Populist readme
Populist - Clipboard utility to provide easy and quick access to your favourite text entries.
Very important! Please read the upgrading instructions below BEFORE running Populist.
New stuff for version 2.1:
- Full Drag & Drop support.
- Stores last 15 text entries to pass through the clipboard.
- Entries are now stored in a text file, therefore no size limit on individual entries.
- Added 'Always On Top' option to float above other windows.
- Added Search feature making it easy to find entries.
- Hotkey to access the Populist Menu from anywhere in Windows.
- Added 'Save On Exit' option, now detects Windows shut down and saves if set.
Installation instructions:
If you are upgrading from a previous version you must close it down before installing the new version.
Unzip into a temporary folder. Right-click the populist.inf file and choose Install. The populist.exe and readme.populist.html files are copied into your windows directory and populist.inf is copied into your windows/inf directory. A shortcut to populist.exe is also placed in your start-up group. After installation you may then remove the unzipped files from the temporary folder.
Note: On Window's 95 the temporary folder must not be made up of any long filenames. This is a restriction of Window's 95 and the .inf script files.
Note: On Windows NT4 you need Administrator rights to use the populist.inf installation script. The program itself does not need these rights though. If you don't have these rights then manually copy the unzipped files into a chosen directory and run from there. You will lose the uninstall option.
Upgrading:
Before upgrading you must close Populist if it is already running.
Previous versions of Populist stored their entries in the Registry, this new version stores it's entries in an external file.
When upgrading, Populist will read your entries from the Registry then store them to a file, it will then delete your entries from the Registry as you will no longer need them.
Very Important: As this is a BETA release, you should take steps to backup the section of the registry that stores the settings for Populist BEFORE you run Populist.
To do this, click the Start button, then click Run. Type regedit. The registry editor will run. Along the left you will see a series of folders.
Click the plus sign to the left of the HKEY_CURRENT_USER folder to expand it. Then expand the Software folder that appears, then expand the Krapplets folder that appears.
Now, select the Populist folder by clicking it once, it will change colour. Then, click the 'Registry' menu and choose 'Export Registry File'.
You need to select a filename and a folder to store this file in. The file will not be large. When you have selected a name and folder, click Save.
This file will only be needed if Populist fails to import your registry settings, as it will delete them after it has read them.
If you believe this to be the case, please do two things, 1, mail me and 2, double click the file you created to restore your settings.
You should then use the old version of Populist until a new version has been released.
Uninstall:
Use the add/remove programs applet in Control Panel. There will be an entry for 'Krapplets Populist (Remove Only)'.
If populist is running when you uninstall, it will be removed next time you reboot Windows.
Basic Usage:
Populist will run after installation. It's icon will appear in the System Tray.
Double-click the icon to configure Populist.
Adding Entries:
The first step to using Populist is to add some text entries. For this example you can add your email address.
Type your email address into the 'New Entry' field then click the 'Add' button. Your email address then appears as an entry in the 'Current Entries' tree.
Grouping Entries:
Grouping entries allows you to store a group of related entries in a sub-menu. For example you could store a group of friends' email addresses.
To group entries, first click once on the text 'Populist Menu List' in the 'Current Entries' tree. This tells Populist that you want to add a top-level entry that can contain sub-entries.
Then type a name for the group into the 'New Entry' box and click 'Add'. The text will be added to the tree, you can now add more text entries as described above and they will appear as sub-entries of the group.
Populist decides whether to add entries as a group heading or not based on what entry in the tree has focus when you click 'Add'. It will always use that entry as the parent except when at the lowest level.
Accessing Entries:
Having added entries to the tree you are probably wondering what you can do with them.
These entries can be accessed from the system tray then copied into the clipboard and pasted into any program.
To access an entry simply right-click the Populist icon in the System Tray and all the entries are displayed as a menu.
Simply click the entry you want and it will be copied into the clipboard, it's as easy as that.
Other important information:
After adding or modifying entries, the information needs to be saved. To do this simply click 'Save'. If you would rather not worry about saving then click 'Save On Exit' then click 'Save' once only.
From now on, Populist will save any new entries when you close it or shut down Windows.
When Populist displays it's menu, you can adjust the width it will display up to. The maximum width is 99 and the minimum is 10.
