Welcome to Clipomatic

Clipomatic is a clipboard-caching program that remembers text that you have copied to the clipboard, even after it has been replaced by other text.

It has been designed to be fast, small, and very convenient to use.

Clipomatic was programmed in C++ by Mike Lin.


Basic Usage

Clipomatic’s usage is simple, integrated, and convenient. As you copy text to the clipboard, Clipomatic automatically saves the replaced text into its cache.

When you want to paste an item back, put the blinking keyboard cursor in the target text box as if you were going to use regular Ctrl-V to paste. Then, press Ctrl-Alt-V. A menu appears next to the cursor. It displays the text currently copied to the clipboard, as well as all the items currently cached by Clipomatic.

The clipboard’s current contents is listed first, followed by a divider line, followed by a list of all items in the cache. To paste cached text, simply click on the appropriate menu item. The menu disappears, and the selected text is pasted into the text box as well as copied to the clipboard.

Note: Clipomatic will truncate long items when they are displayed in the menu to avoid taking up too much space. When you paste the item, of course, it is restored in its entirety. The actual length of an item is limited only by available memory.

You can also quickly access cached items with the keyboard. Press Ctrl-Alt-V, then press 1 for the first item, 2 for the second, etc...and 0 for the tenth item.

Note: the item currently on the keyboard is not the first item in the cache. Items are only put into the cache once they have been replaced on the clipboard by another item. The text currently onto the clipboard can be flushed into the cache with Clipomatic’s tray menu.

When you copy a new item to the clipboard, the item previously on the clipboard gets pushed to the first position in Clipomatic’s cache. All the other items are pushed down: #1 becomes #2, #2 becomes #3, etc.

There is a maximum number of items that can be cached. By default, this is 10. It can be changed in the Settings DIalog. When the maximum number of items has been reached and a new item is copied, the last item falls off a cliff as the other items get pushed down.

When you exit Clipomatic, the cache is saved to disk. It is reloaded when Clipomatic starts again. Thus, the cache is saved permanently.


The Tray Menu

The tray menu is used to configure Clipomatic and can be accessed by right-clicking Clipomatic’s tray icon. It is also accessible at the bottom of the clip popup menu. Each item on the menu is discussed here.

Exit

Shuts down Clipomatic.

Caching

Unchecking this will stop Clipomatic from monitoring the clipboard for new items (you will still be able to paste previously cached items).

TIP: This can be very useful to programming, HTML coding, and other typing tasks that use a lot of repetitive text. For instance, when writing web pages, I can cache things like ‘<p align=’ or ‘<img src=’ to save time.

Clear all items

This will clear all items currently in Clipomatic’s cache.

Note: If you’re wondering why there’s still a clip menu after using this, remember that the item currently on the clipboard is not in the cache.

Flush current item

This flushes the item currently on the clipboard into Clipomatic’s cache. This can be useful if you are shutting down Clipomatic and you want the current text to be saved.

Clipset Editor

Activates Clipomatic’s Clipset Editor.

Settings

Activates Clipomatic’s Settings Dialog.

Clip Set

Allows you to save the current clip set and load new ones. For more information, see Clip Sets.

Quick Sets

Gives you easy access to clip sets. Again, see Clip Sets.


The Settings Dialog

The Settings dialog allows you to configure various customizations for Clipomatic.

Paste Key

Allows you to change the key combination used to paste (by default Ctrl-Alt-V). To set a new paste key, click on the text box and press the new combination.

Cache Items

This allows you to set the maximum number of items that the Clipomatic cache will hold. The upper limit for this is 64, however you will want to limit this to your available screen space for the menu.

WARNING: If you set a new limit that is lower than the number of items currently in the cache, the extra cache items will be lost.

Load on startup

When checked, Clipomatic will load with Windows on system startup.

Paste item on selection

When this is unchecked and you select an item from Clipomatic’s cache, it will not be automatically pasted; instead, it will just be copied to the clipboard for later pasting.

