How can I see what the Windows clipboard currently contains without using the paste operation?
I don't want the "pasted-to" application to perform any actions on the clipboard (for example, formatting text and converting).
Is there a tool which shows the clipboard's objects and their format (CF_BITMAP, CF_TEXT, etc.) and content (in simple bytes for example)?
There is a list of clipboard manager tools at Wikipedia:
Clipboard manager
ClipX allows you to view a log of previous clipboard entries by pressing Ctrl + Shift + V.
NirSoft offers a free “Inside Clipboard” utility which allows you to see the raw clipboard contents and different formats. It’s close to what you would see with a programmatic API but with a nice GUI. Its GUI includes hex view. It also allows data to be exported and allows saving a snapshot to a .clp file which it can open and allow you to examine later.
If you need to see things at the level of the programmatic API to quick check things without writing a program yourself, I recommend this tool.
If using .NET you can query the Clipboard object.
How about the regular old Clipbrd.exe clipboard viewer from Windows XP?
That'll still run on Windows Vista and Windows 7, IIRC.
Select run from the start menu.
Enter "clipbrd.exe" in it.
Then you can see the clipboard items in the Windows systems.
Related
I would like to be able to select text in a text editing application and then send that selection directly to PowerShell for further processing and manipulation. I realize that I can select and copy with the mouse, then get the text from the clipboard, but I would like to cut out the clipboard step if possible.
My use case is a workflow where I have to make a lot of individual text selections from a set of files (the selections I need vary on a case by case basis, and cannot be done programmatically). I would like to set up a simple keyboard shortcut to automatically get the selected text and append it to a preset text file.
I do it this way on OSX, so I just wanted to see if it is possible in Windows before I start trying to script using the clipboard.
EDIT:
#SimonMᶜKenzie: I'm using Sublime Text 3 primarily, but I actually interact with my files from different editors sometimes (Visual Studio Code, some markdown previewers, etc.). On OSX, I even used the "get-selected-text" capability to grab stuff out of web browsers, and so on, and it was kind of nice not to have to create macros for each of the editors I use. It was pretty handy to have a single "get-text-anywhere" capability everywhere.
I'm switching from Mac to Windows, and everything is quite different. I've committed to try learn stuff a Windowsy way, rather than try to force Win to be Unix/OSX. I'm kind of just testing things out right now to see what capabilities might be available in Windows. If it is not there, I'm happy to make due, but I wanted to make sure first, before I invest time in some of the other options.
Only tried this on Windows 10, so it might differ for older versions:
While ($true) {
if ([System.Windows.Clipboard]::ContainsText()) {
$Var = [System.Windows.Clipboard]::GetText("Text")
[System.Windows.Clipboard]::Clear()
<do stuff>
}
else {
Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 5
}
}
It's not a dedicated shortcut, but it will grab any text you copy into your clipboard...
You should also be able to get the exact behaviour you want using the .net classes such as System.Windows.Input.Keyboard, but that is probably a lot more effort.
When a user copies text to the clipboard, is it possible in Windows to programmatically identify the source file (and/or URL) and text position?
I have looked at a bunch of clipboard management applications (Ditto, clipboardFusion, ArsClip, and ClipDiary) and none appears to record the source of a clip.
It is my belief that this functionality in not possible, but I would like another opinion or two before I abandon my attempts.
I currently think the only way to achieve the desired behavior is to create an add-on / extension for every application that will be copied from. The extension would override the applications normal copy to clipboard behavior with a new format that adds the additional information. The key applications for me would be adobe acrobat (or another pdf reader) and a browser.
Windows does not require any source information to be given when setting clipboard data. Additionally, the only information needed to enable calling that function is a window handle. As such, the best windows could give you in a general case is the window handle that set the clipboard data via GetClipboardOwner.
Some applications set some of the formats on the clipboard to the source location of other data on the clipboard, but again in a general sense, there need not even be any source data; an application can just place random arbitrary data on the clipboard.
For your specific use case, you may be able to write a grease-monkey script to add your meta-data, and as firefox/chrome can display PDFs you might even be able to use the same script for PDFs.
I need a tool to capture and attach screenshots in TFS team web access. Instead of having some thrid party tool that captures and saves images on disk and then you have to attach that image to a bug like bugshooting. I want something integrated within TFS.
In VS11 it is possible to copy and paste your screen shots in the description field of the work item. You can check out the VS11 Beta version yourself.
There's nothing integrated in VS, but there are a couple of easy options:
use the standard Windows screenshot function. Alt-PrtScrn will capture the current window, and then you can paste into your work item's Attachments pane. It'll create a generic filename and attach as a PNG.
if you're using Win7, try the "Snipping tool" (just press Start and type "snip" to find it). That will capture a specified area and can then copy it to the clipboard or save to a file. If you copy & paste you still have the problem of generic filenames, though, so personally I still tend to save it myself.
