The Bad News

The good news is I may have something unique for Android. The bad news is there's tons of work left.

The current prototype app does nothing.

In the above screen capture, the app globally detects a click on a text box and shows the AC popup button. It can either be clicked to activate or dragged to dismiss. The placement is an issue, since there are several cases where the text box can shift or report a position that's different from what's seen on screen.

The "easy" fix is to use a static position on the screen to show the popup button. If the button is dragged to reposition, this solves many problems.

There's just one architecture thing left to research. The rest of the research will all be just decisions for starting features, like if it should support the "cloud" for multiple devices. Only a small subset of ArsClip features will belong in an Android environment, so the blueprint will be easy to create. The Android only features may take some time to discover.

Still Slow Research

There's been quite a bit of success, but Android testing is extremely slow. At this point, only a clickable glyph is shown when a text box is clicked in the current App. That's it, but it took many hours and many tricks to accomplish.

Android version support will be an issue. Only 4.0 and above will work, but there are some features the program could really use that only exist in higher versions. Features like automatic pasting is an example. Supporting 4.0 as a minimum includes about 90% of all devices, but most run on 4.4, 4.2, and 4.1.

Finally, the prototype made only serves one purpose: to compare against other methods. Copy and Paste needs on a consumer device are way different than on a producer device, like a PC.

Slow Research

Research for the possibility a mini-ArsClip for Android is extremely slow. The architecture is closed for security reasons, so the idea of creating a global utility is very foreign. It's challenging finding ways to work without requiring root access.

Nothing may ever be officially released. The goal is to create something unique or much better than already exists. Plenty of clip programs exist for Android already, so it would be difficult to catch up to the more mature clip managers. The litmus test is probably to create something unique.

Unless an intuitive and creative way can be found to trigger a "popup", it doesn't seem reasonable to continue. Piggy-backing onto the Android Text Selection mechanic makes the most sense, but requires some trickery to get working. This is where the research currently is being done.

Status for 2015

While bug fixes are still being handled, personal issues have prevented full development. Work on new features should begin soon.

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Why no 64-Bit versions or support for OS X, Linux, Android, and etc. versions?

This question gets asked a lot for RM and AC. The short answer is: "no money and time". The cost to upgrade my compiler, and buy devices, would take years of donations/ads to afford. I, also, don't have the audience type to crowd-fund this, since most users visit the website once. The other issue is that the programs would almost have to be 100% re-written to work on another operating system.

That being said, I do plan on researching App creation on Android. There is a terrible, but free, development environment for Android that I've been trying to use. I'd like to create an "ArsClip Light" for Android, but security restrictions will determine what is possible to implement.

Rename Variables 3

A recent request was made to describe what all those "?n02? things are in a help file. Help files are a crutch for bad program interfaces. Placing "help" directly in the interactive program is much more useful. The real problem, however, is that meta-variables aren't handled well in the program.

If done well, the user shouldn't have to know anything about those variables. The current Public Beta gets another step close to this goal. Variables are now displayed using friendly names. Variables still use the same syntax behind the scenes, so backwards compatibility is maintained with existing scripts. But, the program hides the details better. The process is now the opposite of what was done in the previous beta: a tooltip hint on hover now shows the old data and the formatting and the textbox shows the friendly name.

To complete the illusion, variables now require using prompts to format the output of the metadata represented. This means that the prompts and windows used need to be polished up. Many of these windows haven't been updated in a very long time. For example, the program has to advertise better how to find filetype specific variable tags. The Filelist improves this process by showing when a clicked file can contains tags that are usable by the program. The Advanced Insert window now gives a help message for a better way deal with file specific tags. By default, these old pages on the Advaned Insert window are now hidden under help prompts, but clicking a 'Show' button reveals the previous interface. The old settings remains accessible just to help in the transition process.

Rename Variables 2

The current Public Beta of Rename Master contains the changes mentioned in the post below.

Meta-variables are now very visually distinct by using a background color, an underline, and a different font. The underline helps cue that the item can be clicked and might make it easy to discover the new hover mechanic. When hovered, a friendly name is shown using a tooltip hint. When clicked, a variable is automatically highlighted and a context menu is shown for editing.

Textboxes now will automatically grow and shrink when dealing with a long text. This should help with overall readability and editing, for those dealing with multiple variables or long strings.

These "simple" changes took a lot of work, but the improvement in usability was worth it. Ultimately, the user should need to know very little about meta-variables. This goal requires that the program do all the work for inserting, rendering, and editing variables. This version is closer to that goal.

Rename Variables

Variables in Rename Master are being worked on for the next beta. The goal is the make them easier to read and identify.

The first step, shown in the example screencap, is to change the visuals to distinguish them from literal text. The program automatically detects a variable like "?n02?" and formats it by trimming of the question marks and changing the font style.

The second step will be to change the text into something friendly. This will require some research, since there's no straight forward way to do this.

Preparing v4.20 for Release Part 2

This will be delayed until next week, after things settle down from the last RM release.