Dolphin Text Editor Menu (Version: 2.7 as of this post) is an enhancement and efficiency tool that works with most text editors and browser text areas such as MS Word, gmail, forum reply text areas, most if not all text editors and more. It applies or adds formatting, sorting, aligning, reversing and lots more to any text being worked on. Some examples of its features are remove blank lines, align text, append text – this adds text to the end of each line – convert to plain text, word count and get file names – this copies file names of selected files into the clipboard – and many more.
Dolphin Text Editor Menu sits in the tray and works in addition or in conjunction with the text editor or browser. The default keys to launch it are Ctrl+Numpad0.
Tag: formatting
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Freeware Shorts: Dolphin Text Editor Menu
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TyperTask: Tiny System Automation
TyperTask is a small freeware executable that automates many common tasks. The most notable and perhaps immediately useful feature of TyperTask is that in can expand text. Often typed or repeated phrases can be automated with fewer typed letters. As a simple example one can define the “~hth” abbreviation for “Hope this helps!” (see image) saving several key strokes. This is what the program calls a Trigger. Any number of triggers can be defined and saved one per line in the program interface. The other example in the image is a trigger for an email signature. Triggers can be used to correct common misspellings by adding a trigger like “recieve=receive” and also auto completing single words like “compl=completely”
TyperTask does more than just simple text triggers and can act as a launcher with such definitions or triggers as “{Control}{Shift}{Alt}G=RUN: http://www.google.com”, where special or non-alphanumeric keys are sorrounded by {}. TyperTask also supports delays like “{Control}{Shift}{Alt}N=RUN: notepad.exe{Delay=1000}Hello! {Delay=500}World!”, here notepad is opened and the text typed in it after the specified delay (in milliseconds). This can be useful when one wants to make sure an operation (a fully loaded notepad in this case) is completed before doing anything else. The WINDOW operator brings an already open window in front or into focus, for example “{Control}{Shift}{Alt}C=WINDOW: Calculator” brings the calculator into focus. Mouse clicks are also supported, this is perhaps most useful if one wants to use a program but make sure the mouse is clicked inside of it so that its Window is activated.
A more thorough explanation is given in TyperTask’s help file (accessed via the Help menu) which includes a list of special key codes and other features such as the support for environment variables (%TEMP% for system’s temporary files folder for example) and the Remove Clipboard Formatting feature.
One notable example from the help file is very interesting for those who write (HTML) code manually. “<b=<b></b>{left}{left}{left}{left}”, here the bold tags are completed faster and automatically but furthermore the cursor returns to in between the HTML tags ready to type the bold to be text.
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DzSoft Paste & Save Looks After Your Clipboard
Windows computers, in general, keep the most recent text or image copied to their clipboard.
DzSoft Paste & Save is a small and simple utility that saves multiple clipbord contents. However, instead of the typical clipboard manager like Clippy, CLCL and others Paste & Save holds or saves every text clipboard in one of three note (*.txt) files in its program folder. The advantage of such a set up could be in that excerpts of text can be collected from different sources in one location. As Paste & Save automatically appends the clipboard contents into one of its three text files. One can therefore have a large collection of related notes only by having the program remain in the system tray and do nothing more than the usual Ctrl+c – and not even need to use notepad or any other text editor and forget about Ctrl+v altogether. DzSoft Paste & Save lets the user define a separator between each clipboard and using its ‘remote control’ floating bar set and choose which note file is used on the fly, without maximizing the program’s main window.
For example the excellent Clipboard Help+Spell From Donationcoder.com has a notes section that allows permanent use of commonly used notes, and more features of course, but Paste & Save simplifies collection of notes very well as well. -
PlainText Is True To Its Name
PlainText is another alternative lightweight and no install software to make copying and pasting text more efficient and useful.
In much the same way as PureText featured earlier on RGdot.com PlainText removes formatting from text copied from such sources as the web. This includes removing the likes of font sizes, colors, images, tables and borders. The program let the user choose any combination of the Windows, Shift or Ctrl keys along with any one letter or number to use for pasting the text unformatted. This key combination would be used as an alternative to the traditional and standard Ctrl and V keys.
PlainText sits in the system tray, consumes less than 5MB of memory, is a 486KB download and is GPL GNU General Public License v3 software.
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PureText Clears Text Formatting
PureText does a simple task and does it well. It clears any formatting from text that is copied from such sources like the web.
There are many occasions when a text needs to be copied without the original color, font face, font style or character margins and spacing. PureText does this without the need to follow any extra steps. For example pasting text in Notepad and then copying it again will clear all formatting but using PureText it is possible to use Windows+V (or other configurable keys) instead of the traditional Ctrl+V keys and paste any text unformatted.
PureText does not require installation and when it is run it sits in the system tray. Right clicking its icon allows the user to configure any combination of keys by choosing any of the presented variations or to use the “Capture the next key typed’ button to choose and configure other variations. PureText should run on any Windows versions up to Vista.
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Clipboard Help+Spell From Donationcoder.com
I wrote about the Donationcoder.com’s website in a previous article and one of the more impressive and useful software written there is the Clipboard Help+Spell.
There are certainly many freeware, well reviewed, useful and popular clipboard utilities available. The sadly semi-abandoned Yankee Clipper, the open source Ditto and ArsClip just to name three and of course the clipboard capabilities of the all powerful PowerPro.
Clipboard Help+Spell is nevertheless a worthy contender, if not down right winner in the category. It is simply described as
…a text-based clipboard utility
But it has many features. Among its many features is the ability to archive and delete clipboard based on configurable dates, defining hot keys for viewing, pasting and working with the stored clipboards, filtering entries to find the forgotten ones and backing up the database of collected clipboards. The features don’t stop there, an internal editor spell checks and adds text editor features to manipulate the entries as well. For example it possible to change the case of the clipboard entries within the editor, strip characters, add lines and even find and replace words using regular expressions.
A clipboard utility won’t be complete without the ability to permanently store ‘favorites’ and in this case it is only a matter of dragging an entry into the said category (see images below).
Having said all that one of the most innovative features is the ability to create ‘Virtual Folders’. This feature allows certain definable clipboards to be grouped separately. For example a preset Virtual Folder is ‘Clips With URLs’ and the way it is defined, using SQL database conditional statements, is as follows
(Lower(ClipText) LIKE ‘%http:%’) OR (Lower(ClipText) LIKE ‘%www.%’) OR (Lower(ClipText) LIKE ‘%https:%’) OR (Lower(ClipText) LIKE ‘%ftp:%’)
in that the clipboards containing any of http, https, ftp or www will be placed as a subset of all clipboards under a separate icon (as shown in the above image).
The program’s Windows tray icon is configured such that left click, double left click, right click and double right click are all defined and show stored clips, the program’s main window, the program’s general menu and the program’s on and off toggle respectively. With Clipboard Help+Spell there is a lot to play around with and discover, well worth the support and download.
