In X11 (all Unix platforms) there are by default two clipboards to exchange any data between the windows. A default clipboard which is modified by manual copies (for instance when you select a file and press the copy button), and there is a primary clipboard which is modified by selections (for instance when you select text in a field).

Clipman handles only the default clipboard, but optionnaly it can also notice the selections. When it is handling the selections, the default clipboard will always be synced with it and contain the same data.

Clipman is used to keep in history a list of clipboard contents and to restore them. The history is displayed in a menu by clicking on the main icon. Within the menu it is possible to select an item to restore it, to clear the history and to activate or deactivate the clipboard manager.

Figure 1. Clipman Menu

There are two ways to run Clipman. You can select Clipman in the applications menu under the category Utility or type xfce4-clipman-plugin on the command-line, or you can add it into your panel. To add a new item in the panel right click the panel and select “Add new item…”.

Clipman provides the command-line tool xfce4-popup-clipman. When called it popups the main menu. The command is practical for the Application Shortcuts available at Xfce Menu+Settings+Keyboard.

The following table describes the available options:

Figure 2. Clipman Settings

An action is a pair of an action name and a regular expression. Each action can have one or more commands. The support of actions is optional and can be enabled or disabled through the “Enable actions” option.

To add an action click the Add icon, to edit an action select the action and click the Edit icon or double click the action, and to remove an action select an action and click the Delete icon. By adding or editing an action a new dialog is opened.

To learn more about actions go to the section called “Action”.

Figure 3. Clipman Settings

Clipman uses Xfconf to store its settings in the xfce4-panel channel. That allows you to change the settings with the tool xfconf-query. The following table lists all the properties with their possible values:

To change a setting type the command-line:

Basic special characters: ".?+*(|)[]\".

Basic alphanumeric character class: "A-Za-z0-9". Character classes are used within square brackets to represent a set of characters.

A command can reuse one or more substitutions from the regular expression. The substitutions are represented by ”\<number>” where <number> corresponds to the sub-pattern within parentheses or 0 for the complete text.

For example, from the simple pattern ”bug #(123)” it is possible to use ”\0” for the text “bug #123” and ”\1” for the text “123”. For the command ”exo-open http://host/\1”, the real executed command would be ”exo-open http://host/123”.