add-in it comes with so you won't have to install one tiny add-in on the OS you work in"...

Then again, none of the Klipper screenshots suggest to me that it's overcome a horrible failing in the X clipboard - the inability to usefully copy/paste anything that isn't text.

Sure, some X software supports copy/paste of images, but most of it doesn't, and to my knowledge there's no one standard for how you do it.

Back on point, I've never really liked stack-simulating clipboards, myself, but that's my workflow.

I remember using things that did that sort of thing (their names escape me) as long ago as using System 7 on a 68k Mac, but it's never been worthwhile - for me.

Wow! I developed the first significant clipboard extender for Windows (ClipMate) back in 1991. Since then, it's been in continual development.

Re: KeePass - if it uses the "CF_Clipboard_Viewer_Ignore" flag, ClipMate will ignore the data, so you can avoid capturing passwords.

Re: Needs to use something that costs money - don't worry, you can definitely PAY for ClipMate. It's $34.95, and we fill corporate and govt's orders all the time.

I too was frustrated by the way clipboard history captures passwords from Keepass, but after reading these comments I went and looked at the Keepass documentation. There's a feature called auto-type that types the password for you instead of using the clipboard. There's even a flavour that combines keystrokes with cut-and-paste so that both keyloggers and clipboard spies will have a hard time sniffing a password. The details are here:

http://keepass.info/help/base/autotype.html

www.Clipmate.com

This program is so awesome that I can safely say it gives me an edge over other developers (I'm a freelancer) that don't use it.

It helps me remeber what I was working on this morngin, shows screenshot, has shortcuts and is very stable.

Regards, Tom

SDIZ,

"The problem is -- clipboard seldom really store those data, but only store a reference to those data. In this way, the client can request for alternative formats of the copied data.

if you don't know what i means, try to copy something from excel and parse to notepad, excel and word..... all shown in different formats."

The clipboard can contain multiple formats of the same data at the same time. They have to be put on the clipboard as part of the same operation, and there can only be 1 item of each clipboard format. The program doing the paste can look at the formats available, and pick one or give the user a choice.

As to why anyone would want multiple items on the clipboard, I use this on a daily basis, especially when I'm adding new functionality across an entire code base and have 3 or 4 different strings that I'm going to be using repeatedly.

("The other mysteriously missing should-be-standard clipboard feature is "Paste as unformatted text" (which some apps support through "paste special", but not all). I've come to rely on PureText to provide this feature, and I use it often.")

Yes. MS Word's Paste *always* does such insane things with formats that I expect to open up the monitor and find, Flintstones-style, a pack of miniature blind rabid monkeys pushing the letters into place. Word should default to unformatted paste. There's not even a direct keystroke assignable to it. However, you can write a macro and assign a keystroke to that:

Sub PasteUnformatted()
Selection.PasteSpecial Link:=False, DataType:=wdPasteText
End Sub

Sounds like you need to try out Linux. I used to be a Windows power user and installed all those apps, trying to make Windows do what Microsoft refused to include by default. After switching to Kubuntu about 1.5 years ago, it's been nothing but bliss. If I ever need a Windows app, VirtualBox's seamless mode has served me amazingly well ( http://www.fsckin.com/2007/10/29/how-to-run-microsoft-outlook-natively-on-linux-using-virtualbox/ ).

For those of us who like DOS boxes, or UNIX enthusiasts of the command line, copy/paste is mind-dead in yet another way. It is very common in Unix to copy something and paste it to the command line. There ought to be a single command to do this, but you have to paste separately. In a DOS box in windows, the paste operation was designed by a moron who never used it, I think.
-tobias d. robison

I think the reason you don't find the Clipboard functionality in the Linux Operating System is that a clipboard is not a operating system function! It makes no more sense to put a clipboard in an operating system than it does to put shell history in the operating system. This kind of user-specific functionality should be belong to part of the user presentation (Windows Manager, shell, etc). In Linux, this functionality is found in Windows Manager (KDE, etc) -- which is where it should belong (and where it has been for years).

Microsoft Windows tends to blur the distinction between the operating system and user presentation; but that doesn't mean we who know better have to buy into their sloppy thinking. This is, afterall, the same company that vehemently argued in court during the anti-trust suit that Internet Explorer was a necessary and indepensible component of the Windows operating system.