As #Hofman said, you can do it with VS 11 beta, so you can use MS Paint or even SnagIt, for how to do it just see the following link:
http://mohamedradwan.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/new-enhancement-in-mtm-11-preview/
You may want to check the Capture Custom Control - you can use it to embed a "Capture" button in your work items. It automatically attaches the screenshot to your work item.
Check it out at http://witcustomcontrols.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Screenshot%20controls&ProjectName=witcustomcontrols
there are a very powerful tool which comes with Windows Server 2008 (Actually I'm not sure if it comes with windows 8 or 7)
never-mine.., the tool called "Record Steps To Reproduce the Problems" , this tool built for Taking screenshots of doing any thing in your machine step by step... WOW
You just need to open the start panel and then write "record steps to reproduce a problem". starting record, and make you job that you want, then when you finish stop recording and save the zip file in your machine.
the zip file will expose a word document contains every single click that you make and every page you've open with some description.
I have both InDesign CS2 and CS3 installed. Both use files with .indd extension. How does Windows know which icon to use? It uses correct icons i.e. CS2 files have cs2 icon and CS3 files have CS3 icon.
How does Windows know how to do this?
And how can I extract or use this version-detection system in my programs?
Edit:
Thank you for your shell-extension-icon-handler answers. Something new to me. But is there any way I could connect to IconHandler that InDesign provides and use it to detect version of the InDesign file?
You need to write an Icon Handler shell extension. See the MSDN documentation for IExtractIcon. The basic mechanism is that you create a shell extension and register the icon handler for the file type you want (look in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/.indd) and then the shell loads your handler, passes the file information and requests an icon in return. There's also the IExtractImage method if you want to provide a thumbnail bitmap rather than just an icon.
Note that you need to be especially careful writing shell extension handlers as any memory leaks or crashes can nuke the explorer and any other applications that display a file open/save dialog.
For some files it's HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\<file extension here>\DefaultIcon registry entry, but most files map to a more friendly name, e.g. .pdf\(Default) -> AcroExch.Document (if Adobe Reader is installed).
In that case you have to go along the registry to AcroExch.Document and see that either
DefaultIcon is right there or
AcroExch.Document\CLSID\(Default) is some GUID. Then, follow HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\<insert that guid here> and you'll notice that this key contains DefaultIcon
... and DefaultIcon is where the icon is loaded from.
Hope that was clear enough ;). I don't know about your special case but there should be a distinction in the registry.
It almost certainly installs a shell icon extension handler. Writing your own and knowing how to detect the version in a file format that isn't documented well or at all is quite tricky.
I'm creating a small ruby script to resize images and save them in a specified directory. I'd like the application to be as transparent as possible.
Is it possible to allow file dropping onto my Ruby script in all platforms? For instance, the user drags a file onto the script, which then takes the file path as an argument and resizes the image accordingly -- No GUI, no console, etc..
The behavior of drag & drop is dependent on the OS (and in case of Linux of the Window Manager), so no.
In Windows, you get the behavior you want for free. Just put a .rb file on the Desktop, and the files dragged onto it will be arguments to your script.
Another easy way for integrating with Windows is to write to registry entry HKLM\Software\Classes*.jpg\myhandler\command with the command you want to appear in the context menu of Windows Explorer (right click on a jpg file will popup a menu which will have your script in the menu).
I don't use drag & drop at all in Linux, so I wouldn't know how to do that there. I would expect it to have more security issues (permissions must be right, ...) but you could get there by creating a .desktop file, see http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/ for the complete standard, or read some examples from ~/Desktop/*.desktop .
Platform dependend, so here for windowsusers and reference only.
Save the following to a .reg file and load it by doublecliking it, tested on Windows Vista and 7
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rbfile\ShellEx\DropHandler]
#="{86C86720-42A0-1069-A2E8-08002B30309D}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rbwfile\ShellEx\DropHandler]
#="{86C86720-42A0-1069-A2E8-08002B30309D}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\RubyFile\ShellEx\DropHandler]
#="{86C86720-42A0-1069-A2E8-08002B30309D}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\RubyWFile\ShellEx\DropHandler]
#="{86C86720-42A0-1069-A2E8-08002B30309D}"
Such behavior would surely be platform specific, as drag-and-drop is implemented by the OS in this case, not by ruby.
So answering your question: no, it is not possible.
You can use platypus on os x to create a wrapper around your script.
http://sveinbjorn.org/platypus
regards
Claus