clipman

THE CLIPBOARD MANAGER UTILITY
version 3.0

The Clipboard Manager utility is a clipboard viewer for the Microsoft Windows 95 or NT. Any time when a Windows application places some text onto the clipboard, the utility tries to convert the clipboard contents. According to the radio button checked onto the utility control panel the utility can:

Leave the clipboard contents unchanged;
Format the text in the clipboard;
Sort lines in the clipboard;

With the aid of the Clipboard Manager you can teach your preferable text editor to format or sort the selected text. Just run the clipboard manager. Choose conversion mode on the control panel. Select the text you want to convert. Make `Cut' and immediately `Paste'. Here you are!

The utility was compiled using the Microsoft Visual C++ and Borland C++ compilers. However it is a pure Windows application, i.e. it uses neither Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) nor Borland class library. Theoretically it can be compiled by any C++ compiler that supports Win32 API.

The clipboard manager was developed by Dmitry A. Kazakov. It is distrubuted under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later versionterms GNU. This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

The current version works under Windows 95 and Windows NT (both Intel and Alpha). Download: clipman.zip (zip) or clipman.tgz (tar + gzip).

I would be glad to hear your comments. My E-mail address is dmitry@gandalf.atm.fh-luebeck.de.

Buttons and the front panel

The Clipboard Manager starts minimized. It shows its buttons on the taskbar:

You can use these buttons to change the clipboard formatting mode without task switching.

You open the Clipboard Manager to change the default formatting mode and parameters. The panel of the Clipboard Manager looks like follows:

You can set:

The mode: Do not touch, Format, Sort.
The tabulation size (tells how the tab character is expanded). Initially tab is treated as 8 spaces.
The right margin of the text used for justification. By default it is set to 72.
Up to four prefix-suffix pairs (see below).

You can save the current settings using the Save button.

Formatting

The way the text is formatted is defined by the shape of the first two lines of the text.

For example, let's consider this paragraph.

The paragraph indentation is taken from the second line.

However the first line indentation is preserved.

The formatted text is justified. So the result is

For example, let's consider this paragraph. The

paragraph indentation is taken from the second line. However

the first line indentation is preserved. The formatted text

is justified. So the result is

Another case is hanging paragraph text:

Note how the paragraph is formatted when

the first line is less indented than the second one.

The paragraph indentation is lead by

the second line indentation.

Note how the paragraph is formatted when the first line is

less indented than the second one. The paragraph

indentation is lead by the second line indentation.

Hyphenations are correctly processed. Leading tabulators in the first two lines are expanded before text formatting. Other tabulators are assumed to be particular spaces.

Prefixes and Suffixes

On the front panel of the Clipboard Manager you may find four fields for formatting prefixes and suffixes. When a prefix appears in the first formatted line, the Clipboard Manager uses the prefix and the corresponding suffix for formatting. The following example shows how it works:

/* Many C programmers like to arrange the multi-

/* line comments using /* as the prefix and */ as

the suffix for each line of a comment.

If you set /* as a prefix and */ as the

corresponding suffix of the Clipboard Manager,

this text will be formatted by

the following way:

/* Many C programmers like to arrange the */

/* multi-line comments using /* as the prefix */

/* and */ as the suffix for each line of a */

/* comment. If you set /* as a prefix and */ as */

/* the corresponding suffix of the Clipboard */

/* Manager, this text will be formatted by the */

/* following way: */

When a prefix is recognized, the Clipboard Manager works so as if the prefix and the corresponding suffix were removed from all lines of the clipboard text before formatting. Formatting the text it adds the prefix and the suffix to each formatted line.

Sorting

Lines in the clipboard are sorted according to their alphabetical order. Tabulators are considered as if they were expanded to spaces before sorting.

Building

For Microsoft Visual C++ and Borland C++ there are ready to use make files:

nmake -f vc.mak

make -f bcc.mak

I did not provide a make file for gcc (GNU C++), because the current version of the compiler shipped by Cygnus (Cygwin32 beta 19) lacks some important Win32 API calls. If you have a more recent version, it should be no problem to get clipman compiled with gcc.

Last note. Tabs are used in source texts The texts may look a bit strange if your editor has tab stops other than 8.