Windows (with MS Office) has had a multi-entry clipboard feature for several versions. However, it breaks any other apps that rely on the clipboard so I always have to turn it off. As for copy/paste to the command line, you can configure the dos window to select text with a mouse drag, then copy to clipboard with right-click or enter key, then paste to command line with a right-click.

Of course with all that being said, I would find Windows very unpleasant if I didn't have access to my favorite unix shell environment (complete with command-line STDIN clipboard commands) installed on my windows box.

Microsoft Office from version 2000 (I think) onwards has the multiple clip history enabled - and I absolutely despise it. My main gripe is that the damn thing maxes out at ten items, and doesn't remove the oldest.

I've only encountered one situation where I'd really like to have multiple items in my clipboard, but it's hardly a daily occurrance.

Microsoft: Please leave the clipboard alone, or let me use it just like it currently works (read: simple, but fast).

I'm usually the first to go "Lets try this new cool way of doing things", but this is one situation where I'd really love the status quo to be maintained.

>why is the Windows clipboard only capable of holding a single item

Possibly because non-geeks prefer it that way? When I set up machines for family and friends one of the first things I have to do is turn off Word's *#&$#*!&( multi-entry clipboard (or if I don't I get a call back a few days later to complain that "the clipboard on the Windows [sic] is broken"). I'm guessing that Microsoft's user testing revealed the same thing, that the masses just don't want multi-entry clipboards. Heck, I'm a pretty hardcode geek and even I hate them, I don't want to have to go fishing in a menu just to cut and paste a line of text.

The multiple-clipboard feature was already there in MS Office since Office 97. I think what MS need to do is to provide such feature in OS level.

I think that Copy and Paste's presence in the Top 5 List is actually BECAUSE OF the single-item clipboard. I think, in short, that the single-item clipboard is a feature and not a bug.

Software is too fucking complicated. Features that make us think, that burden our minds, that demand our participation: they have a cost, and a cost that is widely unrecognized and underappreciated. Paste does not suffer from this problem. When I Paste, what gets Pasted? Why, whatever I just Copied, of course. I Copied it so that I could Paste it. Now. I didn't Copy it so that later on, if it so happened that I wanted to, I could select it from a list of other things I thought I might someday want to Paste, to Paste. I'm not gathering things speculatively; I'm Copying THIS, from HERE to THERE. That's a very simple concept and it allows for a very simple interface, and simple interfaces don't scare away users and, if they're interfaces to useful features, they get used.

I knew a guy once who (in 1988) printed 3 Excel spreadsheet fragments, used scissors to cut and then tape them to 1 sheet of paper. While doing this the phrase "cut and paste" popped into his mind, and he felt a bit embarrassed.

True story, and no, it's not about me.

+1 to Carl Manaster - bang on.

And... as if we don't have enough complicated problems - to Carl's 2nd paragraph, first line - Hallelujah man!

IIRC Windows 95 had an optional accessory on the install disc called the 'Clipbook viewer' which added multiple copy/paste selections to that system.

I seem to recall it being somewhat of a pain to use, but I am quite certain it was there.

Of course, X11 has had two clipboard buffers since the beginning (and IMO the X11 selection and middle click to paste is the single most useful thing about that system), and xclipboard is a rather old utility that adds multiple level cut and paste capability. I don't know how old it is though.

> I'm Copying THIS, from HERE to THERE. That's a very simple concept and it allows for a very simple interface

As I said in my post, this simple behavior is be retained with no modification-- CTRL+C and CTRL+V work the same as before. With an enhancement like ClipX, you can opt to press CTRL+SHIFT+V and get access to your clipboard history.

I'm certainly not lobbying for anything like the annoying Office clipboard "manager" which pops up every time you copy something to the clipboard, until it is invariably turned off. ClipX behavior is completely invisible and automatic until you press CTRL+SHIFT+V.

Try ClipBoard Diary utility.
It maintains a history of each and every thing you have copied into clipboard starting from the time you install the software

What I don't understand is: Why force your left hand in the awkward position for ctrl+c and it's relatives?