Ignore Whitespace

Activating this will cause Clipomatic to ignore copied items that consist of only whitespace (spaces, tabs, returns, etc.).

Flush Current Item on Exit

This will automatically flush the current item on the clipboard into Clipomatic’s cache when it shuts down.

Quick Sets Directory

This is the directory that the Quick Sets menu will search for clip sets. For more information, see Clip Sets.

Permanent Clipset

This selects the clip set that Clipomatic will use as the permanent set. For more information, see The Permanent Clipset.


The Clipset Editor

The Clipset editor allows you to add items to a clipset, rearrange or edit currently stored items, or delete items.

When you activate the item editor, you are presented with a list containing all the cached items.

To add an item, right-click a blank spot in the list and select New.

To edit an item, select it right-click it and press Edit. Similarly, you can move items up, move them down, or delete them.

TIP: You can press Alt-Space or Shift-F10 for keyboard access to the context menu.


Clip Sets

Clip sets are a powerful feature of Clipomatic that allow you to save the cache to a file or load other caches. This allows you to switch the entire cache as needed. For instance, I keep a set of clips useful for HTML authoring and a separate set for regular clips. When I go to write a web page, I switch to the HTML authoring cache. When I’ve finished, I switch back.

The default clip set is created after you first run Clipomatic. It is created in the same directory where Clipomatic was started, and it is named default.clipset.

To load a new clip set, right-click on the tray icon, select Clip Set, and select Load. You will be given a dialog box in which you can locate and select the clip set to load. When you load a new clip set, the old one is automatically saved.

You can Save the current clip set manually by using Clip Set > Save. Or, you can save it under a different name using Clip Set > Save As.

The Quick Sets menu gives you quick access to clip sets. It lists all the clip sets that are located in the same directory as Clipomatic and allows you to load any of them simply by selecting it in the submenu. It is much faster than using the regular Load command.


The Permanent Clipset

The Permanent Clipset is a clipset that will be separately displayed in Clipomatic’s menu. The items in this clipset will not be affected by changes in the clipboard; they merely allow you to quickly paste common items. For instance, you could save your name, address, and phone number, and be able to paste them very quickly.

The default permanent clipset is permanent.clipset. This can be changed in the Settings dialog. Clipomatic will automatically attempt to load this when it runs; if it cannot, it will simply not display any permanent items in the menu.

To create the permanent clipset, use Save As to save the current clipset to permanent.clipset and switch back to your normal clipset. Then, use the Clipset Editor to add whatever items you wish to the permanent clipset. Once you close the Clipset Editor, Clipomatic will again attempt to load the permanent set, so your items should now be visible in the menu.

You may have up to 26 items in the permanent clipset, one for each letter accelerator key.

To make the permanent clipset even more useful, Clipomatic allows you to enter control codes into an item so that, when an item is pasted, the codes will be replaced with information about the current date and time. This way, you can always paste the current date, time, etc. and add that to existing clips.

The control codes are as follows (case-sensitive):

%w – weekday as number (0-6; Sunday is 0)

%a – abbreviated weekday name (Mon, Tue...)

%A – full weekday name (Monday, Tuesday...)

%d – day of month (0-31)

%m – month as a number (1-12)

%b – abbreviated month name (Jan, Feb...)

%B – full month name (January, February...)

%y – year without century (00-99)

%Y – year with century

%H – hour in 24-hour (military time) format (0-23)

%I – hour in standard 12-hour format (1-12)

%M – minute (00-59)

%S – second (00-59)

%p – A.M. / P.M.

%U – week of year (0-53)

%j – day of year (1-366)

%z – time zone name (e.g. Eastern Standard Time)

%% - percent sign

Some examples:

%A, %B %d %Y %I:%M:%S %p %z

Produces something like:

Saturday, February 20 1999 04:25:49 PM Eastern Standard Time

Hi! It’s %a %d/%m/%y %h:%M:%S

Gives you:

Hi! It’s Sat 20/02/99 16:25:49