Since starting Take Control, I've been doing a lot more HTML work, and I'm continually struck by how often I want to maintain little chunks of text. Perhaps I want to copy the same bit of code from one file into a number of others, or perhaps I'm trying to see what a page looks like with and without certain text. When I'm working on actual HTML files in BBEdit, I have multiple Undos that help, but much of my work takes place in eSellerate's Web interface, where the text editing features are limited to what my Web browser provides (pretty good with OmniWeb, but barely acceptable with Safari). And no matter which environment I'm in, I find myself wanting to stash bits of HTML away, just in case I want to use them later. In cases where I really expect to reuse the code, I toss it into NoteBook, where I can be certain I won't lose it.

But a lot of the time, I'm saving a few lines not because I really think I'll need them, but as a backup, just in case I'm actually making a mistake by deleting them. There are of course a myriad ways to save a few lines, ranging from a text clipping to NoteBook to a temporary text file saved on my Desktop, but they're all too much work for the value of the text in question. What I want is something that protects me from deleting potentially useful HTML code without making me change my working habits at all.

I was lamenting this need while talking with Julian Miller of Script Software not long ago, and he said, "But that's exactly what CopyPaste does!" He was of course right, and I hadn't been thinking about CopyPaste in the context of saving bits of text because it was categorized in my mind as a multiple clipboard utility, something I seldom need in my everyday work. (Matt Neuburg has written about CopyPaste several times for TidBITS.) But CopyPaste also features a Clip Recorder that tracks everything you cut or copy. I immediately downloaded and installed CopyPaste X, set it to store the last 200 things I cut or copy, and promptly forgot about it.

http://www.scriptsoftware.com/copypaste/ http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=00751 http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07078

A few days later, I was working on a procedure to import eSellerate order files into a test database managed by Panorama, ProVue's long-standing database. Once I'd assured myself that the procedure worked properly, I needed to copy it over to my production database, but in the middle was distracted by email and overwrote the contents of my clipboard. I was initially irritated with myself, since although I could have recovered the text, it was going to be a few minutes of unnecessary work, but then I remembered CopyPaste's Clip Recorder. And indeed, it had saved the copy I had initially intended to paste into my production database. A click on the appropriate line in the Clip Recorder Palette and my procedure was back in the clipboard and ready to paste.

Frankly, this is really cool, since all I have to do to make sure that some bit of text doesn't disappear forever after being deleted is to use Cut rather than the Delete key. It will eventually roll off the end of my 200-entry list of copied items, of course, but I'm unlikely to remember I cut or copied something more than a day or two after the fact.

CopyPaste has a plethora of other features, of course, and even though I still haven't found myself needing multiple clipboards (I have occasionally used Nisus Writer Classic's multiple clipboards as part of macros over the years), and although I was happy to restrict my use to the Clip Recorder, I just found another useful one. In moderating TidBITS Talk, I sometimes end up with a post that lacks proper email quoting. That happened just today, and as I was grimly setting about the task of inserting all those angle brackets, I remembered that CopyPaste had an Email Quote function. I selected the text in OmniWeb's text editing window (moderation of TidBITS Talk takes place via a Web browser now, since it's Web Crossing functionality), Control-clicked it, and chose E-mail Quote from the CopyPaste Tools menu.

I could get to like CopyPaste. CopyPaste X 2.0 for Mac OS X costs $30 shareware, the reduced feature CopyPaste Lite for Mac OS X is only $15. And for those people feeling left behind in the move to Mac OS X, there's a free version of CopyPaste that works in Mac OS 9, along with another that works in Windows ($20).