It just exists that way because Macs already had command+c. DOS had (and all the versions of Windows I tried still have) a much better keyboard combination for copy/paste (ctrl+insert and shift+insert) that doesn't hurt your hand. Not even after threehundredthousandeightmillionandtwentysix successive copies and pastes.

P.S. 1 : I agree with the folks saying we don't need fancy multi clipboards making a simple operation less simple, but it's a good thing for power users that we have the choice.

P.S. 2: For Visual Studio copying anything while there's no selection? that's just a really dumb exception to the way the clipboard works, you copy the selection. it makes no sense whatsoever to copy anything if it's not selected! The option may make life easier for some but someone needs to be severly cut on his/her bonus for making it the default setting to copy an the current line when there's no selection.

Wow, Kris - I must have banana hands...

:P

or at least abnormally large hands for a female... and don't hurt me at all...

Of COURSE I can't use less than and greater than in comments...duh.

That's: "or at least abnormally large hands for a female... ctrl +c and ctrl + v don't hurt me at all..."

I actually just used both when copying from my earlier comment and pasting into this one.

Smartphones have cut+paste but you can use it without showing the on screen keyboard and tapping ctr-c/ctr-v. Thats way too long winded to make it useable. On the WM5+ screen you can TAP+HOLD. You'll see little dots appear round the stylus point, which after about a second completes a full circle and then pops up the applications context menu, which on most apps has Cut/Paste on there too.

cheers,
Rob

Besser Wisser wrote:

>> I wonder how clipboard monitors work in general when programs
>> put "application rendered" data on the clipboard.

> Imagine if you're executing a copy/paste loop in a terminal window,
> and ApplicationX suddenly (if only for a moment) changes the
> clipboard contents.
>
> I'm going to go ahead and assume you're talking about (or out of)
> something else.

I'm not sure where you got the idea I was talking about programs modifying the clipboard while you were using other applications. That's not what I meant at all.

The Windows Clipboard API allows programs to put an item on the clipboard without actually putting the data into the shared clipboard memory, and thus without having to actually "render" (i.e. convert or translate into a generic format; it's called "render" in the API) the data. If another program then tries to paste that data a message is sent to the program that put it on the clipboard asking it to render it into real data, which is then passed to the program doing the pasting.

The advantage is that if nothing does end up pasting the data, or if something pastes it but using a more light-weight format, then the CPU and memory overhead of converting and storing the data is never used.

If you consider that the vast majority of clipboard operations are copy and pastes within the same application/window then you can conclude that this is often a useful mechanism.

However, if something is monitoring the clipboard and saving its history then every time an "application rendered" item is added to the clipboard, the clipboard history manager is going to have to request the data in full so that it can be stored. There's no mechanism to say to a program "Hey, can you render that data you put on the clipboard three days ago, before the last reboot?" so that's how it has got to work, I assume. That loses the advantages of "application rendered" data. The only question is whether those advantages still matter so much on modern computers. I suspect they do but only in a handful of applications (e.g. massive image editing).

PS: Thanks to everyone for the comments about Keepass. I expect it does set that flag to tell monitors to ignore its passwords, which sounds like a good solution all round. (I already use the autotype feature, but not with web pages as AFAIK there isn't a reliable way to ensure it types into the right box. The autotype feature is fantastic for password prompt dialogs from applications, though! I don't even know what most of my passwords are these days; Keepass generates them and types them for me.)

There is "clipboard ring" with same features in Visual Studio. and it also uses Ctr-Shift-V shortcut.

@Cristophe

"pop from the clipboard stack" - well, for a stack model "pop" means remove, too ;). The idea of copying is that what's in the buffer doesn't get removed. Only having "top" (return data but don't move stack pointer) as an option renders it useless.

Those that keep mentioning the Linux distros as major operating systems...

Linux 'may' be major, but the splintering of the distros results in exactly the lack of recognition of 'major' when it comes to one of the distros that is a subset of an operating system that commands a nearly insignificant amount of desktops.

