Improved Clipboard !

[mmoni]

Wouldn't it be a nice idea if we can copy and keep multiple items in the clipboard, and chose which all to paste. The maximum no. of items in the clipboard can of course be restricted, but not one, as it is now I suppose! Such features are available in most common office apps but would be useful in LV too!

Imagine this:

I do a careful selection of objects to copy from location X to copy to location Y. I find a label with some annoyingly complicated spelling which I think is better to copy and paste 'as is'. As soon as I press Ctrl+C I realise that my earlier careful selection was lost!

This might also be helpful while doing an 'overhaul' of a large project, or for that matter any other case where the clipboard finds any use. Like it might come handy when customising controls and using more than one image at multiple places,e.g. the various states of a boolean.

We can view/hide the clipboard from an option in the Edit menu for example.

Of course the clipboard has to look better than my presentation below May be the thumbnails can hint at the content of the item in the clipboard.

I hope this idea is 'new'.

[Neil.Pate]

They tried this in MS-Office quite a while back, and it was an absolute nightmare (for me at least).

I would not be that keen to see this in LV...

[mmoni]

@nrp:

What was that you did not like in particluar, in such a feature? May be the discussion can lead to a solution.

Also if you hide the clipboard from the menu option, the clipboard behaves like the one we already have (by pasting the latest copied item). This means it doesnt't trouble someone who gets troubled by this!

[lhb5883]

It seems like quick drop,maybe NI should improve custom quick drop

[Neil.Pate]

@mmoni

When it was introduced in MS-Office (back in 2000?) the clipboard was very similar to your picture where there was no visual way of distinguishing the contents. This made it not very useful as the brain has to track the order at which things were stuffed into the queue. I know in your example you suggest some meaningful visual, this would probably help a lot.

Perhaps its just me, but I am so used to a single element clipboard buffer that my whole workflow is built up around this concept. Virtually every single application in existence only gives 1 clipboard buffer, and that is unlikely to change any time soon.

[RavensFan]

I have to agree with nrp on this one.  My workflow is also based around a one element clipboard.  I find it very annoying when MS Word pops up with a dialog because I had sometime recently also copied and pasted other items.  It just gets in the way of trying to paste the last thing I cut or copied.

[Intaris]

I also hate the "multiple object" clipboard idea.....

[JackDunaway]

I like the idea. I really do. I just hesitate to make it even easier to do this. This Idea is helpful and I would use it, but I'll make generalization: if you're heavily relying upon copy and paste, you should re-evaluate your programming style (in favor of seeking a more maintainable and scalable solution). pseudo_kudos for a good idea, but my opinion is that "the masses" would use this tool as a "credit card" generating technical debt.

[mmoni]

@nrp:

I agree the MS office feature was annoying, but it was a saviour at times. But as I said when we disable it from menu it shouldn't trouble us.. may be it should be disabled by default. And thinking of a way of 'visually dstinguishing the objects' I thought the Context Help window might come handy... if we point on a thumbnail the context help window could show the item in greater detail.

@JackDunaway:

ha ha ha...that was a funny piece of code 🙂 and I think he/she might not have even used the copy-paste, as the various 'lines' of code have unequal spacings between the blocks!

As for the usage I don't think I will or am using it SO frequently...its just that I ran into a situation which I wouldn't want to the next time... and if the 'masses' want it to be there so be it.