ctwise Posted November 19, 2014 Share Posted November 19, 2014 See this conversation - http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/5137-services-and-workflows/ It would be extremely useful if Alfred automatically copied any selected text to the pasteboard when it was invoked, and, when Alfred closes, clean up the pasteboard if it hasn't otherwise changed. For example, if the pasteboard looked like this: "Some old text on the pasteboard" But the user selected the text: "I want this text auto-copied" Then the "I want this text auto-copied" would be sitting on the pasteboard when Alfred was invoked, before workflows executed. When Alfred closes, if the auto-copied text was still sitting on the pasteboard, Alfred should restore the original text to the pasteboard, adjusting pasteboard history as appropriate. The intent being that workflows can get access to selected text when Alfred is invoked or ignore it if they're not interested and not be surprised by the pasteboard containing something when they didn't explicitly invoked copy. At the moment this behavior requires creating a hot-key and requesting that the selection in OS/X should be passed through. See http://www.packal.org/workflow/funnel for an example of a workflow that uses this feature to implement text filters on selected text. But, if the requested feature were implemented then funnel/filter-like workflows could be broken up into individual workflows that acted on text selections instead of requiring a different hot-key for each separate workflow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew Posted November 19, 2014 Share Posted November 19, 2014 I definitely agree with this... I've added a note to look into this for the future Tyler Eich 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tyler Eich Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 I think a {selection} token, used like {query}, would be a better solution. Internally, Alfred captures the selected text on opening and passes the text of the cached selection to instances of {selection}. Then the original clipboard should be preserved to prevent confusion for other apps that depend on the clipboard (like MenuClip). Alfred has had to deal with other apps that hijack the clipboard; it seems silly to do implement a similar behavior into Alfred himself… Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding the technical details Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ctwise Posted November 20, 2014 Author Share Posted November 20, 2014 I think a {selection} token, used like {query}, would be a better solution. Internally, Alfred captures the selected text on opening and passes the text of the cached selection to instances of {selection}. Then the original clipboard should be preserved to prevent confusion for other apps that depend on the clipboard (like MenuClip). Alfred has had to deal with other apps that hijack the clipboard; it seems silly to do implement a similar behavior into Alfred himself… Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding the technical details There's a big problem with that - large amounts of text. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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