I've used a nearly unknown tiny utility for years: Hamsin Clipboard (http://www.iisr-cnc.com/hamsin/). I became addict to it. It's the first thing that I install on a fresh Windows. I can't live without it. I agree with Jeff that it's a must to have a better clipboard than the Windows default.
It works clicking on the program icon on the tray, or using handy shortcuts Win+1, Win+2....Win+0 to get the n-th item of the stack. It also have sticky favorites, accesed by the same shortcuts, but using the numeric pad instead of the standard numbers.
It's a pity that Hamsin doesn't have updates for years, it seems abandoned. The program has some bugs that never were fixed, and it could have been improved saving more than ten clips.

Thank god for ClipX. Otherwise I would be switching to linux. No question. Vista truly is a piece of .... when it comes to basic things like the clipboard. But hey, flip3D looks cool and that's all that matters right? If only visual studio ran on linux.

I haven't tried any clipboard tools apart from a bad one for OSX. If I've needed to keep a scrapbook of text I either just open notepad/textedit or use JEdit's QuickNotepad plugin.

I think we haven't had mainstream advanced clipboard because it's hard to do. Even if it is a large benefit, it's probably only going to be for a small number of users. The simple copy and paste we all know and love (or hate) works just well enough and is easy to implement and is easy for users to understand, even if they can't see what's on the clipboard. Plus, even though I've thought it might be useful, I've never used the Office 2003 clipboard, even though I can't seem to turn it off.

As for RSI, it's slightly easier on the Mac because I use my thumb on the CMD key rather than my little finger on PC keyboards. Most keyboards also have two CTRL keys and the proper way to use all modifier keys is with one hand for the modifier key and the other for the letter key. The thing is, using X/C/V (and B for paste and go in Opera) means you /can/ work with you left hand on the keyboard and your right on the mouse. That and I can never remember which is which for CTRL and shift+INSERT. X is obviously cut, C is copy and V is paste, because it's beside copy.

"I've learned that if the defaults aren't reasonably close to correct out of the box, then the software is probably doomed anyway."

I know someone else who thinks the same way. We should make a club! :)

I don't see the problem much here, then again, my muscle memory is pretty good with Ctrl + C, Alt + Tab and Ctrl + V. I think adding the Shift key will just confuse things.

I would prefer it be like Alt + Tab. Initially, pressing Ctrl + V pastes the most recent item in the clipboard, and holding down Ctrl and pressing V allows one to cycle through the contents. When one releases the Ctrl key, the item selected gets pasted.

I also use PTH Pasteboard on the Mac. Awesome app (and it actually does keep the contents through reboots). It has tons of additional features, such as ignoring items from certain applications (such as your keychain) so that your password doesn't get stored anywhere. You can have different pasteboards and show them on-screen so you get a quick overview over all of your stuff; you can set how many items to remember, and you can apply filters to copied things (such as fixing windows line endings, capitalizing text, and so on). It's an awesome application.
http://pth.com/products/pthpasteboard/

Something that I don't understand is all the resistance to this concept. ClipX doesn't alter Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V functionality at all, so if you need to copy and paste like you used to, it will always work for you. The Ctrl-Shift-V pops open a list of previously copied items and you can select which one you are interested. Again, it doesn't affect old functionality at all, so I don't get the fear.

I went to the site and tried it out. There was one thing missing. I had cobbled together some scripts that had a group of regular expressions and urls and if the contents of the clipboard matched an regex, then it would launch the the url (which had a grouping substitution in it from the regex). I sent an email about it to the author and he added a new Smart Navigiation Plugin to ClipX.

Here are a couple of my patterns:

Name: Bugzilla
Pattern to match: (bug|scr)?[\s:#]*(\d+)
Navigate to: http://bugzilla.inin.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=\2

Name: Perforce
Pattern to match: (cl|change|changelist)[#:\s]+(\d+)
Navigate to: http://perforce.inin.com:8080/\2?ac=10

Name: Email Address
Pattern to match: ([A-Z0-9._%-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4})
Navigate to: mailto:\1

Thanks for blogging on this! I am able to remove that old cobbled together script and get multiple clipboards to boot!