The 'Always On Top' check box will keep Populist above all other windows when it doesn't have focus.
You can still minimise Populist however with this option checked and when you restore it will stay on top, this is how I use it sometimes.
Advanced Features:
Populist includes a number of advanced features. They are documented here.
Searching for text:
You can search for an entry or part of an entry. Simply click the 'Search' button and a small window appears for you to type text into.
Click < or > to search for the text. Populist will display any matching entries, click < or > again to continue the search.
OLE Drag and Drop:
Populist supports OLE Drag and Drop both within Populist and to and from external programs.
For the external program to allow drag and drop it must be OLE Drag and Drop compliant, many programs already are, including Internet Explorer and Netscape, Microsoft Office, Wordpad and many other programs.
To use Drag and Drop simply click the left mouse button on an entry and while holding down the mouse drag the entry. You can either drag it to another position in the tree or to an external program.
When you have dragged the data to the desired position let go of the mouse button. The text from that entry will now appear at the cursor position. When the data is dragged the original will always remain, if you don't want to keep the original you will have to delete it manually.
Data can also be dragged from external programs into Populist to create entries. When doing this Populist will make the new entry a child of the entry you drop onto.
Last 15 Clipboard Entries:
Populist stores the last 15 text entries to have been copied into the clipboard, this provides a clipboard history.
The entries appear as a group and this group is always the first sub-entry in the tree. Entries in this group cannot be deleted individually but you can clear the entire history list by right-clicking it and choosing 'Clear Clipboard History'. You cannot drag entries onto the clipboard history group.
Undo feature:
When you delete an entry in Populist it is possible to undo that delete. Simply click the Undo button and the last deleted entry will appear at the bottom of the tree.
Populist only remembers the last entry deleted, but if the entry contained sub-entries it will restore those also.
Hotkey Feature:
Populist will allow you to set a hotkey that can be used to access the Populist menu from the current cursor position.
To set the hotkey, click once within the 'Set Populist Hotkey' entry field then press the key combination you want to use for the Populist menu.
The restrictions on possible combinations are that you must use at least two modifier (CTRL, ALT or SHIFT) keys plus a letter or other key. For example if you want to use Z as your hotkey then press and hold down CTRL and ALT then press Z, then click save to make this combination active.
To use the Hotkey, simply press the key combination you previously set and the Populist menu will appear at the cursor position.
Keyboard Shortcuts:
Populist supports the following keyboard shortcuts:
F2 - Rename current entry.
Enter - If editing an entry finish editing and accept changes. If not editing copy the currently highlighted entry to the clipboard and to the 'New Entry' field.
Escape - If editing an entry cancel that edit and ignore changes. If dragging an entry cancel that drag operation.
Delete - Delete currently highlighted entry.
Known Bugs:
Although I am unaware of any bugs in Populist I have noticed some unusual behaviour regarding it's memory usage.
When Populist starts it reads all it's entries from file into memory. As data is copied into the clipboard more memory is allocated to store these entries. As entries are deleted or removed from the clipboard history this memory is freed internally by Populist yet Windows does not seem to recognise this until the program is minimised.
This behaviour has been observed under Windows NT 4 using the Task Manager to observe the memory Populist is using.
Contact:
This software is freeware, if you like it, send me a mail. If you have a problem with it, mail me and I will endeavour to help. If you wish to include this software on a free CD collection, please mail me so I can tell my friends!
Email: darren@krapplets.cream.org
WWW: http://krapplets.cream.org/
Version info:
1.0 25/06/97
First release.
2.0 20/08/97
Now checks if already running and if so brings it to the foreground and quits.
Uses a Tree Control to allow sub menu entries.
Removed 'Save Entries on Exit' as it didn't detect Shut down of Windows.
2.1a BETA 24/08/98
Full Drag & Drop support.
Stores last 15 text entries to pass through the clipboard.
Entries are now stored in a text file, therefore no size limit on individual entries.
Added 'Always On Top' option to float above other windows.
Added Search feature making it easy to find entries.
Hotkey to access the Populist Menu from anywhere in Windows.
Added 'Save On Exit' option, now detects Windows shut down and saves if set.