README.markdown

Shared Clipboard

The shared clipboard does what it says on the label. Use it to share a clipboard between applications you're using on different devices, or between different people. For example, you might use Dragon Dictate on a Mac to compose some text, and then yank it into your editor running on a Linux machine for final editing. Or highlight some text in your browser so someone you're talking to on Skpye can immediately yank it into a Gmail message. Or at the shell, pipe some output into the clipboard setting script and yank it into your editor.

The idea for sharing a clipboard in this way came from Hilary Mason. Thanks Hilary!

This Github repository holds a collection of small utilities that can store selected text into a user's clipboard tag in Fluidinfo, retrieve that text and insert it, or clear the clipboard tag (i.e., remove it from Fluidinfo).

To use one or more of the utilities (at least if you want to store things to a clipboard), you will need a Fluidinfo account (sign-up here).

Note that by default all clipboards tags are publicly readable (this is easily changed - see below).

Available utilities

We currently have code for:

• Command line.
• Chrome-based browsers (Chromium and Chrome).
• The Emacs text editor.
• Python.

You can also get to clipboard tags by accessing Fluidinfo directly, e.g. curl http://fluiddb.fluidinfo.com/about/terrycojones/terrycojones/clipboard

Adding to the collection

If you're interested to contribute code for another application, please feel free to fork this project and send a Pull Request.

Any Fluidinfo-aware application can participate. The only thing an application needs do is to follow the tagging convention. I.e., use the same tag that all the other applications are using. This will create a broadening set of applications and users that are able to exchange clipboards with one another.

If you have questions about how best to use Fluidinfo, please join us in #fluidinfo on irc.freenode.net to ask questions. There are lots of Fluidinfo client libraries that should make it simple to add support for your favorite application to the collection. Check out the Fluidinfo developer information for details.

The Fluidinfo clipboard tag

The Fluidinfo tag currently used (by convention) by the utilities in this collection is username/clipboard.

Unless you set its permissions otherwise, the tag will be publicly readable. We might want to move to having two tags, e.g., public-clipboard and private-clipboard though this would require UI changes in the various utilities.