Here is my blog entry on his new Smart Navigation Plugin.

http://www.thehubbards.org/blog/2008/01/23/reinventing-the-clipboard-reprise/

I can't say I like the idea of a persistent clipboard by default. Keeping track of all this copy/paste is the same as using a key logger in my opinion. Tell me, is this clipboard history available to all programs?

If you want history, use/write a journal or a snippets program (or just use Google notebook). Back in the day before nasty spy-ware apps, I'd say you're right on the money. Nowadays I'm not so sure the benefit outweighs the risk.

I might go a step further in the paranoid security game, and perhaps I'd like yet another windows pop-up, this time asking me if I'd like to allow Program X to see the real clipboard. Yes/No/Allow Once. If I say no, Windows doesn't need to let the program know it has no access to the real clipboard should I choose, and Copy/Paste would work as advertised internal to the application.

I also use KeePass and like the feature when you copy passwords, it clears the clipboard when it detects a paste operation has occurred. Windows should be telling the app 'Interactive User Pressed Copy' and 'Interactive User Pressed Paste, here's the token to retrieve the data', rather than the way it is.

I'd like to see:
- better drag and drop within and between apps.
- better 'paste special' or 'paste as' inside an app.

In summary, what's the problem? The clipboard as-is is 'good enough', and you're able to extend it enough to get your 'power user' application to run nicely. Does the OS really need more bloat?

Tech Links I found:
MSDN About the Clipboard
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms649012(VS.85).aspx

CodeProject ClipSpy+
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/clipboard/ClipSpyPlus.aspx

Note: I too like my Sony phone that allows mark-copy-paste. It's brilliant, and why did it take most phones so long to get this?

kris: Those of us (all of us, in the real world) working with a pointing device find a single-hand solution superior to a two-hand solution.

(And if I'm doing enough repetitive C+P to hurt my hand, I've got bigger problems than the particular keystrokes in use; if I had a two-hand key-combo I'd be going mad moving my hands around to position the cursor and switch contexts anyway.)

And insert doing copy and paste with different modifiers? Ugly. I can see the logic of insert+meta for paste, but copy? No, thanks.

DOS is dead and can stay there, even if I have to fill its mouth with garlic and put a knife over its neck.

>>The Nokia S60 v3 Symbian phones do copy-paste, too.
It has been present since the first Symbian nokia phone, I remember copying/pasting on my 3650 (Symbian 6).

I have no time to read all the comments, I may be repeating.

I would consider it to be a nice improvement if the copy paste worked either like a stack or a queue. I guess a stack would make the most sense. It would break the whole multiple paste thing, but it wouldn't require any new buttons. I guess it would just confuse a lot of people.

I wouldn't be shocked if Microsoft purposefully ignored improving the windows clipboard with the reasoning of "People who want a multi-item clipboard should just buy Office."

Or better yet: The windows team actually did come up with an unintrusive multi-item clipboard, but since it was so much better than the office clipboard they canceled it to avoid embarrassing the office team. :)

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the recommendation. I will give it a try.

install it once on a flash drive, along with all your other favorite stuff, then you won't have to "install it on every machine"

whoever has time for searching for clipboard solutions should not be employed as a programmer.

offler: Whoever does not understand that time spent optimizing tools makes for better tool-use should neither be employed as either a programmer or a manager.

Whoa Jeff I just installed this puppy (Clipx)and man is it great. It's a HUGE time saver! Thanks for the tip!

AAARGH! Don't mess with my sub-concious routines!!
Hmm, I'll just cut this sentence and--WHAT THE--There's a floating palette blocking my email! Go away!
Oh no! Now I've got too many items in the clipboard and I have to read a whole dialogue box. I dare not dismiss it without reading, because who knows what will be in my clipboard then? The oldest item? The second to last one? I've forgotten where I was going to paste this!

Maybe some time in Excel will help. Nice calming grid lines...Why are those marching ants still going? I don't need that selection any more! Must focus but my eyes keep getting drawn back to that animated border, can't...look...away!

Great Post. I actually just launched a product to help developers manage code snippets and everything else they copy and cut.

It docks to the edge of your screen so you can use it with any program. It can also be minimized to the tray or configured to autohide. And more related to this post, it monitors the windows clipboard saving everything you copy and paste.

http://www.snipitpro.com/

thrax: nothing happens when you cut a sentence, or paste for that matter, the dialog will never appear unless you specifically request it. It's here to let you go back to previous clipboards, not to make you think each time you use your clipboard in the normal fashion. duh.

