Effective work with text or how I invented a bicycle

For a long time I was looking for a good program for convenient work with the clipboard.

My requirements are as follows:

• storage of history in different tabs, i.e. when I program, I want the pieces of the copied text not to mix with the ones that I use when writing articles or sending letters
• convenient multiple copying and pasting by means of hot keys (without switching to the program interface)
• the ability to process data before insertion (for example, converting characters to uppercase, breaking into words line by line, sorting lines, deleting empty lines)
• text analysis (search for emails, hyperlinks, dates, etc.)
• the ability to correct the layout of the typed text (as, for example, in PuntoSwitcher)

I tried different ones: ClipMate, Spartan, Ditto, CLCL, but, as a result, I decided to write my own program.

Programming system:

C ++ Builder XE3. It just so happened that I am the happy (unhappy) owner of the licensed version of this programming system. The simplicity and speed of writing applications is compensated by the lack of detailed help on some functions and classes, as well as the unwillingness of Embarcaderro to fix found jambs in older versions of the IDE.

Here is one of the reviews on my program:

Amazingly useless program. The standard of bicycle construction.
(Victor Dymov)

Appearance.



My experience of using

Forms are different:
These

or such

or even such

My friend had to fill out many forms at work, namely, most often I had to fill out similar forms with many fields. It would seem: what problems? But not so simple. When copying information from the database of employees can not make a single mistake. You have to switch from a database to a browser with a form, and so many times.

Here is her sequence of actions:

• Switch to database
• Select the desired cell
• Copy the necessary information to the clipboard
• Switch to browser
• Find the required field
• Paste information from the clipboard (Ctrl + V)
• Continue from the beginning

I helped my friend by inviting me to use my program. Now she does the following:

• Selects the desired field in the database and copies it (Ctrl + C)
• Repeats the operation for all fields that need to be copied.
• Switch to my program and select the first copied entry in the history
• Switches to the browser window
• Selects the first field to be filled.
• Press Ctrl + '+'
• Switch to the next record and press Ctrl + '+'
• Repeats the previous paragraph.

I advised another friend of mine to use the program to search for contacts on the pages. Now he just needs to look at the source code of the page and copy it to the clipboard. Next, the program automatically finds E-mails, names and phones.


Personally, I use a program (for example) to authorize on sites that do not save passwords in browsers:

• Switch to text with username and password
• copied separately login and password separately
• switched to authorization form
• entered login combination (Ctrl + '1')
• entered the password with a combination (Ctrl + '0')

Usage Scenarios

I think the program may be useful in the following scenarios:

• filling out forms with information from existing tables (saving time and effort> 50%)
• alphabetically sort lists instantly
• search for some information (E-mails, hyperlinks, names)
• saving useful information for subsequent reuse (pieces of code, values, etc.)

Other features

For my program, I tried to add some useful (in my opinion) functions:

• network clipboard
• voice and visualization of the current layout
• voice keystrokes
• work with reminders
• to-do lists
• congratulations choice
• converting values ​​from one unit of measurement to another (14 different types of measurements: length, area, volume, time ...)

Disadvantages

They are and there are many of them:

• phone search (I try to look for not only cellular, but also city numbers) often adds a lot of garbage
• shows names one per line, i.e. Ivanov Ivan Ivanovich will be represented by three lines, one word in each line
• verbose city names are not sought (Nizhny Novgorod flies by)
• for price detection, you need nearby "rubles." or “rubles” or euro or pound signs
• car numbers have a strict xYYYxxZZ template (others do not understand yet)
• finds not all dates and times (too many options)

Future improvements

• correction of the above deficiencies
• address search (text analysis)
• selection and use of individual columns, not the entire copied fragment (Processing before pasting)
• adding static fragments before and after the inserted text (Processing before pasting)

I think that the bike turned out, although it still needs to be run in as it should. Well, how good he is is up to you.