ArsClip Next Beta (Update 2)

In the current Public Beta upload, the Pinned mode has replaced Form Mode. The Popup can now toggle transparency, via a Title Bar button. There's also a new toggle button in Pinned mode for sending keystrokes. The only thing left to do is fix some of the in-program documentation to remove references to "Form Mode".

For now, these are the last changes scheduled for v5.44 of ArsClip.

ArsClip Next Beta (Update)

The Paste Selected Text window was forgotten about. It was deprecated (only bugs fixed) a while ago, but the functionality was never purely replicated in the Popup. The "Paste and Stay Open" keystroke + click mechanic replicated most of the features. This feature, however, takes a while to discover.

The new Paste Selected mode in the current Public Beta is much more intuitive and easier to discover. It's a quick way to combine a group of clips into a single clip to paste. It's also very compatible with just about every program that accepts text. The same mechanic could be created using a (Clip Menu/Permanent Clip) macro, but this also takes a while to discover and understand.

While testing the new mode, I discovered the Pinned to Desktop Mode was very unstable. The Pinned Mode was also designed to be an accessible way to replicate the Paste and Stay open mechanic. It worked fine while the same target program was in the foreground. Once focus was changed to another program or the target program was closed, Pinned Mode would break. This mode was rewritten in the current Public Beta to account for all the edge cases. It's now much more stable and reliable.

Pinned Mode also makes Form Mode mostly redundant and it is more flexible. In Pinned Mode, it's trivial to paste into several different textboxes and/or different programs. You can use your normal mouse/keyboard methods to select where to paste. ArsClip also supports dragging clips onto external programs to paste, and this works well with Pinned Mode. With a few tweaks, Pinned Mode could completely replace Form Mode.

ArsClip Next Beta

The "Paste Selected Text" and the "Search and Paste" windows have been deprecated for while. Bugs will be fixed, but no new features are added. Search/Filter was added to the Popup a while ago when the Menu Bar was implemented. So, the Search and Paste window is now redundant.

In the next Public Beta, the "Paste Selected" window will be replaced with a Paste Selected Mode. The Popup will be used to select several clips (text only) to be pasted as a single clip. A button will appear on the Menu Bar to toggle this feature on and off. The Popup Clips will look and behave similar, but will have checkboxes that toggle when clicked instead of pasting the clip. I've also implemented a Shift+Click mechanic for checking a group of clips to paste when in this mode. The "Reverse Order" option is also available, so you don't have to copy clips items from last to first order.

Paste Selected Mode differs quite a bit from Form Mode. Form Mode is designed to paste clips into multiple text boxes, so it offers ways to navigate controls and has customizable macros to perform tasks in between pasted clips. Paste Selected Mode is used to create one large clip by combining text clips separated by newlines.

There's a good bit of room on the Menu Bar of the Popup, so there's rooms for more features.

Latest Rename Master Updates (Part 2)

The latest round of changes are a result of issues reported long ago.

When dealing with a long list of files, you can highlight files, but there was no way to navigate them. There's now a menu (and Alt+H shortcut) that will move to the next highlighted file.

The Breadcrumb style Filepath now supports keyboard navigation. I try to design my programs to be keyboard friendly, but this feature had no keyboard support. Now, it can receive Tab focus and supports left/right arrow key navigation and Space/Enter activation of buttons.

A lot of code has changed behind the scenes to clean up mistakes made over a decade ago. When reviewing the code, I've discovered issues that were reported years ago. These were mistakenly misdiagnosed. For example, one of the Windows routines I use for converting file timestamps fails if the years is less than 1980. Windows itself has no problems showing this in Explorer.

I've emptied the TODO list in on the Plans and Ideas page. There are only 2 Future ideas left that may or may not be added in this version.

Latest Rename Master Updates

The "Case" settings in RM have been an issue for a long time. They were mostly hard-coded for English and failed to work with non-English character. These options aren't used very often and they only activate after running the Renaming Script steps.

The upper/lower case logic has been rewritten. The routines using the system locale settings are now explicitly used for all of the options. Before, most characters would be replaced with an English equivalent. They now work with more characters. This still fails for the Turkish specific "i" characters.

The "word" definition has changed. Before, a pre-defined list of characters was used to determine word delimiters. Words are now made of "alphabet" characters, and "alphabet" characters are defined as characters that have upper and lower case versions. All other characters are considered delimiters.

The "Case" settings may be converted into a Renaming Script Step for flexibility. This way, the Renaming Script can override or customize how these options behave. Currently, case is applied after running the Renaming Script.

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The JavaScript feature has been update to support Unicode literals. This way, you can create your own custom upper/lower case routines. This will work around the current known issues with Turkish characters. Example:

function main(PreviousStepFilename, optionalObject) {
var result = '';
for (var i = 0; i < PreviousStepFilename.length; i++) {
var c = PreviousStepFilename.charAt(i);
if (c == "I") {
result += "ı";
} else if (c == "ı") {
result += c;
} else {
result += c.toLowerCase();
}
}

RM_SetNewFilename(result);
}


The above script will work around the lowercase issue with non-dotted "i" Turkish characters.

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Quality-of-Life update suggestions are a priority. There's a small change to the Rescan prompt after performing a rename while in Subfolder Scan mode. There's a new "Always" button that will automatically select the "Rescan" option. This selection will last until the program is exited. This is a small changes, but it can create a better flow to the program in certain cases.

Current Plans

I've officially released ArsClip, Rename Master, and MouseWrangler latest version over the last 3 months. My current plans are to make sure the "Plans and Ideas" section is up-to-date. As usual, I completely forgot to update this section. So, I'm scanning my emails for things to list.

If your fix/feature is not listed, feel free to re-send an email.

I'll wait for about a week to begin working on Rename Master, since it was just released. It spent a long time in beta, so I'm not expecting any issues that would require a fast hotfix.

ArsClip Pending Release

The last change for this version of ArsClip has been made. The current beta is now Release Candidate 1. This is a small release that mostly targets scripting changes and fixes.

The last update changes how plaintext is retrieved from the clipboard. If a File clip is detected, it will extract the text and return it; otherwise, it will query the clipboard just for plain text. This mostly only effects scripting areas of the program.

MouseWrangler 2.0 - Fourth Test

Behind the scenes, the code for detecting mouse gestures was reworked. This solved a lot of issues and limitations, but it also bound to introduce new issues. This fourth test fixed a few of those issues as well as issues caused from newly added features.

Two small new features were added. The Welcome screen was updated to include an example gesture. This will create a simple gesture that will show the Configuration screen. The Configuration load speed was improved when showing the Per-Program list.

A fifth test is needed to address more issues. There are two small program additions already planned for this test, but no more features will be added after this.

There are planned changes scheduled for version 2.1, but these will require significant changes. The idea is to rework how gestures are displayed in list form to make them easier to understand and visualize.


EDIT: Public Beta 5 was release and now the program is in feature freeze. All ideas for changes are scheduled for a future release. Only bugs and minor tweaks are being addressed.