Clipman
This manual describes Clipman version 1.2.2.
Last edited: 2011-11-01.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. The complete license text is available from the Free Software Foundation.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Clipman is a clipboard manager for Xfce. It keeps the clipboard contents around while it is usually lost when you close an application. It is able to handle text and images, and has a feature to execute actions on specific text by matching them against regular expressions.
Anatomy of a Clipboard
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. By this meaning you can paste with the keyboard what you select on screen.
Starting Clipman
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 restore a text and to clear the history.
There are two ways to run Clipman. You can select Clipman in the applications menu under the category Utility or type xfce4-clipman 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....
Popup Command
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.
Settings Dialog
The settings dialog is available under the Properties item in the right click context menu on the main icon. It allows to tweak the history and to edit actions.
General Settings
The following list describes the available options in the General tab of the Settings dialog.
- Sync selections
Sync the primary clipboard with the default clipboard in a way that it is possible to paste what gets selected.
- Save on quit
Keeps the history at every new session.
- Store last copied image
Allows to store one image in the history.
- Ignore selections
Prevents the primary clipboard from being inserted in the history.
- Size of the history
Sets the number of items to keep in history.
Actions Settings
An action is a pair of a 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 .
Action Dialog
An action has a human readable name that describes the pattern it is going to match. An action must have at least one command which also has a human readable name. The matched text can be reused in the command.
The actions are always matched against text selections unless specified otherwise. When the box Activate only on manual copy is checked, the action will be matched from the default clipboard (e.g. with Ctrl+C).
Regular Expression
Basic special characters: ".?+*(|)[]\".
".": represents a single character.
"?+*": respectively means zero or one character, one or more characters, and zero or more characters.
"(|)": used for grouping and substitution, the vertical bar is used as an OR operation.
"[^]": used to match a character from a set of characters and special characters, the circumflex is used at the start as a negation.
"\": escapes a special character.
Basic alphanumeric character class: "A-Za-z0-9". Character classes are used within square brackets to represent a set of characters.
"bug ?#?[0-9]+": text "bug", zero or one space, zero or one sharp character, and one or more numbers.
"(http|ftp).+\.(jpg|png|gif)": text "http" or "ftp", one or more character, a point, and the text "jpg", "png" or "gif".
"http://.{120}[^ ]+": text "http://", 120 characters, and one or more characters except a space.
Commands
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". With the command "exo-open http://host/\1", the real executed command would be "exo-open http://host/123".
Tweaks
The following list describes the available options in the Tweaks tab of the Settings dialog.
- Paste instantly
Automatically paste a selected item from the history to the current focused window.
- Position menu at mouse pointer
Popup the menu at the mouse pointer position, only for the xfce4-popup-clipman command.
- Reorder history items
Push last copied text to the top of the history, useful to reorder old items.
- Reverse history order
Reverse order of the history shown in the menu.
- Skip actions by holding Control
When the selection is done (mouse or keyboard) and the Control key is still pressed down, the popup menu for matched actions will be skipped.
Xfconf
Clipman uses Xfconf to store its settings. That allows you to change the settings with the tool xfconf-query or xfce4-settings-editor. The channel where Clipman stores its settings is xfce4-panel and the base property is /plugins/clipman. The following table lists all the properties with their possible values.
Property |
Type |
Default |
Values |
/settings/add-primary-clipboard |
bool |
false |
true or false to sync the primary clipboard with the default clipboard |
/settings/enable-actions |
bool |
false |
true or false to enable actions |
/settings/history-ignore-primary-clipboard |
bool |
false |
true or false to exclude the primary clipboard from the history |
/settings/max-images-in-history |
uint |
0 |
0-5 number of images in history |
/settings/max-texts-in-history |
uint |
10 |
5-100 number of texts in history |
/settings/save-on-quit |
bool |
true |
true or false to restore the history at every new session |
/tweaks/inhibit |
bool |
false |
true or false to disable the collector |
/tweaks/paste-on-activate |
uint |
0 |
0 to disable, 1 to paste with Ctrl+V, or 2 to paste with Shift+Insert as soon as an item is selected from the history |
/tweaks/popup-at-pointer |
bool |
false |
true or false to popup the Clipman menu at the mouse pointer position, works only when called from the xfce4-popup-clipman command |
/tweaks/reorder-items |
bool |
true |
true or false to push the last copied text to the top of the history, useful to reorder old items |
/tweaks/reverse-menu-order |
bool |
false |
true or false to display the history in the reverse order |
/tweaks/skip-action-on-key-down |
bool |
false |
true or false to skip the actions popup menu when the Control key is hold down at the end of the selection |
To change a setting from a terminal type the following command-line:
xfconf-query -c xfce4-panel -p /plugins/clipman/property -s value
Support
To report a bug or a feature request use the bug tracking system at bugzilla.xfce.org. If you have questions about the use of this software, please ask on the Xfce mailing list, or point your IRC client to irc.freenode.net and join the channel #xfce and ask for help.
About Clipman
Clipman was written by Eduard Roccatello and then maintained by Nick Schermer, and nowadays it is written by Mike Massonnet. Visit the Clipman Website.
This documentation was written by Mike Massonnet (mmassonnet@xfce.com). Please send all your comments and suggestions regarding this manual.
This software is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110, USA.