I don't understand how people can dismiss this out of hand on the basis that it makes things more complicated, when the article actually mentions that: "you can OPT to press Ctrl+Shift+V", that should be a pretty good clue that unless you do opt to do that, the clipboard works the way it always has.

But I guess asking them to read the article before commenting on it is too much.

Bottom line, whether you use clipx or another of these tools, they are HUGE time savers, especially for developpers and writers. If you don't use your keyboard that much, then yeah, it's probably not that useful to you, but it certainly doesn't make copypasting any more complicated than it currently is, it just makes it more useful.

If you'd like to try a good freeware clipboard, try Hamsin Cliboard. It doesn't need installation so you can carry it with you and use it wherever you go, and it is only a few hundred k. What I like about it is not only does it save history if you desire and can give you a list of saved items,but you can also use the Win-key +1-10 to paste any of the last ten items.I use it to have my sig and other bits I use a lot saved as an easy to use portable macro. Now matter what app I'm in the short text bits I need are just Win+1-10 away!

I'm not trying to sound like a linux troll, but Linux comes with 2 clipboards by default: the normal one, like you have in Windows, and a hidden one in the X server: whenever you select something, this is copied onto the hidden clipboard, and middle click pastes the contents.

This is useful for quick copy-pasting without interfering with your default clipboard.

I'm happy with this, because it's still just a one-action method, and doesn't make me search through a menu before pasting.

However, for the ones who do like the menu with a list of recent copies, in KDE there is an application that starts up at login by default, called Klipper, that does this exact thing. It even works when you log out and back in again, reboot, ...

http://www.controlc.com/ just came out recently, which saves your clipboard history to the web!

Great Post. I actually just launched a tiny app to help people searching on Google using the clipboard.

Google It! is a simple, unobtrusive widget used to search the content of your clipboard automatically on Google. It's a snap to setup and works on Windows Vista and XP running .NET Framework 3.0.

To use Google It!, copy any text from any program, the Google It! widget will appear, click on it, it will then automatically search the content of the clipboard on Google.

http://www.zypto.com/labs/googleit/
http://www.zypto.com/labs/googleit/releases/latest/googleit.zip
http://www.zypto.com/labs/googleit/media/googleit-howtouse_800x600.wmv

Thank you Jeff for your great work!

Very very useful application, Jeff!
I have been using it for a couple of days, and I feel much more comfortable when copy-pasting text, code, or whatever.
Thanks so much for sharing this little things!

Indeed cut/copy and paste seem to be the most used commands. There used to be a Microsoft Office Keyboard (1998?) with seperate buttons on the left for cut/copy/paste - fantastic !!
I can't find a replacement anywhere. Any ideas?

Hey, Jeff, thanks. I read this post with a lot of interests.

I never used ClipX before. As you said in your article, "In this era of 3 GHz processors, 1 GB memory, and 500 GB hard drives, why is the Windows clipboard only capable of holding a single item", the single item is limited. That's why I could not copy all the output text in Visual Studio to the clipboard though computer's memory was enough.

I am going to install ClipX on my computer and I think I would be happy with it. :-)

I use MS Office Clipboard (2003) this way:

\ \ \\

(Control c)\ Windows+Office\ Copy (default behavior) and add an item to the Office Clipboard\\
(Control v)\ Windows\ Paste (default behavior)\\
(Alt Shift f)\ ttenk\ Open the Office Clipboard (as the Task Pane in OfficeClipboard.doc; the Task Pane is given the keyboard focus)\\
(Up/Down)\ Office\ Select an item on the Office Clipboard\\
(Enter)\ Office\ Activate the selected item (copy it to the system clipboard)\\
(AppsKey d)\ Office\ Delete the selected item\\
(Control Shift f)\ ttenk\ [Effective in OfficeClipboard.doc] "Select all" + "Delete" + "Minize Window"\\

ttenk
May 6, 2008

+1 for Ditto, I've been using it for a month now after reading about it here, and I love love love it!